Are you writing a novel?

Are you writing a novel? Would you like to meet fellow writers and get some feedback about your work?

Greenacre Writers have a second 'Finish That Novel' that runs monthy on Monday evenings at 7.00pm (the 3rd Monday of the month) The group will run on similar lines to our existing group, and is for those who are already working on novels (not just planning one!).

Please let us know if you are interested.

For those who are not already in a GW group we do request you send in a sample of writing.

E:mail: greenacrewriters@gmail.com

A Little Success

We'd like to congratulate Lindsay Bamfield, one of the Greenacre Writers, who has just won Authonomy's The Pitch Writing Competition. The competition was launched last month for authonomy authors. The premise? Pitch your novels – Authonomy selected the strongest pitch and the author will receive personal writing advice from bestselling women’s fiction author, Claudia Carroll, based on the first 20,000 words of that novel. After lots of toing and froing, Claudia and the authonomy team managed to whittle down to 5 finalists, and after some more whittling, one overall winner and four runners up were chosen.

We’re delighted to announce that the winning pitch was Do Not Exceed Fifty, by Lindsay Bamfield.

Here’s what Claudia had to say about making the decision: I had a great time reading through all the pitches, and I have to tell you, selecting a 'favourite' really was an incredibly tough job! The standard was unbelievably high and after a LOT of deliberation, I narrowed it down to two; then spent the weekend mulling it all over in my mind. Anyway, at the end of the day, I really thought there was one absolute stand-out and that was DO NOT EXCEED FIFTY by Lindsay Bamfield. The criteria I used to make the final choice was, which pitch would immediately make me want to run out and buy the book? And Lindsay's pitch was not only fresh and totally original, but also I thought totally unlike anything else that's out there at the moment.

Do Not Exceed Fifty - Pitch

It’s not thirty-something chick-lit, or forty-something mummy-lit. This is grown-up fifty-something, thinking-more-about-menopause-lit. Meno-lit has arrived.

Independent as she is, Xanthe, 50, divorced with an empty nest, would quite like to have someone special in her life, and more to the point someone who thinks she’s special. But it’s no good sitting patiently waiting for gorgeous, single, fifty-something men to turn up like buses, she has to go out and hunt. Which is why Xanthe discovers the horrors of speed dating, dining clubs and Internet dating sites. At least something good comes out of it - she meets Maggie, and they can compare and share the ups and downs of life and dating at fifty. Older women still have it, but flaunting it is just that bit harder.

Aimed at young-hearted older women who are fed up with ageism, and bored of reading about ditsy young things or the trials and tribulations of women who think they are the first to raise teenagers, this novel is for women who want heroines of their own age who don’t have it all. Funny and wry, Do Not Exceed Fifty follows Xanthe on her dating quest, discarding hopeless cases: men who want women to cook for them; men with moustaches and men who have only just left home as she goes.

Congratulations Lindsay.

Memoir and Autobiography Club

Greenacre Writers are planning a Memoir & Autobiography Club to
commence Tuesday 26th July. It will run alternate months on Tuesday evenings at 7.00pm (the 4th Tuesday of the month) The group is for those who are already working on memoir or autobiography.

Membership is £10 per year and will be on a 'first come, first in' basis!
So please let us know if you are interested.

For those who are not already in a GW group we do request you send in
a sample of writing.

Email: greenacrewriters@gmail.com

Finish That Novel2

Greenacre Writers are planning a second 'Finish That Novel' group to commence on Monday 18th July. It will run monthy on Monday evenings at 7.00pm (the 3rd Monday of the month) The group will run on similar lines to our existing group, and is for those who are already working on novels (not just planning one!). As places are limited, membership will be on a 'first come, first in' basis! So please let us know if you are interested.

For those who are not already in a GW group we do request you send in a sample of writing.

E:mail: greenacrewriters@gmail.com

Third Prize Winner

Coffee with an Old Friend

By Natasha Mirzoian.

I had been thinking of you for a few days and as always when I think of you, you ring. So in a way I was expecting the call, but not your news.

The fear is a hand wrapped around my throat making my voice sound different as we speak. I know that if I take a deep breath then as I exhale the fingers will tighten, crushing harder. So since our conversation I carry on with my daily tasks taking only small shallow breaths that leave me slightly light-headed. I unload the dishwasher and then load it again with dirty plates, wipe down the kitchen surfaces with a rag and take the chicken out of the freezer. I notice that the plants on my windowsill are all dying. I over-water the parched earth, out of guilt. Water pouring down the sides of the clay pots like dirty tears, hoping that by over compensating I might bring them back to life.

I haven’t seen you in nearly a year. I thought you would look thin and pale and withered, yet you are rounder and your skin has colour. Before our meeting I worry. What should I say? What will you say? I want to hide, unable to cope with such adult themes.

But it is just like the old times. Except we have a new topic of conversation. Your voice is steady and fluid as you tell me about the horrors you had endured in the last five months. I’m aware that my eyes are large as I listen and I try to make them smaller. We discuss it all calmly, our voices soft, as we sip our steaming cappuccinos in Starbucks. I wonder briefly if you should be drinking coffee but I can’t bring myself to ask. I poke with my spoon at the marshmallows in my coffee, suddenly feeling like a child for choosing them, they have become brown ugly lumps bobbing in my drink. I notice that your lips are blistered and you blow on your coffee to cool it before you can take a sip.

As I listen my eyes wander to the family sitting a few tables away. They are American and excited to be on holiday. The mother manages to manoeuvre and conduct three noisy children and one tired-looking husband with the ease of someone who is used to juggling many things at once. She has a ruddy complexion and sun-parched blonde hair making her look like she spends all her days outdoors in the sun. I notice her eyes soften as she watches over her brood, who have settled down, momentarily pacified by brownies and hot chocolates. She catches my look and smiles. To her we appear ordinary. Two young women drinking overpriced coffee and casually discussing our jobs, but if she only looked closer she might notice how my hand shakes as I stir my coffee with a spoon while you talk or that your blunt brown fringe is slightly askew underneath your hat. Her mind is elsewhere as she wipes dribbling chocolate from chubby cheeks with one hand and smooths down a crumpled but carefully written-out list of places still left to visit with the other.

We talk for hours; even laughter finds it way through our conversation as you describe your stays in hospital. I laugh cautiously aware that it may change into something else if I don’t keep it in check; hilarity and hysteria can often blur into one. As I wait at the counter for our third round of coffees to be served I examine the pastries under a glass display distractedly. I feel a trembling throughout my body, like a buzzing travelling through my blood. I think that if I place my finger on the glass it might vibrate. I don’t look back at you as I wait for my order, not wanting you to catch me staring. Even though that’s exactly what I want to do, to examine you from a distance.

‘Would you like anything else with your coffee?’ The waiter asks. His smile reaches all the way to his brown eyes, his teeth white and healthy. ‘A Danish pastry, maybe?’

I look back at you, catching your eye, and point to the cake displays. You tilt your head and for a second I remember you from eleven years before, sitting cross-legged in our student kitchen in your pale pink pyjamas eating a cream horn with icing sugar on top, the cream spilling out from one end as you bit into the other. I remember watching in jealous awe as you devoured desserts without ever gaining a pound, while the rest of us stuck to coffee and cigarettes. The look of pure delight just before you bit into it, in anticipation of the taste, a look close to love. I point at the Danish, a swirl of icing and dough with a bright hopeful cherry on top. You smile and shake your head.

‘No, thank you.’

He is still watching me. ‘Maybe next time.’

As he places the change in my hand his fingers touch the flesh of my palm. He is young and sweet. I glance back at our table, you’re fiddling with your hat, pulling it lower over your forehead, pulling gently at the stiff hair strands that stick out from underneath it, re-adjusting things before I return. Then I look back to his easy smile that rolls off his tanned face like soft butter off a knife; he is somewhere else, on a different plain from where we are.

‘Maybe.’ It comes out sharper than I intended. I grab the tray, turning my back on him and return to you, crossing worlds as I walk towards our table and sit down.

While you talk I study you, your dark eyes glow with a fever of something. I can’t tell what it is, maybe just the drugs that you’re on. I can’t help but remember hearing about a ritual in one of my anthropology classes from years ago. I cannot recall where it happened, it may have been in a remote village in the Caucasus, or a rite of passage in Ancient Greece or it may have been a particular tribe in Africa. The time and place has left my memory, but the story remained.

At a certain time every year all the girls who had reached the age of maturity were gathered together and presented with a clay bowl filled with stones from which they each picked one. There were exactly the same amount of pebbles in the bowl as there were girls, half of the stones were a milky white and half were a polished black. As the girls each blindly picked a stone their future would be sealed. The girl who pulled out the white stone became instantly elevated in her position within the community, she would be sought after as a wife and would have her choice of suitors, a life guaranteed free of hard labour and forced marriage. The girls who chose the black stones were destined to be servants, their life would be of hard work and service, forced to do anything that was required of them. They accepted their new position in the community’s hierarchy without questioning. All girls were prepared for either paths before they pulled out the coloured stones. Sometimes friends were separated in this way, sometimes sisters were divided as one was forced to serve the other within their household. The interesting thing was that nobody argued with their fate. They believed that the stone’s colour had come to each of them for a reason. Feelings of unfairness or injustice did not plague the girls’ thoughts, the way they would ours. They lived with pure acceptance.

As I look into your eyes I wonder if that is what I am seeing in them. Is it acceptance of your fate that gives them that strange glow? I swallow hard, feeling my own pebble stick in my throat.

To my relief by the end of the evening our conversation does turn to jobs and boyfriends, topics that indicate we are still part of the everyday, the mundane. We are just as we were before. We discuss everything, except the prognosis. And even as we gather our things to leave you don’t offer this information so I do not demand it. It is yours to give. Yet when I hug you goodbye I hold you longer than usual, pressing you to my chest in an awkward way. I want you to feel my solidity, to know that I am here. Or maybe it is just my way of trying to overcompensate, to revive you after a period of neglect, like my plants.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ you say, generously.

As you rush off to catch you train it begins to drizzle and I realise that I left my umbrella in the coffee shop. I go back to our table alone. It hasn’t been cleared yet and the sight of our cups on the table stops me in my tracks. At first I think it is a different table, but then I spot my umbrella underneath it. It seems impossible that those cups belonged to us just a few moments ago, but the smudge of my lipstick on the white ceramic confirms this. I think of you catching your train and how my thoughts had turned to other things so quickly and yet our round cups are still here sitting in their saucers, frozen as time moves around them. Once again I feel like I have crossed plains. Hurriedly I grab the umbrella from under the table and step outside without looking back, just as the rain really starts to fall hard.

Creative Writing Workshop Tomorrow

The Greenacre Writers invite you to a Creative Writer’s Afternoon - this is part of the Trinity in May - Art, Drama, and Music - a series of events held at Trinity Church in North Finchley:

Life Writing Workshop
Saturday 28th May 2011

2.00pm - 5.00pm
Trinity Church
Finchley,
London N12

The workshops will introduce you to the skills needed to think and write creatively.
The aim of the afternoons are to meet with fellow creative writers, to work on creative writing exercises, share your work to receive supportive feedback and ideas in a friendly and stimulating environment.

Workshops are free but we are raising money for the Greenacre Bicycle Rally (Sunday 12th June).
Suggested donation: £5

If you require more information either e-mail:
greenacrewriters@gmail.com
or contact:
Rosie (MA Writing) on 020 8346 9449
Lindsay (BA Hons Literature) on 020 8343 7181

Second prize winner

The Bread

By Sal Page

‘Don’t just look at it – eat it. Come on, Robbie. Why do you have to be so slow?’

He tried to speak. Although he’d not taken a bite yet, he felt as if his throat was full of bread already, bread that didn’t want to go down. His voice came out dry and squeaky.

‘It’s him’.

‘What?’

He’d been staring at it forever. On the other side there’d been an organised street plan with plots of blurred leopard skin along the edges, like Auntie Jude’s coat. Then, on this side, the usual burnt brown bubbles and wild craters gave way to mysterious swirling mists and creases and scabby as-white-his-knees patches. And right in the middle of his bread was Dad’s face.

Robbie swallowed whatever it was stuck in his throat. His voice emerged clearer the second time. He pointed at the face.

‘It’s him.’

‘What are you on about now?’

It was unmistakably Dad, hair parted to the left, brown-rimmed glasses and the half-laughing expression was right too. It had been five weeks since Robbie had seen him but he hadn’t forgotten.

Mum peered over his shoulder. Robbie had a rush of confusion when she began to pay her full attention to the bread. She snatched up her phone, thumb stabbing at the buttons. He took a tiny bite from the edge of the bread, put it back on the plate, then wondered if he should have done that.

‘Leave the bread. Just eat the curry, babe.’ Mum pulled it away from the dollop of chicken Korma. A splash of sauce followed and landed on his school reading book.

‘No Jude, just Sainsbury’s Naan. Not even the luxury brand. Yeah, bog standard, like you always say. Unless that’s just for toilet rolls.’

Mum, nodding and ‘uhuhing’ at whatever Auntie Jude was saying, turned away from Robbie and placed the bread on the work surface. She tucked the phone under her chin and grabbed the cling film from the top of the cupboard.

‘I’m ringing the paper, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this one’s better than all those. Seriously, Jude, you’ve got to see it. I’m looking at it right now. It’s really spooky. Come round. No, I’m sure it’s not Michael Jackson. Ok, see you.’

She stuck the phone in her back pocket, ‘Eat up, Rob.’

Robbie lifted a forkful that hovered in the air above his plate as he looked over at Mum. She reeled a piece of cling film from the roll too fast, cursing as she tried to tear it off. That weird tingly magic, a bit like he sometimes felt pulling his jumper over his head, curled it and stuck it to itself. Robbie got up to help. He was better at this than Mum because it was one job where being in a rush didn’t help. He put his hands out to take it off her but she peeled the cling film off her fingers and waved it onto the floor.

She flipped open, and slammed shut, the cupboards one by one. She pulled out the biscuit tin, tipping the Penguins and Kit Kats out. They slid and raced along the work surface, one yellow Penguin winning by nearly reaching the kettle. She banged three times on the bottom of the tin, shooting out a spray of crumbs from biscuits long ago eaten and forgotten about. Robbie was wondering if any of them were from Dad’s digestives and malted milks when Auntie Jude burst in the front door.

‘Let’s see it then.’

A lady with a camera came early next morning and took lots of pictures. She asked them to point at the bread and look surprised. Auntie Jude wanted to be in the photo as well so they all squashed onto the sofa. Robbie was pleased his Dad was going to be famous. Lots of different people visited the flat. They had more visitors in a day than they usually had in a year. They all wanted to see the bread, now safe inside one of the plastic boxes from Dad’s Christmas chocolates. Robbie could look through the lid and see Dad’s face looking out. His own teeth marks spoilt one side. Mum was talking to a man who was sitting on their sofa, writing quickly into a notebook.

‘I’m a single mother. I lost my husband quite recently.’

Robbie sat by the window. He wondered why, if his Dad was lost somewhere, he didn’t just ask someone the way. And why didn’t Mum go and look for him? The last time he’d seen his Dad had been at that odd smelling place with the thin scratchy carpet. What had it smelt like? Grey meat and something toilety. Maybe Dad was still there, sitting on the saggy sofa with the others, the television on but no sound coming out.

He remembered coming back on the bus, deciding not to think about it anymore. He hadn’t done very well at that but he’d tried. He looked outside. Shame there were no clouds. He loved looking at clouds. It was all blue except for a fading to pale cream on that line beyond the far side of the park. Two startlingly straight trails from an aeroplane bridged the sky. They were cloudy but nothing like real clouds. They soon lost their preciseness, expanding and dispersing into the blue. Soon it was as if they were never there.

‘It’s on Youtube now. Everyone’s talking about it. We’ve gone world-wide.’

Later, a man with a television camera and lots of busy people with phones and clipboards filled the flat. Robbie kept getting in the way, being elbowed out of the way and then getting in the same people’s way all over again. Auntie Jude had repeated the story so often, it had started to sound boring. The story of first seeing the bread had begun to sound like lines from a song they had sung over and over till they’d forgotten what the words meant.

‘It was just an ordinary packet of Naan bread, nothing special. From the big Sainsbury’s. I nearly bought poppadums instead.’

They’d stopped mentioning Robbie, which seemed strange since it was his bread and his Dad. His part had been taken over by Auntie Jude. New people were coming to the flat every day, some of them camping in the park. He heard them singing at night. They came to the door and asked to see the bread. There was so much talking in the flat since they’d found it that he hardly ever had a long sleep anymore, just snatches here and there. His head felt as if it was full of clouds and his eyes itched. Auntie Jude seemed to have moved in. Some of her clothes were hung in Robbie’s wardrobe and she spent a long time in the bathroom.

Robbie got up in the night and wandered into the kitchen where Mum and Auntie Jude were still up and chatting.

‘I can’t tell Rob the truth.’ Mum was saying, sipping her hot chocolate, ‘I just let him think he’s gone away. Whatever’s gone on between us, I don’t want Rob thinking Jack …’ she stopped when she saw Robbie at the door.

‘All right, babe? We thought you were asleep. Want my marshmallows?’

Another film crew arrived the next day, just as Robbie was coming in from school. He let them in and knew from their accents they were from America. He could hear Auntie Jude talking in the living room.

‘And when people stop paying for pictures and interviews we could sell it on ebay. How much do you reckon we’d get?’ then, when she noticed the film crew she pasted a big grin on her face and said ‘Hi’.

There seemed to be even more people in the flat now, as the story was told yet again. Robbie decided to keep out of the way and walked outside. He crossed the road to the park, looking both ways like Dad always told him. He walked into the playground, climbed the ladder of the slide and sat in the puddle at the top. He didn’t care that the water seeped into his jeans. He looked up.

Several bulging white-topped mountains had built up. He couldn’t help staring out at them and their random, ever-changing patterns. They were moving fast today, changing shape and, in front of them, greyer, thinner clouds travelled across pretending to be smoke.

He’d watched them from his classroom window all morning. They had distracted him from his maths. Mr. Crosby said ‘wakey, wakey, Robbie!’ in that somewhere between singing and teasing voice of his. Robbie knew they all laughed because they felt glad they weren’t getting it this time. He shook his head because he didn’t want to remember the time Mr. Crosby told him to pull his socks up and he did pull his socks up. He’d felt sick when the whole class laughed at how stupid he was. That made him feel like he might as well start acting stupid to prove them all right.

Robbie heard voices. Everyone was coming outside and crossing over to the park. The clouds continued their performance of shifting, expanding and swelling up further. He stretched out a hand, a small part of his brain believing maybe he could reach one this time, pull it down and use it for a pillow, pour strawberry sauce over it or float it in an enormous mug of hot chocolate for Mum. At the same time he knew this was impossible.

He glanced back at Mum and Auntie Jude, surrounded by the film crew and all the visitors and the people hanging around in the park. In the second that he‘d looked away from the clouds something had changed. None of the others had noticed what he was looking at. The biggest cloud Robbie had ever seen appeared to fill the whole of the sky and right in the centre Dad’s face, just like on the bread, slowly flowed into focus.