Hello everyone,

General:
First of all, a warm welcome to Celia, who is all set to enjoy her first season with us!

Challenges and organisers:
The thing that I need to do is to set a list of organisers for challenges. I’ve created a provisional list based on the few replies that I’ve had about dates, and I am checking to make sure that I’ve got the first couple of dates organised before I send out this provisional list.

Just to remind you, the dates are:

AD and Ch. 1. September 24, 2009
AD and Ch 2. October 15
AD and Ch 3. November 5
AD and Ch 4. November 26
AD and Ch 5. December 17
AD and Ch 6. January 7, 2010
AD and Ch 7. January 28
AD and Ch 8. February 18
AD and Ch 9. March 11
AD and Ch 10. April 1

The Christmas Quiz (which I will set, and it will be tough!) will be distributed on December 10th for submission by January 7th

The remaining Alpha Days to tie up the season will be:
AD.11. April 22
AD 12. May 13
AD 13. June 3

Excused from running challenges are Sally (looking after website), Margie (helping with website), David, Olaf (setting Christmas Quiz), Christine (keeping Log), but in exceptional circumstances may be asked to help. Those not setting challenges may be asked to help on other topics which may crop up.

Remember that to run a challenge, you should think of it running over 3 Alpha Days: the first one is to set the Challenge, the second to send out all the entries collated into one file, and the third to send out the judges results and comments – with the identification of the winner of that challenge.

Judging by last season, it may be advisable for the first few days after the setting of the Challenge to be available to answer emails querying some aspects of the description of the challenge – but I hope we will keep this to an absolute minimum this year, although members are ingenious in interpreting rules! Therefore I will ask you to frame the challenge, and send it to me before sending it out. I don’t really want to change any, but if anyone else has laid claim to that idea first, I might have to ask you to change it. I’d also like to make sure that the whole set of challenges are balanced to cover as wide a range of writing experiences as possible – and, of course, that they are as well question-proofed as possible!

Potential Challenges:
I have circulated this list of challenges before, but just to remind you, I’m sending it out again. David set out the initial list, and I have modified it, adding a few new ideas. We’re still looking at the 300-word challenge as being the norm, but the odd few variations in length would be acceptable. We will have to balance the whole programme so that we cover different aspects of writing.

A book/play/film/tv programme review .
The picture story could be based around a picture of an ancient artefact and the challenge is to write about its provenance.
A newspaper report (written present day) based around a nursery rhyme/fairy story.
A 500 word item (given) that needs to be reduced to 300 words: this is essentially harsh editing.
Given a 1,000+ word description of a situation/happening, prepare a newspaper report limited to 300 words.
A story/article/report that needs a footnote to explain a ‘technical’ word or process that is key to the item you write.
A story/article/report based around a discovery (there’s a saying on our local restaurant wall, “it was a very brave man who first ventured on eating oysters” – I wonder what that event was like?)
A letter (remember those?) to a friend about a journey. It may be set in the past e.g. Victorian era.
A piece of dialogue relating to a specific topic.
A story based around a colour, a smell, or a body part (a leg, for instance) as an important part of the plot.
A story with a given first or last line, or about making the wrong decision (or breaking a rule).
A story based around tidying/clearing/opening a wardrobe (but not a fantasy/fairy story)
Given an article/story written in the first person, change it to third person.
The first page (300 words) of your novel. It’s about the setting/the main character/era but, of course, has to grab the reader.
The first 25(or 50?) words of a crime novel together with the last 25(or 50?) words of the same novel. You don’t have to include the 74,950 words that go between.
A 100 word mini-saga, given 4 words – noun, verb, adjective and place (not necessarily a town) but restrict the word usage so that they are used in the manner specified. Other ideas could include stories for children (specific age group) science fiction, poetry.
Write an obituary for a national champion in a ‘rare’ sport or pastime (such as tiddly-winks, or bog-snorkelling)
You have been beaten in an election by a bitter rival. Write a short speech acknowledging the will of the electorate to make a ghastly mistake without defaming your rival.
Write a promotional review about a gadget which is doomed to failure (you’ll have to think up the gadget, but two spring to mind (1) A machine to cut Rothman’s long king-size cigarettes into two (this was actually marketed), and (2) a machine to remove the skin from bananas and replace it with a yellow easy-peel plastic cover.
I’m sure that you’ll all have some good ideas for challenges, but please discuss them with me before deciding on the final format of the challenge. If two members want to set a similar challenge, then it’s not on, and first one gets the right to use the idea.
There’s a lot of time for the later ones, but the sooner I get the list of organisers settled the better, then I will know who to harangue about getting on with it.

Writers Log:
We all know what an excellent job Christine has done with the Log over the past two years. What you don’t know, however, is that I asked her to write a short summary of the Log and the part it plays for us. I had hoped to persuade Jonathan Telfer to use it in Writers News, but he didn’t think it would fit (I don’t agree, actually). Nevertheless, I sent it to mike Wilson, editor of The Link – which is a newsletter type of magazine published by NAWG (National Association for Writers Groups) and he is enthusiastic. It’s a bi-monthly publication, and he’ll publish it in the October edition if there’s room (but a lot of space is taken up by their report of their Annual Conference in Durham at the beginning of September, so it may not appear until the December edition). I’ll keep you informed.

Me and my life:
It does seem that we all get our lives disrupted by various unexpected problems. I have had my problems, although they are more disruptive of routine and plans than anything really serious. It has stopped me from attending to too much detail in respect of Alpha although fortunately we are in a close season.

My son is working as the Technical Director for building a completely new civil airport for Islamabad. He now has given up his own home base in the UK to move to Pakistan for the duration of the contract 2-3 years. He uses us as his UK base. So far so good, as he shares his leave with visits to the UK and Uganda, where his long-term friend lives.

In the second half of July he visited us for a week and then flew to Uganda. His flight was Bristol – Amsterdam – Nairobi – Entebbe (Uganda). The 6.30am flight from Bristol to Amsterdam was cancelled due to a ‘technical fault’ and he was taken by taxi to Birmingham where he was re-routed Birmingham – Paris – Cairo – Entebbe. That was a brilliant piece of work by the airline re-booking system, especially he arrived at Entebbe only about 4 hours later than he’d planned. His luggage went via Amsterdam, but that arrived a couple of days later, but he had to collect it from the airport, which he duly did. Driving back to the place where he was staying, he failed to put the hand-brake of the car on as hard as he should, and as he was getting his luggage, the car rolled back, and trapped his leg against an iron gate.

This gave his leg a very severe bruising, he thought, and decided that it would clear with a few days. He was able to walk. So about 3 days later, on his flight to Pakistan, he had to change planes at Dubai, and that necessitates a good deal of walking, which he found very difficult. So he went to the Doctor in Islamabad, who examined the bruise, which had by now broken the skin, and treated him, but as he is diabetic, it needed special care. The leg didn’t improve, and after a few more days, he was sent for Xray, and it was found that both fibia and tibia had cracks. It was decided that the best course of action was to send him back to the UK for treatment and setting for the fractured leg (his parent company is still UK). So, of course, we are his base.

We accept this as the appropriate place for him to be, but it has meant that I have had to drive him to Taunton hospital four times in the last 10 days as they have been getting rid of an infection. This has been followed today (Thursday) by a visit to hospital in Bristol for specialist opinion It’s all progressing, albeit slowly, and there’s no cause for medical concern, but a hospital visit to Taunton takes half a day, and to Bristol takes a full day, so a lot of available time has been lost. My wife and I had planned to go on a 10-day break to Northumbria (during which I was hoping that I might have diverted to see David) at the beginning of September, but that is now cancelled because it is impossible for him to cope with looking after himself for more than a few hours with crutches and one leg in a heavy plaster cast. ,p>That’s not quite all. Otherwise he’s quite well, and so continues to direct the job of preparing and building all the runways and ground works from our dining room, using mobile phone and emails. It becomes difficult for me to access to the internet because I have to fit with him. And for the next 2 months as well.

So that’s my excuse for not being quite as prompt as I would like in getting the details planned for next season. And it’s all true: I couldn’t have made that up! It’s a lot more interesting than excuses like ‘missing the bus’.

Summer Collection:
I think that the summer collection seems to have worked out very well, and it looks an excellent read. Sadly, though, I haven’t yet read any of the submissions: I was going to print them all off earlier this month, but I’m afraid it’s been low on my list, as I’ve had a couple of complicated legal problems to offer my opinions on (I’m not a legal expert, but my opinion is apparently valuable). I’ve kept all the emails about the writing and will print those off to read at the same time.

Anyway, I think the whole collection looks good.

That’s the lot for now: I’ll send the list of Challenge organisers as soon as I get it sorted.

Best wishes

- Olaf