Chasing my tail…

Tags

International Club of Bordeaux, Parisot Literary Festival

… and shortly about to graduate onto tearing my hair out.  I’m juggling getting the International Club of Bordeaux’s monthly newsletter, The Grapevine, ready to go out next week (with practice it’ll be a doddle but as this is only the second issue there’s a lot of glitches to be sorted out) with preparing my speech for the Parisot Literary Festival this weekend.  And if that wasn’t enough there’s Life getting in the way too- walking the dogs, food shopping, talking to friends when they ring up, doing the housework, finding a set of keys my daughter left behind and posting them to her Collissimo…

It’s at this stage of blind panic that I’m starting to wonder why I ever agreed to appear at the Literary Festival – believe me I’ve been wondering ever since I was asked why they wanted me.  The other authors appearing are much better known than I am but at least I’m on last.  I think (hope) most people will have gone home by then.

I said at the beginning of last year that I was going to start pushing myself.  I’ve certainly done that here but actually I’m rather looking forward to it.  The idea of the speech terrifies me, I used to give short seminars as part of my job but that was a long time ago and there’s a lurking fear that I might have lost the knack.  Let’s be honest here, in the middle of the night it’s more of an absolute certainty.  Even so I’m thoroughly enjoying myself doing the planning and the festival itself (apart from my contribution) sounds as if it’s going to be terrific.  I’m getting to meet a couple of authors whose work I really like and also meet Vanessa whom I’ve only known through blogging (she’s pretty busy herself right now), stay with someone who runs a creative writing group (lots of picking of brains planned there), get taken out to dinner and it’s all in a really pretty part of France that I love.

What’s not to like about all of that?  Apart from my bit of course?

Bordeaux’s new writing group opens for business.

Tags

International Club of Bordeaux, Writers Inc, writing group Bordeaux

Yesterday was the first meeting of the ICB’s writing group – Writers Inc.

I’ve wanted to join a writing group all the time we’ve been in France, I loved the one I went to in London, but there weren’t any writing groups in Bordeaux or reasonably near.  So when the ICB was launched I decided that I’d better offer to start a writing group myself.  This was a somewhat foolhardy decision as it’s 20 years since I’ve attended one, so my knowledge of writing groups is, to say the least, rusty.

Consequently the last week was spent frantically searching for ideas to keep a new group going for two hours, cut with blind fear that no-one was going to turn up and it was all going to be a horrible failure (several people have kindly informed me that another club tried to get a writing group going and it died rapidly.  Almost worse was the worry that there would be several attendees who’d all be much better writers than me and would be wondering, ‘Why on earth does she think she’s equipped to run this?’

In the event there were three of us – small but enough to get discussions going (we should have been six but two couldn’t get back to Bordeaux on time and one was ill), and after the initial nervous few minutes I loved it. There was an English journalist, much more experienced than I am, who says she should be writing a novel and isn’t (I know the feeling) and a French member of the ICB who declared that for her, coming to a writing group was like going to the dentist, something she felt she ought to do.  She’d have been better off thinking in terms of jumping in the deep end and seeing if she could swim.  She proved, much to her surprise, that she can write.  I think she also rather enjoyed it.

I certainly did.  It was wonderful talking writing of course, but more importantly I’d forgotten how stimulating and what fun those short group exercises can be.  Spending a minute writing down a list of things that you find boring, then four minutes writing about the activity you find the most boring is pretty joyless when you’re on your own.  It’s quite different when you can laugh over how we all selected football and housework.  In a group you can’t cheat and take an extra few minutes to polish up what you’ve written either, the time constraints mean you just have to get on with it and that’s very liberating, especially for someone who usually has a critic sitting on her shoulder croaking, ‘You can do better than that.’

Going home I had a distinct buzz of excitement, we need to grow and I’m sure we will, but as far as I’m concerned Writers Inc already hits exactly the right spots; it’s fun, it’s stimulating and it made me push myself a little.  And you get to meet new people.

Roll on next month’s meeting!

NB.  The illustration at the top is borrowed from Bo’s Cafe Life, the writing life seen through the eyes of an aspiring novelist.  Well worth a look.  And the mug comes from The Literary Gift Company, a favourite site.

New In Bordeaux…

Tags

creative writing Bordeaux, International Club of Bordeaux, social clubs in Bordeaux, social groups, writing group Bordeaux

I’ve been doing myself a little bit of a disservice when I said that I’d been doing absolutely nothing during the summer, for I have in fact.  Along with a group of incredibly dynamic friends I’ve been involved with the creation and launch of a new international social club in Bordeaux for English-speaking women and men of all nationalities, and goodness has it been fun!

15 of us had our first meeting in a sun drenched courtyard in mid June to discuss plans, what we could all do for the club and to be given individual jobs to do. The International Club of Bordeaux was registered as a French Association (non-profit organisation) with the Marie de Bordeaux on July 1st and we were off.  July and August were punctuated by meetings planning our activities, being given things to do by the President who is a genius at making people want to work, working out how we’d get the word around and we managed to ease our new baby into the world within 7 weeks with a picnic in the Parc Bordelais.  It was touch and go for a bit whether rain would stop play but  the weather gods were supremely kind to us.  The damp forecast changed the day before and our inaugural event on August 24 was warm but not too hot and it was generally agreed that a good time had been had by all.  Certainly some of those who said they had to leave early where still there around 4.

Not our picnic – This was the opening of the new bridge in Bordeaux earlier this year but countss as an excellent celebration!

One of the reasons that we’ve been able to get going so quickly is that we can call on so many different talents, from genius gardeners who are happy to run the gardening club to the graphic designer who created our logo and the so talented website designers who have been working their cotton socks off to get the website up and running.  As we grow the website will too, but I think you’d agree that it’s both great to look at and easy to use.  They’ve created a Facebook page too.

My contribution to the group is being in charge of the monthly newsletter which goes out by email and currently involves many emails to the website experts starting with ‘What do I do…’

I’m also setting up a creative writing group for the ICB – believe it or not, according to Google (that fount of all wisdom) there is no English-speaking writing group anywhere in Bordeaux or nearby.  Funnily enough, for the first time ever, I’m seeing notices going up for French writing groups so with luck I’ll have hit the crest of a wave.  So if anyone reading this is within reach of Bordeaux and fancies hanging out with other writers our first meeting is on October 1st.  You don’t have to join the club first to come along.  Details on the website.