Maria (00:09.754)
Okay, sorry. I will be looking at my questions and like, that's all right. Don't worry. I've got some notes of answers here, I'll trust myself not to need to look to them too much. Okay. So hello Adrian and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing? Very well. Thank you, Maria. Thank you for having me. Pleased to be here. it's a real pleasure. Honestly. We've mentioned you several times in previous episodes. So to have you here finally is great. you have my reputation precedes me.

You've not listened to the Richard one yet, but you're in that one too, I No, listen to Louisa's. So obviously I know you very well, but for our listeners who maybe don't know you, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. So I'm from London originally, born and bred, North Londoner. I grew up in Islington on a housing estate called the Peabody Estate. But I moved to Reading in the 90s, the early 90s. Moved for work, I worked for Foster Wheeler.

big employer in Reading up until relatively recently they've been taken over by Wood Group for a while now. But we, yeah, I moved here in the mid 90s, I suppose, finally, I was commuting from London for a little bit. And I worked in IT, I was an IT consultant for a long time working in networking and communications. And I suppose, yeah, the only writing I did back

would be the more sort of business and technical side of things. I didn't do a lot of creative writing, although I was very interested in it. So it's quite sporadic. And I've always been a voracious reader. But of course now, now I can devote a lot more of my time. do work still, I'm working as a freelance copywriter, but it does give me a lot more freedom and time to devote to my own writing and to running Cavish and writers.

The things that we've discussed, we've had many conversations and it's so fascinating. Going into the fact that obviously you do live in Reading, you live in Caversham. I won't say that's in Reading exactly for anyone who lives in Caversham is listening. But what do you like about Reading or living in Reading? Because you have been here since the nineties, haven't you? Yeah, I have. I think Reading residents tend to do the town down quite in my experience, quite a lot. I like it in Reading and...

Maria (02:27.934)
especially in Cavisham and you're right to sort of point out the distinction. think a lot of long -term Cavisham residents, feel like we're a town apart. And they were once back in the, I don't know, a hundred years ago or more, it was a separate village. was in a different County. think they were in Oxfordshire. Yeah, it was over the bridge. Yeah, that's right. and I think, yeah, I think I felt drawn, maybe I felt drawn to Cavisham for that reason as being a North London boy, staying North of the Thames still in the Reading area works for me.

But I do like that villagey feel. There is a sense of community around Caversham. We've got lovely local restaurants. On my doorstep I can walk with a five minute radius. I can find myself in an Italian restaurant or a Spanish restaurant or a Thai restaurant or a Lebanese or a Persian or an Indian. So there's a lot of choice. And there's lots of lovely little local independence.

shops as well, so you've got your local delicatessen and of course our wonderful local independent bookshop for all bears books, so that's a mainstay for the area. And of course the other thing, think Reading's best kept secret is the river. know, Reading doesn't really make as much of the fact that it sits on the river as other towns along the river do. Everyone knows Marlowe and Henley and Maidenhead sit on the river, but no one really appreciates all.

Not so many people outside of Reading really appreciate that Reading sits on the river and has, and it feels to me like I'm on holiday half the time. I sort of walk out of my house and go for a walk along the river, it's fantastic. It feels like you're in, you know, away from everything. So that's what like really is a beautiful location. And I totally agree with you that Calvisham is such a sense of community over there. That's why since I've discovered it, I tend to cross the bridge quite a lot. Cause I'm obviously in a couple of different groups. One of them being

Carvish and writers, which is how I met you and Louisa and many others now. So for Carvish and writers, I know we've probably mentioned in previous episodes, but could you give us a bit of an overview because now you lead it, but it's quite an interesting backstory, it? Yeah, well, the group's been going for close to six years now, it'll be six years in September, I think. -COVID. Pre -COVID, yes. And we had all of our meetings in person back then. We were a bit nomadic as well, we didn't have a fixed

Maria (04:47.442)
which we still, well, we don't, come onto that. I'll let you know exactly what we do and where we meet. the, I didn't start the group is the thing. I did go to the very first meeting. The group was founded by a Canadian author called Crystal Book. And Crystal, I think it was her husband was assigned to the reading office of his company from Toronto. And she found herself in, well, they stayed in Carversham

she found herself, there wasn't a writing group that was like the one that she was a member of back home in Toronto. So she decided to start one and that was Caversham writers. And, happened to notice that they were meeting. think the first ever meeting was in Costa coffee in Caversham, on a busy and noisy Saturday morning. but one of the first things that Crystal told the group, or, know, the people that turned up for that first meeting was, something that I've tried to keep close to my heart since I've been running.

which is that if you write, you're a writer. And that was the message she gave us. So that even though she is still an author of dark fantasy novels and stories, she didn't want to restrict the group to that genre or even to fiction. So the group is very much more open and inclusive group to open to not just fiction writers, but nonfiction poets.

We even have a couple of playwrights and we've had screenwriters in the past. So, and I wanted to keep that as well. So I took over running it after Crystal moved back home to Canada. And I wanted to keep that inclusivity and that message, that foundational ethos of if you write, you're a writer. And that's the sort of main message really. It's a lovely group. I love all the different activities and things that we do, which I said we'll come on to later. What are the benefits? I know we've had discussions about the benefits

being part of a group and what you pick up, what do you think are the benefits of being part of a writing group? Initially, I think chiefly, a sense of community. I'll talk about Caversham itself, having a sense of community, but within the group, I think it's that sense of community. I think writers, at some point, if you're a writer, at some point you are faced, you're going to be sitting alone in front of a blank page. So it's a very lonely business.

Maria (07:10.854)
So having a community of like -minded people around you is really important, I think. And just to be able to share and talk to other people that know what it's like to sit on your own in front of that blank page. We had an author come and talk to the group last year, Kate Wells. Very good, check her books out. She writes murder mysteries. And when she came to talk to the group, we were talking about writers groups and she was asking about caverns writers and

she summed it up really well, think it's about finding your tribe. It's finding your tribe of like -minded people, people that think the same as you, or at least have similar interests as you and understand it. Because I think as well, the other thing is that for a lot of writers, they might be the only writer they know, certainly in their family, there may be no other family members in their household that write. Maybe their circle of friends ordinarily or work colleagues or whatever don't write either. So they don't really know

it's like to sit at that blank page and try to come up with stuff and write. So just being in contact with other people that do know what that's like. You know, there were lots of others of benefits to do with the sharing of expertise and information and tips and advice and what have you. really it all starts with just that sense of community and finding your tribe, think that's the main thing. Definitely.

that one of the main things that I've liked about Cavish and writers is the variety. I didn't know what to expect. I've never been part of groups before, but you don't just show up and have a conversation about writing and that's it. You structure them. yeah, kudos. I love your leadership. You structure them in such a good way. So lots of different varieties of things. So that's what I've really enjoyed about them. What do you think works well for Cavish and writers? What do you think it does well and why it attracts so many

Well, do you know, I think that might be a question. We'll maybe come back and ask you about that. It feels like something that members might be better placed to tell than me about what works well and what doesn't. think there's...

Maria (09:19.206)
What works the best, I think, for us is that we have... I've just lost my place there. Sorry about that. You're going to edit this, aren't you now? Yeah.

Maria (09:34.032)
Yeah, I think what works well the most is that what I try to do is to provide a welcoming environment for the group. And I think that's really important. think for a lot of writers, they'll be writing, when writers sit down to write and they're gonna be drawing on personal experience a lot. And often they'll be drawing on...

maybe some difficult personal experience, some even traumatic personal experience in the past. That's where the good stuff is often when you're writing. And it might be, you might be fictionalizing it or you might be writing about it in memoir or narrative non -fiction. But sometimes writers will go to a dark place and that can make you feel very vulnerable if you're thinking about letting that writing out into the world and having other people read it. So providing a welcoming environment in which you feel okay about

I think is an important thing to do. And I think that's, and I try to promote that type of environment. I think we do that well. The feedback I've had at least tells me that we do that. So that's the first thing is that welcoming environment. How would you say you provide a welcoming environment? mean, I know you, whenever someone comes on the Zoom calls, when we have online Zoom calls, you always say the name, ask what they're doing. So I think that's very good. How else do you think you provide the welcoming environment?

for other people who maybe don't do this and probably could learn a lesson from. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's about that. starting by just doing that, welcoming them, talk to people, don't just have them turn up and then make them feel as though it's a clique of regulars that they're not a part of. Be interested, find out who they are. And because we are, it comes back to that foundational ethos that Crystal started the group with. If you write, you're a writer and we are open to more than

fiction writers or whatever. We have poets, we have non -fiction, we have other categories and genres that people write in. So I want to find out, and it's for my own interest as well, I want to find out what you write, what you're interested in, what you write. And the question I usually ask first time people when they first come to the group is, what are you looking for from us? That's key. What made you go out and look for Cavish and writers or any writing?

Maria (11:53.458)
So where are you at your stage of your writing, I hate the word, journey, but your writing journey? Now, where are you? Are you a beginner? Are you published? Are you somewhere in between? Do you not even want to be published? You're just interested in writing. And that's valid. We've got plenty of people that are writing just for the fun of it because they enjoy the process and they're interested in other people's process of writing. And so finding that out, that is part of what provides a welcoming environment as far as I'm concerned.

If you're interested in other people and you're not just in it for yourself, then people are going to feel part of that and part of that circle. then in doing that, that sort of sets a tone as well for the rest of the group. so other people feel as if they've been given permission to act in the same way and they can ask questions of others as well. So that goes towards providing that welcoming environment, I think. Definitely lead by example. So what have you found?

As you've been leader group, what have you found? Have you faced any challenges with the group? For example, know getting new members or promoting it. So have there been any challenges with doing the group? I don't like to think of running the group as a challenge. It's a pleasure. Opportunities then. Well, you see, the thing is that, yeah, I mean, that's the point really is that, you know, that word is often used as a euphemism for problem and difficulty and issue. no, the writing itself is hard.

And writing itself is difficult. If you apply yourself, if you do it right, if you want to work your craft, then you're going to work hard at it it's going to be difficult. So having a support group of writers of like -minded people, that should not be the difficult part. That should be the fun part, the interesting part, the sharing part. So I don't think of it as, and I don't want to think of it in terms of a challenge. I ever start thinking of it as a challenge, it starts to feel like a chore and I don't want that to be the case. And that'd be the day I stopped doing it, I think.

So kind of flip it on its head maybe that the part of running Caversham writers in which I challenge myself the most, let's put it that way, is when we have, so we often have visiting authors, frequently, infrequently, occasionally, we get some visiting authors come and give a talk to the group and I'll interview them and we'll have a discussion around the table if we meet in Four Bears Books, which is where we often do these things.

Maria (14:17.07)
If an author, no, a successful published author is willing to give up their time to come and talk to us, if they're willing to give us the benefit of their experience and share their knowledge, then I think it's the least I can do is to prepare for that in the best way possible and put some work into it. So I'll challenge myself to do that. I'll make sure I've read their work. I'll make sure I prepare some interesting and meaningful questions for them that are both interesting for them as

because they will have been on the treadmill of promotional activities around their books and what have you. So I've heard them all. But also interesting for our members because I suppose the difference for an author coming to talk to us as a writers group as opposed to the promotional treadmill that they'll be on is that they'll be used to talking to people who are interested in their work as readers, but we are interested in that too, but more so we're interested in their work as writers.

So I'll want to ask them about their writing process, their writing routines, their any tips and hints and what have you around that. And also their path to publication, how they found an agent, how they got published and things like that. So I'll put the work into that and challenge myself to do the best job possible for that because I think, you know, if you've got an author coming to talk to us, they deserve that at the very least. Definitely, yeah. They're the juicy, interesting behind the scenes bits that everyone wants to know about.

Liza, I've been, what I've really liked about Caverson writers is there's always someone different, always new people showing up. How do you promote the group? Obviously I know a couple of ways in which you promote the group, but how do you do it? seems to be like effortless the way we just keep getting new people come. Is there a, specifically that you're doing that other groups can learn from or, or what do you think? Well, there's, there's a marketing adage, isn't there? But, that goes something like that. The art of marketing is not about,

trying to sell something to people that don't want to buy it. Rather the art of marketing is about putting what you've got to sell in front of people that already want it or need it. Yeah. So I'm sure, you you're in marketing, you know all about that. So for us, meetup .com kind of does that for us. That's where the group lives. Meetup .com is a website global platform for the sort of community groups and not just writing, it can be anything.

Maria (16:43.898)
So we have, and when you sign up for that, it's a free platform for people who want to go and join a group. You sign up for that and you register what sort of things you're interested in. And it might be writing, it might be cinema, it might be flower arranging or dog walking or whatever it is, whatever people might be interested in, there's probably a group for it. And then what happens is that once you've expressed your interest and registered your interests, then you'll get served up groups that meet those interests. that's

that side of that marketing adage really is this. We are fed a regular supply of people that already looking for us and that we fulfill what they want. So that's the main thing. Most of our membership comes through meetup .com and the algorithm that runs behind meetup .com just presenting us to the people that are interested in writing. So that's the main part of it.

And that sort of, that gives us a bit of a global reach as well. I like to think of us as a local group with a global reach. And that came from, I suppose that really all started, didn't it, with the pandemic and lockdowns. The initially meetup .com was always geared towards local community groups that are meeting in person. And when that couldn't take place, they had to sort of pivot towards providing a means of keeping those groups together via online platforms like Zoom.

which we pivoted to as well with Caversham Writers. And that meant we had an influx of people from all over the world joining the group, which was fantastic. We started getting people not just around the country or around Europe, but North America, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Myanmar. I mean, it was fabulous. was a really energizing plurality of voices that was suddenly putting their two pen up in. And when everything opened up again, I did want to continue to have some of that element.

for the group as well. Now, obviously most people, if you're in Los Angeles or if you're in Singapore or Lagos or wherever you are, you're gonna want to resume contact with your local group. But every now and again, some of our further flung members still come and pop in on a Zoom call that we do and let us know how they're getting on and we hear about their successes and their progress with works in progress and things like that. So that's terrific. But it does mean as well, we do still have a regular

Maria (19:10.922)
membership of people that are just a little bit too far away from reading to come to the in -person meetings. So people who are in London or in the Midlands or something a bit further north around the country, they can still join us at the online meetings that we do. But otherwise we're in, we're in Forbear's Books for our regular monthly session there, or we meet up for a at a local restaurant for a sort of social event we call Writes and Bites. So we just...

talk about our writing, get to know each other a little bit better that way. And for that local stuff, Alex at Four Bears Books is a very good advocate for the brilliant. Stephen King, the author, says that to be a writer, you must be a reader. If you want to write a lot, you've got to read a lot. And that is the case. People that do write a lot do read a lot. And so when Alex, as the customer in Four Bears Books that starts talking about writing as well as reading, he's very quick to...

to advocate us as a group and point them in our direction. And I have flyers that I leave in the book shop and he hands them out. There's an example of it behind us here. Kavish and Writers Flyer. And he's great at that, Alex. So that helps the local community thing. that's probably our second, sort of our main channel for promotion and sort of where people find us is meetup .com. But really it's kind of word of mouth as much as anything.

but Alex in the bookshop, our flyers, if I remember, I leave flyers in the library, in local cafes and things like that, meeting points. Those third places. Do know what a third place is? No, I don't know a third place. What's third? There was a study a while ago that said, it's all about community. I think it's an American study. So our first place is home. That's where you spend the most time in. Your second place is usually your place of work. It's the place that you spend the second amount of time in. Where do you spend?

the next amount of time and what's your third place? And that can vary from person to person. It might be a best friend's place, but, you know, often in a community area, it's a cafe, it's a bookshop, it's a local repertory theater, it's things like that, places that provide, or community center, you know, that's there for that purpose. Yeah. And I like to think of Cavachan writers as being some people's third place that they can spend a bit of time with. Definitely. It's my third place.

Maria (21:33.668)
It's my second place in that probably. I think you've mentioned some really interesting points there which I'll just summarise because I think other groups, maybe groups who are struggling don't do this quite so well. I think there's something everyone can really learn from. So the first thing is obviously having the online in -person balance, I think is really good. Some have just gone into in -person again, and I don't think nowadays you can, probably in some situations, absolutely,

people nowadays like the online offline balance because then you can, like you said, reach a global worldwide audience and bring in so many other aspects. So I think that is having that balance is really good. Having, like you said, for the impersonal, someone like Alex for us from Four Bears, someone who, know, a business associated with who will people will go through to channel people to us. That's really important. An advocate is what you got there. Yeah. Definitely. But also the third thing I thought was really good where you said,

you know, promoting the group by just showing, not selling to them. And like you said, I think what we do, what we do, what you do on the Meetup page by promoting all the different types, it's not just you go on, is a chat, chat, chat. There is the prompt night and then the read your writing night. And then there's the in -person, just looking at that page, you see such a variety of activities. So anyone looking at it will go, wow, this is regular. It's up to date. There's so much things to do. So yeah, showing what you do rather than just doing,

there's a talk coming up or, just having a list of talks. Yeah. That's key to what we do as well is to provide a bit of variety like that. And we have a bit of a smorgasbord of formats. I love it. You know, we have a meeting. we meet weekly every week on Wednesday night, 7pm is Caversham Writers' Night. But I rotate that through a series of different formats. And obviously we're a writers group. So we sit and gather and write together. And sometimes that'll be

in person, sometimes that'll be online. But we have a couple of formats for that. One week we'll do, or one time we'll do a work in progress writing session, which is for people to get on with the things that they're already working on. And we have a discussion on either side of the writing session about what they are working on and how they're getting on with it. And we have, as you say, a prompted writing session. So I'll set a prompt, everybody writes against that prompt wherever that idea takes them.

Maria (23:53.018)
And we'll share some of that afterwards. That's a really fun one for me. I really enjoy that one because I never cease to be amazed by the variety of ideas that people come up with from the same starting point. really never fails to take me aback. And it's fun to hear them. So what we usually do is we'll spend up to an hour writing against that prompt. And then afterwards we'll share and some people, I think people often feel more...

inclined to read out what they've written on the prompted session than on the unprompted work in progress session, perhaps because they're not so attached to it. they know it's just a bit of fun, can throw it away afterwards if they need to. So people will read out their work to each other and we'll all sit there sort of appreciating just how fun and different and the ideas that people have come up with. So we do that, we have the writing sessions, we have feedback sessions, that's crucial. Feedback is important.

And we have a couple of formats for doing that. We have a read your work to the group session and where people can give some, an instant response to what they've just heard. And we have a more formal one where you can submit a longer piece in advance of the meeting and sort of direct the type of feedback that you're looking for. So you can ask people that are gonna come to the next week's meeting, you know, I've written this scene with these characters in order to do this. Does it work? Does the dialogue work, et cetera? You can direct my feedback. So you get a bit more considered feedback than you would with

the reading workout to the group event. And feedback is important because, you know, I mentioned before about, you know, often people are in, you know, our sense of community with the writing group, if people don't have, they're the only writer in their family or in their friend group. They're still going to maybe share their work, you know, something, I've written this short story and they show it to someone in the family. But that leads me nicely into something I want to ask you about, challenges that writers...

generally faced and maybe you could help them with some advice. And I think that you've already said that one, that is really interesting that they may not have feedback from family. having a group where you can go to for feedback is really, that's a really, are there any other ones where you think these, it keeps coming up what people need help with? Well, that is one of them. And there's another one I'll come onto, but the, yeah, the feedback point is important because it's not so much that they don't get feedback from family or friends. It's that they do, but it's of no worth.

Maria (26:14.674)
I And the reason and it's because if your family and friends are not interested in writing particularly, you don't know much about it, but they do love you. You show them your work and they'll say, that's great. yeah. Well, that's not good to you. You want to improve. You want to know what's wrong with it. You want to get better. And so just having feedback that tells you that's great doesn't get you anywhere. So what you want, what you need to improve is some honest critique, some honest feedback

on and constructive feedback. And I hope that's what we provide as well. So you asked me earlier about, know, what do do? Well, I hope that's one of the things that we do well. And it's, it's constructive, that it you know, yes, you can tell us what's good about it, but also, you know, what's worked, but tell us what hasn't. So, so, you know, that's that comes up again, again, and we because we have dedicated meetings to that, and that tells you the prominence of that, of that need of what the group can provide to people. I think

answer your question more fully that the thing that comes up again and again as well I think is it's really about keeping going with your writing. That's a problem that people have. People usually don't have a problem starting. You know they'll start to get an idea for a book or a story or poem and they'll jump into it with all enthusiasm and we all do that with anything you know. People are gonna learn the guitar, learn Spanish, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that and you fly into it with all sorts of enthusiasm.

there always comes a point in a big large -scale project that you undertake where that initial enthusiasm starts to wear off a little bit. And then it comes down to, well, how do you cope with that? What do you do when you don't feel like writing? And that's where the whole thing can fall apart, where keeping that momentum going can be difficult for some. Some people will breeze through that. Some people, their enthusiasm is boundless and it will carry on. But for other people, where the first flush of enthusiasm starts to pass.

And then it starts to become, I don't really feel like this. And there's a big myth around creativity and writing and other forms of creativity. think that creative people need to be inspired by the muse, know, to be, know, well, it's nonsense, really. Or at least it's nonsense for anyone that's produced a serious body of work behind them. You go and look at any writer or painter or musician or anyone with a body of work behind them.

Maria (28:43.13)
they've worked at it, they had to work at it, they've treated it as a job. And if you have a job, you've got a day job yourself, you know, what do you do on Monday morning if you wake up and you don't feel like going to work? You go anyway, don't you? just go. Because you have to turn up, you know, you turn up and you get it done. And as unromantic as it sounds for creativity, you've still got to turn up and get it done. You've got to put, you

your bum on the seat and your fingers on the keyboard. the hours of practice like, like Olympians or anyone. You don't see it. You see the race, but the hours, years that have gone into the pre -race and the training to get you to there, the sacrifices, you don't see that. And that is the unsexy. Exactly. Yeah. And so, so the question becomes, how do you get yourself to do that? How do you turn up? when the demands of it, you know, most, know, it's okay if you're a full -time author already, maybe.

because that is your full -time job and you do turn up like you would see a Monday morning job. But if you're juggling a Monday morning job and life and family and other pressures, how do you then maintain that motivation to keep the momentum going after the initial enthusiasm of starting a book or a project or whatever comes up? I think my answer to that is sort of, there's more than one way of doing it. Some people are very good

self -motivation and setting targets for themselves or gainifying what they're doing. you you often hear of writers that will set a word count target. So, you know, every day I've got to do a thousand words or whatever. And some people respond well to that and that's fine and great. Good. Well done for you. I'm not necessarily one of those people. think you need to habitualise what you're doing. if you can find a slot in your day to schedule

or writing even if it's only 30 minutes. Actually do schedule it. Put it in your diary or your calendar. Block it out and protect it. Protect it at all costs. This is for you. In the same way that people get used to the idea of protecting their time to go and meditate or do some yoga or whatever. Your me time, make your writing session that you've blocked out in your calendar on a daily basis if you can. Make that your mean time. Make that your sacred.

Maria (31:07.09)
time that nobody can touch. Everyone else knows that this is your writing time. And then turn up. then you can make that a ritual. You can make that a habit. And don't worry initially at the beginning. Don't worry too much about the results from that, the output. If you sit there for 30 or 45 minutes, some days the words will flow out of you and you'll get a thousand words or more. Other days you

You might struggle to get the whole sentence out. Well, don't worry about that initially at the beginning. You're training yourself to habitualize this, ritualize it, to make it a habit. And you're also training yourself to be focusing on the job at hand, on your writing project, your story, on your ideas. And that will come. That will come naturally. And you'll probably find what happened is that if you can only find 30 minutes initially in your day, that

you turn up regularly and you get used to that and you've protected it and it's become sacrosanct, you'll end up wanting to make that longer. You'll find 45 minutes, you'll find an hour and you'll start sacrificing other things in service of that. I was going to ask you for a key takeaway for anyone. I suppose it sounds like that would be it. What would you think would be a key takeaway for anyone if you want to leave someone with one thing to do? Yeah, it could be that. It could be that. think

There's a great Alex out, we've talked about Alex and Forbear's books a few times. Alex was interviewed a while back and he didn't mean to do it in, and say this just next to the fact that the topic of Cavish and writers had been brought up, but the old sore about everybody has a book in them came up as a quote to which Alex responded

for most people that's probably best where it should stay. And I thought that was really funny. And then I thought, well, you know, maybe that is the case. Maybe not everyone has a book in them. Maybe not everyone has a novel in them. But I do, and this will be my takeaway, think, I do really do think that everyone has a story to tell. So maybe a book, maybe a novel isn't the ultimate expression of that story that you have to tell.

Maria (33:29.998)
Maybe it's something else, maybe it's a poem, maybe it's an essay, a personal essay, maybe it's a blog, maybe it's a play, who knows? And maybe it's not even your story actually, there are plenty of people out there who are no longer with us even, who don't have a voice or a platform but they have a story. You can be that voice and platform for them maybe. So tell their story, tell somebody else's

And I think, you know, what I would say to that is, you know, the search for whichever format of telling that story, that search can be worthwhile in itself. That can be a meaningful pursuit in itself is to find out what, you know, if it's not going to be a whole book, a novel, what is it going to be? Is it going to be a poem or something else? Then, you know, work on

and that will be meaningful in itself. I think that's a lovely message to leave people with. Do you have, we've already mentioned all the different types of sessions that we have with Caversham Writers and one of them we've said is a prompt session. Do you have any prompts that you could leave our listeners with? Just if they want to maybe to get them started so we can try and encourage them to do that and maybe come along to one of our sessions. yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, please do come along.

Yeah. How about here's the thing. the problem, instead of setting a prompt like a one and done, or one prompt and then you go and do it. How about I give you a method of doing a prompted writing session that you can repeat again and again and again, and each time it will be different. love it. Please do. So this is something I found actually in an old book called Writing the Natural Way by Gabrielle Rico and the

I adapted it for sort of use for us. So the idea is that we're to start with a word. We need to find a random word. So to do that, just pick a book off the shelf and turn to a page at random. And then you want to find, go along on that page you found at random and find the first verb or the first non -proper noun. So not a place name or a person's name. First verb or first noun. And on a blank sheet of paper,

Maria (35:50.628)
write that word in the middle of the sheet of paper, draw a circle around it. And what we're to do is construct a kind of a mind map. So if we don't know what a mind map is, don't worry, it's not too complicated. Really, it's about word association is what we're to do. So you've got your word in the middle, let's say it's turn is the word you found. So you've got that in a circle. You're just going to draw a line out of that circle and word association. So if turn is the word, what associations do you have? Turning loose.

turning up, turn around, that, you just start thinking of words and phrases in association with that. and connect with lines, you know, little things. They don't go too far away from the root word we've got of turn, but you know, you might put, you know, if, if turning loose was one of the things that came up, you might then go onto loose women, draw a line from turning loose to loose women. So do that, but we're not going to spend long on this. We're not going to go, you know, five minutes, absolutely to the maximum. But what you'll find is, and it's a wee.

Humans are pattern seeking animals. That's how our brains work. And what you find is that after two or three minutes of doing this, the pattern that your mind will start to form, to make, it'll take the form of a narrative. You're putting all these phrases and words that have already got an association with your root word that we started with. But you've got a personal history and experience of life in which some of these things might.

turning up, you know, let's go back to that. Maybe there's, know, you had an important life experience where somebody important or failed to turn up for something important that you were doing. And that was a big thing. Or maybe you didn't turn up for something you were supposed to. So that's an avenue. So at some point, a narrative will start to form in your mind while you're doing this mind map of, from your original word. And when you feel that pull towards a narrative, that's a perfectly natural thing to do. Just start writing then, stop the mind mapping.

start writing, give yourself maybe 15 minutes, but don't worry about editing yourself or a stream of consciousness. Just go where that narrative will take you. And what you'll end up with after about 15 minutes is a starting point, really. You've got something because it's come from somewhere within. This has been drawn out of you. It's going to have some kind of meaning. going to be associated with something. And from that point, you can start working on it. You might want to put it away for a few days and then come back to it, but you'll

Maria (38:17.872)
You can then sort of like mold it, you can edit it, you can build on it, you can add to it, you can think about where it might go, what it might mean. And if it does none of those things, so what? Doesn't matter, it's not wasted, it's good practice. What you've done is you're training yourself to be creative, to allow ideas to come and to see where they go. And the more you do that, the more easy it will become. And the good thing about it, as I've said, is this is a sort of writing prompt that you can do that is not one and done.

can do it many, many times and it's different every time. I love that. I love strategy. I think it just gives you a way to see things differently because I think in each of us there's so much that is so much untapped potential. So all these are just different ways to tap into your subconscious ideas and things that you're interested in that you may have never even realized. So thank you for that. That was fascinating. So before we finish, do you have any final comments or anything that you'd like to say? everyone with?

Well, it comes back to creativity. You're talking about this, of allowing yourself to be creative, I suppose. And creativity, I think, is a really interesting subject because, you know, it works. use, people often think of creativity, you know, it's a right brain function and it's all about the flow of ideas and, you know, don't interrupt that flow. It's actually, to use its full, the full extent of your creativity, it's an iterative process where you move

from right brain to left brain and back again and back again and back. So just what I said with that writing prompts, that is all about the right brain just letting loose your ideas and creativity. The point at which I said, okay, now stop, if you've written 15 minutes of stream of consciousness stuff, then maybe you come back to it and you start editing it and molding it and what have you. You're then using the logical side of your brain to apply structure and what have you to

And that's really what creativity is. It's not all about the ideas. It's about the moving from one to the other and back again. So you have your ideas, you let the flow of ideas come, you get to a point where you then apply a logical structure to it. You use that discipline and you do, and then you go back and you start getting more ideas. And then you start, you go back again and you start putting structure onto that. And that's the whole creative process. It's not just about being free.

Maria (40:40.718)
at some point you might want to apply a little bit of discipline and structure on top of it as well. And that's when you get a worthwhile end product. I think you've just changed my whole perspective on creativity there. thank you. Adrian, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure to have you. yeah, hopefully someone will be listening to this and showing it to our Cavisham writers. Yeah, please do come along. You'll be welcome, as I've said. Welcome is the first rule of writers club is a welcome.

Excellent! Thank you!

Yeah, sorry about the glitch in the middle. completely lost track of my train of thought. So that's the beauty of having something that you edit. Yeah, quite.

Maria (41:37.18)
Same.