Tyldesley Creative Writers

As it's Halloween, we wrote and shared ghost stories at our meeting today. Thanks to everyone for your work, and for those who dressed up. We followed it up with a costumed lunch at Union Arms Tyldesley

At today's meeting we celebrated success. Our founder, Mary Berry, led the award ceremony for winners of our Mary Berry Cup competition. Congratulations go to:

Prose section: Winner: Joe. Runner up: Alison.
Plays and monologues section: Winner: Rudrani. Runner up:
Sarah.
Poetry section: Winner, Sarah. Runner up: Ian J.
Overall winner of the cup: Sarah.

We also recognised others who have achieved successes this year, through publication, external competitions, and, of course by participating in our charity write-a-thon.

Today's 15 minute challenge was for for each group member to write a letter about a new Olympic sport they could represent their country at. It was hilarious: nominated sports included 'Reaching the top shelf of a supermarket when you are under 5 ft tall', 'Being lazy sitting on a sofa, watching box sets', 'Finding a matching pair of socks' and 'Getting lost'. Well done everyone.

Did you know there used to be Welsh Eisteddfods held in Tyldesley? Neither did we, until Keith G gave us a talk about them today, including the 24 strict meters of Welsh poetry.

Eisteddfods are a celebration of Welsh culture through poetry and music. We discovered two of our members - Mark and Alison - have Welsh heritage. They are pictured here with Keith.

Keith will be giving this talk again on 30th September at Tyldesley Historical Society.

Well done to Jill, who won our ten minute challenge this morning, and to Mark, who was runner up.

Group members were asked to form as many words as they could from the word 'Pedestrian'. Jill found 93 words and Mark found 92, in 10 minutes!

We are so proud today: our latest publication has arrived from the printers! (Thank you Collins and Darwell).

Some of you may remember we held a charity writ-a-thon earlier in the year, where we spent two hours writing stories for children, to raise money for the 'National Literacy Trust. We have now built these into an illustrated book.

We intend to give free copies to Tyldesley Library and various Tyldesley community venues/groups. Members of TCW also have their own copies, should you wish to borrow one and have a quick read.

We are celebrating again today: Cathy, one of our members, has had an article published in Peoples Friend magazine. Well done Cathy!

Congratulations to Ian J, winner of our summer Auditor's Challenge competition. The subject was 'blue' and Ian was inspired to write a powerful poem.

Also well done to Alison, who was runner up with a short story.

We had a really fun meeting today: playing 'Consequences' to create some instant flash fiction!

Many thanks to James Fish Independent Network Councillor for Tyldesley and Mosley Common for supporting our application for a Wigan Council Brighter Borough grant. Amongst other things, this has funded our new roller banner. We are delighted with it and will use it a lot at local events.

Val and Ena getting to grips with Samuel Johnson's (very large) English Dictionary at our meeting this morning. We were lucky enough to see this original set, published in 1785! We have learnt some new (old) words. Did you know that a shapesmith was a personal trainer? Or that fopdoodle means a fool?

We were in Union Arms Tyldesley today with our friends from the National Association of Writers' Groups. Thank you to Chris and George for delivering a fantastic poetry workshop for us earlier in the morning.

Congratulations to Ian H, winner of our Easter Auditor's Challenge competition, and Alison, who was runner-up. The writing theme was 'Friendship', which sums up.our group!

Some members of the group had a great time today at a metal casting workshop. We created pieces to be displayed at Ponky's Park, and couldn't resist creating one with our initials on it!

I'm not the writer I would have been
Had I more time or course to plan
But I am the one I am meant to be
I write therefore iamb

Photo Bob Price

Thank you to Lou, who taught our writers to draw today. ' Self-portraits' in 45 minutes!

Well done to everyone in the group who dressed up today for World Book Day, and to Cathy and Christine H, who won our book day quiz.

Yes, we're joining in with World Book Day today!

Thank you to Kaye Jones, who spoke to us today about her career as a historian and a published author of many history books. We all learned a lot about the publication and promotional processes.

Members of the group and friends enjoying lunch at Don Alberto's at The Loom today. Great food!

Thank you to everyone who supported our charity Write-a-thon in aid of the National Literacy Trust. The total amount we have raised is £776.25, plus £77.50 gift aid. Well done to all our writers.

We've done it! Completed the write-a-thon. Well done to all members who took part.

Adding in offline donations received to date, we have raised a total of atleast £600 for the National Literacy Trust. Thankyou to everyone who has supported us.

We now have a pile of stories to type up....

We are off. Our write-a-thon in support of the National Literacy Trust has begun! Good luck to all our writers. We will post updates during the morning.

You can still donate to our Just Giving page. https://www.justgiving.com/page/tcw-writeathon