AMED WRITERS’ GROUP, THE PENN CLUB, 3 NOVEMBER

We held our most recent meeting of the AMED Writers’ Group (AWG) in the Cadbury Room of the Penn Club on Friday 3 November from 1.00 to 4.30 p.m., and worked to the following emergent agenda.

Agenda:

• Catch-Up/Agenda-building
• Lunch
• Equal air time
• Business (including our meetings schedule for 2007)

 What participants said: (Here is a selection of some of the comments and ideas that our meeting inspired)

• I’ve written a lot, but I’ve never considered myself as a writer.   I now realise that I’m a writer-in-training.’
• ‘I’ve written chapter headings, but I’ve no idea what to do next.’
• How many books to read?   How much research to do before I start writing?’

• ‘I’m preoccupied by what’s going to happen to my just-published book.   How can I put the book to use?   My big challenge is ‘Will my book sell well in other markets?’

• I’ve written an article on ‘The Joy of Learning’ and I’ve attended a one-day NLP-based workshop on ‘Seeing Spells Reading – on how visualisation can help people with dyslexia to read and write.   This is different and there are lots of quick, practical exercise with which I’m going to experiment.’

• ‘It’s great to be in this lovely environment (the Cadbury Room) and to have the opportunity of this conversation.   I don’t know where I am in terms of my writing.   But I know that the moment has come!  
• What do I need to do next?   I’m struggling with time and resources.   What are the opportunity costs involved in writing?
• It’s so good and timely to discover another part of AMED that I wasn’t aware of before.’

• ‘I’m interested in a consultant’s uses of writing.   There’s so much that I’d like to discuss today:   Possibilities include my learning from being commissioning editor/contributor to the special issue of O&P on Explication; plans to convert my written doctoral Explication into a book; plans/feedback for my session on Doctoral Writing in December.   So I’ll have to ration myself.’ 

How we worked: Four people in turn took the lead in discussing their writing interests (there wasn’t time for everybody), and then we discussed how we might work as a group in 2007.  

Possible topics for the AWG to explore include: 

• What it means to be a writer
• The impact of the web and ICT on our writing
• Writing in organisations
• The relationship between our writing and our reading (writers as readers; books, book clubs etc)
• Collaborative writing
• Etc

Other AWG plans include: 

• A joint event with Surrey University/CAS Programme
• A large AMED Conference for writers, possibly incorporating Open Space technology.

Please put these dates in your diary, tell your friends and colleagues about our plans, and let them know that they are very welcome to join us if they wish.    Remember that our next meeting is on 12 January at the Penn Club from 1.0 to 4.30 p.m.   Watch out for further notices.  

Meantime, best wishes for your writing.   Bob MacKenzie, November 2006.