A Revamp for The Writers at Lovedean!

Writing is changing.

Most people focus on changes between traditional publishing and self-publishing, but the new advances in technology mean that there are lots of exciting opportunities to show off your creativity in different mediums. I have rediscovered my love of poetry via the work artists display on YouTube.

For the past few years, I have published an anthology for my writing group, The Writers at Lovedean. However, I've been keen to keep up with the changing times. This year I want to do something different.

I tried to get the group into pod casts last year, but the idea collapsed before it even got started. This year I feel a lot more energised and convinced that we should be able to produce a more polished end product.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to work as a scriptwriter for Express FM. Writing for radio left an impression on me. I think that writing outside your natural genre makes you a stronger writer. To be asked to write something that someone would listen to rather than read pushed me to my limit. It was a thrilling experience.

What I want to do is create a mixture of ‘shorts’ which we will upload to YouTube. I think this is going to test the abilities of many of the writers within the group. I believe the work should be short, around three minutes. They need to think about how their work will be received by a listening audience, rather than someone reading their work. AND I want to have visual images. Now I'm not pretending that I am now into the business of making films. But I want the writers to think how they would portray their work with visual images or music.

I often listen to some of the writers work. Especially, a gentleman Mick Cooper. His work is often inspired by real places in Portsmouth. He’s good at reading his work. It will be interesting to see if a slideshow would work.

On television recently was a programme called, ‘Crackanory’ which made me wonder if something similar could be reproduced by a small group of writers. It will be interesting to see if the group fancy the challenge.

/http://dave.uktv.co.uk/shows/crackanory/watch-online/

We had a little meeting today. And came up with an action plan.

The first thing on the agenda is to make sure that everyone’s bio’s and head shot is up to date. A must for any writer by the way.

Next is getting people to look at their work or write a new piece that they think will lend itself to a visual side.

We will then ask members to read their work and record it.

Then going out with a video camera and tripod to record some images.

Lastly, I’m going to have a go with my editing suite software.

I am not sure what the results will be like. But what I do know is that it will make us all think of our writing in a different way. And that is good.