VRWG December Meeting, 2014 (Shit vs. Shite, Vegan Brownies and Shame of an Ineffectual Blogger)

It seems to be more frequent these days that we arrive to a room that wasn’t expecting us. The tables and chairs were standing to attention around the walls and the cold air suggested that the heating hadn’t been switched on for some time. All available hands made short work de-stacking the furniture and arranging it into the format we thought we usually have. We weren’t far off, perhaps a table too long for a winter meeting at the first attempt.

By the time the trickle of late arrivals had subsided, we finally got round to finding out nobody had an exercise ready. Fortunately Bob had wrangled enough readers to compensate so we started the meeting. It’s at this point in the blog that it would be appropriate to mention something raised by Lee; which is that prior knowledge of who will be writing the blog would be useful, as up to this point (and to some point way beyond) I hadn’t taken any notes that would help me when it came to writing this down. Fortunately though I know an awful lot of swear words. But who could have guessed this might come in useful tonight?

Triggered by a reading from Bob of a re-visited and re-edited chapter from his novel (the name of which would have been in my notes, honest Bob), we got into a lively discussion on the merits of ‘shit’ versus ‘shite’. The general consensus being that both are quite valid and certainly have the literary edge over ‘gumph’, which to be honest was a bit ‘shite’.

The swearing debate spilled over into a discussion started by Debbie, who gave us an insight into the merits of employing a third party editor. It transpires that the one she uses often suggests enhancements to the work – recommending even more swearing (he would have been proud of us all tonight) and spicing up the sex scenes. The cost of doing this appears to work based on multiple factors but the brief outline is – the more you pay, the more you can expect the editor to get involved in the work. Or ‘more fucks for your bucks’ in this case.

A very enjoyable meeting, that neatly sandwiched vegan brownies from Bob (many thanks to Carol Bob, they were a unanimous thumbs up) and a hamster exercise ball full of Swiss chocolates from Steph.

Apologies to the readers – you were all excellent but I didn’t take any notes. I remember a lot of it but I’ll be more exposed by the things I’ve forgotten than the parts I remember. If I were you I would demand that I be banned from writing future blogs for at least 12 months.

Forthcoming Events:

9^th December – Winter Wordfest at the Blue Cap Inn

15^th December – VRWG Christmas Meal at the Blue Cap Inn

Next meeting:

Monday 5th January 2015

Exercise:

Lee Howell will be setting the exercise for the next meeting

Blog:

Lee will also be the blogger for the January meeting and we will also agree the February blogger.

Les Green