Hello everyone,

General:
Now we are starting our fourth year, I’m hoping it will be as enjoyable as the previous ones. There’ll be a few changes in organisation, partly due to comments from you, and partly because I’d like to shed a little of the responsibility. Not that I mind, but sometimes date clashes cause me a bit of a problem.

Membership:
You’ll all have entered Tara and Rosemary into your address lists and it seems that everyone is doing everything we can to make them feel as though they’ve always belonged. As I said last time, we should remove Catherine from the list (some of you have already done so) – note, I avoided saying we must scrub Catherine! You will remember, too, that Ann has some serious disruption to her life, and her recent email saying that she wants to retain her links with Alpha is most welcome. One of my aims for Alpha at the outset was to reach out to members who, for one reason or another, were unable to travel to meetings, but still enjoyed working with words. Margie, as you all know is moving house from the Turks and Caicos Islands to Cape Town, and is unlikely to give us any input until after Christmas, but keep her on the list: if she gets time, I know we’ll hear from her. I’ve had an email from Chris – he’s been very quiet over the summer – but, sadly, that’s because he is going through a bad spell of health. He will contribute when he can, but he asks us not to rely on him for the time being. Again, it’s a matter of keeping him on the circulation list.

As far as I know, everyone else will be responding as normally, although I’ve had a couple of emails asking me to avoid giving them extra duties at specific times.

Circulars:
As previously, we’ll try to work to Alpha Days, and you’ve all had the dates. Because I am trying to get all members to take a turn in organising challenges, I think the Alpha Day Circulars can be identified a little differently. The main communication will be subscripted by ‘a’ – that’s like this one is 4.1a. Challenge information will be subscripted by ‘b’, so all the details relating to the challenges will be on 4.1b. This season, I want to try to initiate a new category 4.1c (see below).

In all cases for all the Alpha Day circulars (well, almost all – I make that caveat in case I slip up), they will be in the form of attachments to a short email. These attachments will be in Rich Text.

New Category ‘c’:
This is not an idea which will make more than minimal demands on members. I know that we have all read each other’s work in respect of challenges, and some have sent in longer pieces of work for criticism, but I’d like to see a piece if ‘free’ writing from everyone if possible. That is, not a piece which is tailored to any challenge, nor to a desire for constructive criticism, but just a piece which you’ve written and think others might enjoy, for whatever reason, but if you wish to comment on it in an email to everyone, please feel free to do so. I’ll start with a piece in 4.1c, and I’ll ask if you can all think of something for future Alpha Days. Presumably it’ll be on your PC, so it’ll just be a matter of attaching it to an email.

If you want to turn this into a discussion about the rights and wrongs of using someone else’s techniques for writing, please offer your opinions.

Challenges:
The basis for the challenges this season is changed slightly, but I hope we are tending towards a satisfactory solution. Last year’s system met with some criticism because members sometimes wanted to opt out of picking a specific winner. The system this year avoids the needs for this, but you have still got to pick the best entries!!

I hope that every person who enters will also enter a judgement: I’m sure that everyone will co-operate as far as possible.

The following sets out the plan for a Challenge – as it applies to the first challenge. Later challenges will follow the same pattern. Thos organising challenges just follow what I do!!

Alpha Day 1, Thursday, Sept 13th. Challenge 1 set
Tuesday, October 2nd. All entries for Challenge 1 received.
Alpha Day 2, Thursday, October 4th, File of Challenge 1 entries sent to all for judging.
Tuesday, October 23rd, All judgements received.
Alpha Day 3, Thursday, October 25th, Results of Challenge 1 sent out.

I am suggesting the following organisers for challenges, based on what members have told me (Christine, Sally, Ann, Margaret, Margie and Chris are omitted for various reasons)

Challenge 1, September 13th, Olaf
Challenge 2, October 4th , Sue
Challenge 3, October 25th, John
Challenge 4, November 15th, Geoff
Challenge 5, December 6th, Clare
Challenge 6, December 27th, Zena
Challenge 7, January 17th, David,
Challenge 8, February 7th, Di
Challenge 9, February 28th, Rosemary
Challenge 10, March 20th. Tara

If any member has difficulty in keeping to these dates, I’m sure someone will step in to help.

This year, I’d like everything relating to the challenges to go out as an ALPHA DAY ‘b’ circular: follow what I do for naming them, as I go first!!

I have prepared a list of topics from which you can choose when it’s your turn, although each topic can be tailored or amended. However, you may devise your own challenge not in my list, but prose entries should not be longer than 300 words. Don’t choose a topic that someone else has already used this year.

I will send this list to everyone shortly (I have done it, but I want to ensure that it’s as complete as possible).

Anthology:
As you will all realise (apart from Tara and Rosemary) the contributions to an anthology over the summer have as yet not resulted in much: David is the only member who has so far sent anything, but there are others in the pipeline. This was intended to be a summer activity, but clearly, we’ll have to extend it – say, to December.

What we were looking for were contributions on the theme of ‘music’. The contributions could be short stories, articles, poems, even anecdotes, so that we have a variety. Chris was originally going to look after the contributions, but in the circumstances, I’ll take over, and you can send them to me. I’d like every member to contribute, and that now clearly includes Tara and Rosemary. Even if you’ve not yet written anything, if you have some sort of idea of what it’ll be, than it would be helpful to me if you could let me know as soon as you’ve firmed up on your idea.

Words:
What I have noticed during the summer is the use of some words which haven’t really existed before, and which particularly grate on me. Probably you all have noticed some as well, but these are my selection.

We’ve all become used now to words like prioritise, and whether we like them or not, they are used. But recently I’ve heard the words democratise and securitise (I suppose the meanings of these is obvious), and even in the last few days, I heard on Radio 4 no less, the word informatisation. As far as I could make out, this is the noun which deals with bits of intelligence information gathered together. But best of all was a stop at a Waitrose store, where I idly looked at recipe sheets (that’s as near as I get to cooking) and say the relevant sheet for Butterflied Chicken Nuggets.

Has anyone else got any good examples?

Website:
I hope that you all look at Alphawriters.net website frequently. When you next do so, please note that there are some gaps in the descriptions of members – the biographical notes, which Sally suggested up to about 30 words, and mugshots (and I’ll send her mine as soon as I’ve eliminated as many of the crease lines as I can).

Summer activity:
You will have seen comments by members about summer activity, particularly those by Geoff, who seems to be preparing ideas for film scripts for a series called ‘Carry On, Geoff’ – but we do all like his missives.

However, I thought you might all be interested in what I have experienced in August – which might not have happened without the Alpha website which Sally manages so well.

On August 1st, I received an email from Jonathan Telfer of Writers News, forwarding an email from someone in Manchester who was desperate to get in touch with me. She had seen the Alpha website, but as that doesn’t give my email address, she sent it via Writers News. When I read her email, she simply stated that I used to work with her father in Manchester, and she had some things she would like to ask me about. For those of you who don’t know, I worked as a programmer with the world’s first computer programming team in Manchester in the early 1950s.

However, her name was Daniela Derbyshire, and I had never known anyone called Derbyshire, so I presumed that was her married name. Answering her email solved the immediate problem: her father had been called Dietrich Prinz, and she had been born when he was 60. He was about 50 and unmarried when I knew him in 1952-3, and one of the most interesting things about him was that he gained his doctorate under the supervision of one Albert Einstein in about 1930 or so!

The exchange of emails with Daniela has continued apace, and she wants to build up a description of what it was like to work in that kind of research in that era. All the technical stuff has been well documented of course, but she wants to put on record the more human side. She knew nothing of her father’s work, and has only just been clearing up her mother’s belongings, and has got interested.

Where this will go from here (I have been sending her lots of information) I don’t know, but she is a journalist – I think she works for the Telegraph: at least she does contribute to the weekly expat version.

Writers’ Log:
Just as a reminder for everyone, and an explanation for new members, this is an appeal for you all to send details of your writing activities to Christine. Christine compiles the log, and circulates it at the same time as the Alpha Day circulars.

All writing activity is relevant, from letters to the press, local newsletters, successful and unsuccessful submissions for competitions and publication.

Finally:
It’s lovely to be starting a new season – and I am grateful for the enthusiasm which comes through in all your emails.

- Olaf