Starting Out Under a Streetlamp – Blog 90 – by Ms Paige Turner
Last Thursday was a good day. I posted my fourth and final re-creative fiction for this year down the Cambridge Masters chute. Then I went out to play. I met Amanda Hatter for coffee after a workout. Earlier this week I had attended her book launch rubbing cappuccino shoulders with present and past Creative Inkers. Amanda (aka AC Hatter) has just published her children’s book ‘Callum Fox and the Mousehole Ghost’. Within days it’s hit the number 2 spot in its category on Amazon eBooks. I know Amanda and Callum well. Callum was born in Creative Ink classes, so I feel a little like a midwife. But Amanda has an extraordinary story to tell about her and Callum’s journey to publication. I won’t spoil it for you. But if you would like to come and hear it, and if you are in any way interested in publishing a story then you must come listen to Amanda’s on Thursday 16th October at 11.00am at the Fitzwilliams Centre. Email me.
Amanda and I talked about the joy and tears of our published projects but we both felt that there was nothing like the feeling of starting out; when we had it all ahead of us and little thought of making money from writing words. I had been reading my beginnings. I started writing in 1988. It was rather good. So if you’re thinking of putting pen to paper or fingertips to keys then do come join our Creative Ink for Writers’ classes in September. Tuesdays – Get Inspired and Thursdays – Get that Book Out of You are definitely running but there are still some places. Five week courses. Email me.
Then I went off to see the ‘Jersey Boys’ film. We’ve seen the show about eight times; lost count. Our daughter Miss Trial and son-in-law, Master Mind had a Four Seasons’ cover band at their wedding so we are aficionados. We have been aficionados so long I now know how to spell the word. From previous blogs some of you may remember that I shook hands with Frankie Valli at the Royal Albert Hall at precisely this time last year. In both the show and the film Valli says that there was nothing like the starting out before it all got serious: four guys under a streetlamp. Makes sense of my blog title, eh?
Then Mister Justin Case and I went to lovely Jean Leung’s Chinese restaurant in Beaconsfield. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful day and so relieved the re-creative fiction has been dispatched. It’s a theatre journal about the making of the play ‘Blackberry Promises’ so look out for it on this blog.
What’s re-creative fiction? Be the first to inbox me on my blog and get the right answer and I will send you a hand out sheet of your choice on any topic related to Creative Writing.
www.achatter.co.uk
www.jasmineofbeaconsfield.co.uk
Well done Michelle Gunner who came third in the Rhyme & Reason prose competition with a story workshopped at Creative Ink.
Well done me for being highly commended in the Words for the Wounded prose and poetry competition.