Tag: Dundee

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Raising a Toast

In last week’s entry, I made a passing reference to Toastmasters International. I’d known for a long time there was a branch near me, but I’d never managed to attend because it always coincided with something else.

I then discovered there would be a meeting the day after that entry was published, so I made a decision to try it out. Potential members are permitted to attend up to three events free of charge before deciding whether to join.

I was immediately impressed by several elements, from the encouraging posts on the Facebook page to the welcome from the hosts and other members at the hotel where they meet. I was glad to see the schedule running to the minute; for example, the first few items took place at 19:00, 19:02, 19:12, 19:14, and so forth. All timekeeping was enforced by a manually-operated traffic light system.

After the introductions, the event started with three speakers each giving a five-minute presentation on a given topic. The rest of the members would each fill in separate evaluation forms, giving the speaker feedback on what they liked and what could be improved. While those forms remained confidential between writer and receiver, one designated evaluator would later give public feedback.

The second half of the meeting took a more speed-dating approach, with members paired up at random and asked to question each other for four minutes apiece. This gave me an idea of what motivated people to join the organisation. One took it up after retirement, another was more focussed on the educational programmes – called Pathways – and a third wanted to encourage more girls into STEM subjects.

I’m told the speed-dating wasn’t a usual feature, and that the time would typically be given over to other members who wanted to be assessed on presentation style, including how often ‘Ah’, ‘Um’ and other filler words were used. I would have benefitted from this, as I find myself using these all the time.

So that’s already one good reason to join Toastmasters, and I wish I could say I signed up on the spot. The package they’re offering is right up my street; it mixes improv, lived experience and networking. Even the fee of £14 per month (plus a £20 joining fee) is good value. You could easily pay more than that for a typical night class at university.

The largest stumbling block is entirely practical. This branch meets twice a month, while my open-mic takes place on the same night as one of these. My attendance rate would be 50% at best, and I feel I can’t offer the commitment it deserves.

If my circumstances change in the future, I’d be willing to give Toastmasters fresh consideration.

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No Fun ‘Til February

I really like January. It carries none of the bustle and hassle of December, but instead has a fresh feeling, as though the cellophane has just been removed from the new year.

There is a trade-off here, though. The relative stillness of the month means that nothing particularly literary is happening right now. We need to wait until March for both the St Andrews poetry festival – or StAnza – and the Scottish Poetry Slam Championship in Glasgow. Many other literary fairs and gatherings don’t happen until summer. Even the Scottish Book Trust has given participants until the end of this month to enter their December 50-word story competition.

Outside of the literary scene, I would normally take part in Fun a Day Dundee. This is aimed at artists rather than writers, but it’s to help them through the slump of January. I usually find a way to incorporate text. However, that event isn’t running in its usual form this year, although hopes are high for 2025.

The best I can do at the moment is to complete the books I borrowed for the readathon a couple of weeks ago and return them to the library.

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Deliberately Not Reaching the Target

The end of November signals the end of National Novel Writing Month, which is a global challenge to draft a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. Regular readers will know I’ve run the Dundee & Angus region for the last eight years.

Although it’s a tough challenge, the only real competition is against yourself. It’s run largely on an honour system, where participants self-report their word counts, and there’s no sanction for not reaching the target. As such, we always remind members that there’s no shame in not hitting 50,000 words.

When I took over the group, I quickly realised that organising and encouraging group members is sometimes incompatible with achieving my own goals. I have previously managed to reach 50,000 words while running the group, but the quality of my leadership suffered.

So for the last few years, I’ve made more of an effort to focus on the running of the group. This is in the full knowledge that a decent word count is unlikely to be possible. At the time of writing, I’ve recorded just 1,178 words.

However, there has been a noticeable improvement in the running of the region. This has been particularly true in the pre-pandemic period as my co-leader and I have gradually developed and trialled different ways of working.

The way I see it, if the members are able to focus on their projects and don’t notice how we run the group, then we’re doing a good job.

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Some Direction

At an event yesternight, I had a conversation with a local author. While we’re not terribly well acquainted, we do follow each other online.

I mentioned I’d written a monologue as part of a Masters degree some years ago. Back in August, you might remember I saw the play Almost Adult at the Edinburgh Fringe, which prompted me to start redrafting it. The conversation did start me thinking about where I might go from here.

For instance, because the play is written from the point of view of a woman looking back around 15 years to her student days, we would need an actress of the right age. She also suggested reaching out to ‘an up-and-coming’ female director who could ensure some of the details were spot-on.

We also discussed the issue of copycat works. I wrote my monologue before Phoebe Waller-Bridge scored a massive hit with Fleabag, but there are some similarities. While it might be seen as derivative, success with one type of story often encourages publishers to snap up other works in the same genre.

In any case, it’s all academic for the moment, as I’m still not finished my latest redraft.

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Until the Last Moment

I’m a member of a monthly poetry circle called the Wyverns. We each typically write a piece ahead of the next meeting to be read aloud and discussed. There is always a broad prompt to assist with choosing a subject.

In most cases, I submit my work relatively quickly, but I’d let it go in October because I thought the focus of the November meeting was entirely given over to discussing an upcoming pamphlet project. Around 48 hours before the meeting, it transpired that I’d misunderstood what was said. We were discussing the project, but there would also be time for poetry.

It was time to knuckle down. The prompt was ‘Being Human’, which coincided with the theme of the aforementioned pamphlet and is also why I misunderstood the brief. By coincidence, I’ve been learning a lot recently about the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried, so I wasn’t short of material.

Much of the online communication in the group is done using an email discussion list, so I posted my ten-line verse there as soon as I was satisfied with the wording. I also printed off several paper copies for those who might not have checked their emails.

As a result, I was able to gather feedback on it, which was more favourable than some pieces where I’d spent days thinking about the wording. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned there.

If you’re local to Dundee, incidentally, you can come and hear poems from the pamphlet being performed tomorrow at the Global Room in the University of Dundee.

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Inform the Troops There Has Been a Complete Breakdown in Communications

Because of other commitments, I sometimes don’t write my blog entries until the last few hours. Most of the time this isn’t problem; I usually have at least one idea ready to go.

Today, however, the Internet connection isn’t co-operating. As such, I’m going to write this short entry and keep trying the Schedule button until 8pm.

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Rewriting the Handbook

As mentioned in the last entry, our open-mic night for writers – Hotchpotch – held its first event in four months.

The bottom line is that the evening went well: we attracted a sizeable crowd, the event ran on schedule, and people embraced the new donations system. While there were a lot of variables outside our control, it helped to have a robust plan to remove as much guesswork as possible.

When I brought an assistant on board earlier this year, I composed a document to show her the structure of our events, as I’d previously done it from memory.

This is not an exhaustive textbook, but rather a handbook to give an overview of how the event is run, plus best practice gained from years of experience. For example, it reminds the host to recap the introductory speech after the first break for the benefit of those who arrive later.

Because our format evolved on the pub circuit, where we could finish later in the evening. I rewrote the handbook to include a stricter end time and added in revised best practice advice.

As the handbook is a living document, it will likely be updated every month or two with new tweaks, but it really did help with our event last week.

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Connecting with Creatives

For the last couple of years, I’ve been a member of a local group called the Amps Network. For a reasonable annual fee, creative folks in and around Dundee can join to meet other members and occasionally attend exclusive events.

I’d known about the network for a long time before I eventually joined. I thought I wouldn’t be welcome because I don’t rely on the arts for my main income. Many members are full-time in the arts, but this is not an exclusive club. Amps events tend to be seasonal, and it’s been more active over the last month or so.

Last week, I joined a discussion group at Dundee Rep Theatre asking how life could be improved for freelancers. One issue dominating this discussion was the recent £6.6 million budget reduction for Creative Scotland, although other issues like communication and longer-term projects were also prominent.

This morning, I also attended a weekly video call for members to discuss questions from, ‘Are you an early bird or a night owl?’ to ‘What makes you contented with your creative practice?’

A regular feature of meetings is Pass the Mic. If members have a project they would like to promote, they can be announced to the group at the end of the event. I’ve learnt this came about by necessity after a projector broke down at an event and the presenter had to fill 20 minutes while it was fixed.

I’ve stolen the idea for my own open-mic event, Hotchpotch. The difference is that our microphone isn’t wireless, so can’t be passed around. Instead, we substitute a tin of chocolates while members promote their work.

Speaking of Hotchpotch, we’re pleased to be able to continue again tomorrow, Wednesday 11 October. Our format evolved on the pub circuit, where we’d enjoyed using a room free of charge for a long time. As we’re now taking over a café and need to pay a hire fee for the evening, tweaks have been made to the format. These include an earlier start, a 9pm curfew, and the introduction of a donations system.

Next week, I hope to be able to bring good news about how it went.

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Writing Clear Instructions

Back in May, I started running a new writing class called Placing Your Mark.

Unlike the other events I run, where the members bring their existing projects, this one is actively geared towards creating new work. The format has now settled down to include regular features such as writing a passage containing five given words, starting with a line taken from a novel, or inspired by picking a card at random.

When I’m writing these prompts, I do it by myself and it’s difficult to tell how well they’ll be understood.

For example, there is always a break halfway through, during which I produce an object and ask the members to muse upon it and write a piece inspired by it. I initially thought I was making the intention clear: a ten-minute break, followed by five minutes of writing. After trialling the feature and finding members were confused, I rewrote the instructions to make it clearer.

Other prompts don’t fly as well as I’d hoped. A few of these have involved an office setting, which frequently has a power structure and is ripe for conflict. However, some members have had difficulty relating to this because they haven’t worked in that type of environment.

Based on this feedback, I’ve had less of a problem with prompts that don’t work. It’s just as well because we’re now into the third block of four sessions, with possibly enough interest for a future block, and that means I need to write even more of them.

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An Element of Emulation

For an upcoming project, my poetry group has decided to look at forgotten poets from Dundee and bring them back to the forefront once more.

As part of our research, we were invited up to the central library to look at archived copies of The People’s Journal. This was in print from 1858 to 1986, and the editions we looked at were all issued towards to the beginning of that period.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t inspired by any of the poets. I was much more interested in reading the articles and creating poetry from those, but that wasn’t the intention of the exercise.

I eventually found one I could work with, although from a book rather than a newspaper. Someone called David Tasker had written a poetic account of a sawmill fire in 1863 titled A Conflagration in the City. I was able to find just one reference to the poet online. The piece reminded me of a furniture store that burned down last November.

I took the approach of using as many of the original words as possible but including more up-to-date imagery. We would have limited space in our publication so I made this poem significantly shorter than the source material. My favourite part was discovering a wordy quote from a witness of the 2022 fire that sounded like it could have been written by a Victorian poet. I was sure to cut this down slightly and squeeze it in:

“I am on the other side of the Tay so quite far away, but can comfortably say I have not seen a fire of its scale in all my time here.”

The last 150 years have marked a shift in how poetry is presented on the page. Before the 20th century, new lines were universally started with a capital letter, whereas that only happens today when a new sentence begins. One of the poetry group pointed out that this distracted from the enjambment. Although I agreed with this sentiment, I felt it important to retain the style of the original for greater effect.

Based on feedback from the rest of the group, my piece is not quite finalised yet, but I’m making good progress.