THE NEW Year has started well for the Airedale Writers Group, which during 2015 suffered declining attendance at meetings.

More writing workshops are part of the recovery plan, and that seems to be working as 12 members gathered round a large table for the January meeting.

Among them was Charlotte Clarkson, one of the Young Writer winners, accompanied by her father who had also been inspired by her success to join the group.

Neil Wilson chaired the evening, presenting an intriguing challenge to each of us to write a piece starting with the words: “She had sat for over two hours without moving.”

Intense pondering and scribbling produced a fascinating variety and quality of contributions.

First, a mother stunned into immobility by the shock news that her daughter had, totally out of the blue, gone off to Syria, her incomprehension and bafflement conveyed in one side of foolscap’s immaculate handwriting.

Next a poignant dialogue between a brusque bus driver and a woman sitting in the bus shelter – slowly you realised that she was in the early stages of dementia. Another had a woman waiting interminably with her sick husband in a hospital waiting room, both insensible from fear and frustration.

In contrast the next offering concentrated on the syntax of the sentence; the tense of the verb recalled to the writer the fear of tenses that led her to study science instead of arts A-levels, with a hint that wrong A-level choices have long-term life consequences.

The next two-hour sitter was an eight-legged creature on the look-out for a post-coital snack – cleverly written so that you didn’t realise until half way through that the protagonist was a spider.

A disgruntled model was the subject of another piece; the characters finely drawn of irascible artist and fidgety naked model, potentially condemned to spend eternity as an unfinished masterpiece if she walked out.

Finally a woman hiding in bushes from attackers; only at the end was the setting, in front of a nursing home, revealed.

The next challenge was led by Eugenie Normanton who got us writing either a Haiku (17 syllables in lines of 5,7, and 5) or a Cinquain (5 lines with 2,4,6,8 and 2 syllables) in five minutes.

Again the contributions were ingenious, and Charlotte’s showed great promise:

Snow falls

A white fog curls

The snarling wind whistles

Icicles glow bright in the sun

Winter!

We all came away with real respect for each other’s creativity, an awareness that we knew each other a bit better, and a sense that this kind of exercise really helps to hone writing skills and critical sensibility.

The group meets every second Tuesday at Sight Airedale in Keighley at 7.30pm. Anybody is welcome. The latest meeting, on Tuesday this week, was due to feature Chris Helme talking about how he got his book about his police service published.

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