Grant Application:
I duly submitted an application for a grant to put our first year’s experiences in book form. I received an acknowledgement on 17 August, and the application was given a number and title for reference: No: 013953. "To print and publish a book of a pioneering experiment".

I started to write this Alpha Day 2 circular two days ago, but now on September 23rd , I’m now having to change things. I’ve just had a letter from the Arts Council today to say that I have been given a grant of £780 to publish the book. I don’t regard this grant as a personal one, it’s for all of us, and everyone will have input included.

Briefly, the money will be spent on producing the master on CD, and getting a ‘print on demand’ firm to publish it. My budget worked on the basis that we’ll get everything in place and get 100 copies of what we’ve done as ‘promotional’ and ‘record’ copies (including one for each of us) and then offer copies for sale on demand at cost price - i.e. no real profit margin, though we might make a few pounds. I’m aiming to get it done by the end of January.

I have a full record on my PC of the monthly competitions, most of the discussions, the longitudinal experiment, and of course the group story. We have also a couple of articles. Ideas for the way the book is planned must be a discussion topic (see Section 5 below)

Website?
I’ve heard from Sally, and she has some experience in setting up websites, and has offered her help, for which I am very grateful. Ann also has experience, so we have a good fund of knowledge to use.

We will have to decide what should be put on the website, but again, I am emphasizing that it should be a website which is informative to others - i.e. it is a publication by us. See Section 5 below.

Future Alpha Days
I think my idea for "hosting" an Alpha Day wasn’t fully understood: I’m not surprised as I don’t think it was well explained, so I’ll put it ‘on hold’. However, I may ask members to take responsibility for sending out the Circular on occasions.

Other responsibilities
Margaret is maintaining the Writers Log, and you will be getting the first of the season coincident with this circular. Sue-J is going to continue with the ‘Learning Curve’ so if you have anything for either, please send them. New members please note that Margaret’s Writers Log is a record of the writing we are doing outside the confines of the Alpha Circle. See the first log, and add anything which you have completed or are doing. The Learning Curve contains a record of a variety of hints and tips - including the value of courses, books, conferences - for the benefit of members. Sue-J will shortly be circulating the information which has been subscribed to date - and again, please send details of anything you can add to Sue-J.

See the Challenges page for details of this month's regular challenge - and the results of the last one! This year, I am taking up the suggestion from last year that we do our own assessment. So within a couple of days, I will send you the entries for the challenge, identified by number only. I’d like each of you to pick out (a) which you think is the best, and (b) four which you feel were good runners-up (but you can’t choose your own entry!!!). I will then collate the assessments. You may make a comment on the entries you’ve selected. I’ll make these points again when I send round the entries.

The Longitudinal study is up and running. John has agreed to take over the running of it. You will all hear from him once during the season, asking you to write about 300 words, either to write the first half of the piece of prose, or the last half - and you’ll have about three weeks to do it.

Group creative writing: See the Group Writing page for details.

Discussion:
Website: Please if you’ve got any ideas about what to put on a website (if we have one) send them round to everyone using subject box labelled ‘XTC Website’. My own feelings are that we should just state what went on in the last Alpha Day: i.e. the next challenge, and the results of the last one, plus anything else which might be of general interest. There would be no contact with us - it would only be an information website.
Grant: As explained above, the receipt of a grant makes exchanging the ideas about the book a priority. However, I haven’t yet had time to rough out a considered contents list, and I’m away until Friday. I will send round a draft contents next Sunday, which I hope you will be prepared to discuss.

I am asking new members to bear with us as we explore this, but you may have useful input to it.

- Olaf