PITTVILLE TOWNSWOMEN’S GUILD

Our July meeting was a talk by Sue Johnson entitled Writing for a Woman’s Magazine.

Sue has always wanted to write stories ever since she was a child.

Her love of stories started when she read to her dyslexic brother which helped with keeping him calm.

At school she was encouraged to take up a more normal career path, but she went her own way and started writing her own stories.

After a lack of encouragement from her first husband and a university lecturer, Sue managed to have some of her stories published in women’s magazines and hasn’t looked back.

Now happily married to a very supportive husband, who we met, she not only writes novels and stories for magazines, but mentors budding writers.

Sue also lectures students on creative writing and makes sure, by some helpful nagging, that they fulfil their potential.

We were treated to some very amusing stories of coping with editors.

One of these didn’t really grasp the idea that phones weren’t readily available 50 or so years ago.

Sue also stressed the importance of historic detail in a piece. One example was a war time description of a bombed house showing the cookers and fridges in all the rooms.

Very few people had fridges at this time.

This was a very interesting talk, we all felt we now know a lot more of the problems facing writers.

Most of them do it purely for the love of writing and not for wealth and fortune.

After all, not everybody is a J K Rowling.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday August 28 and will include a talk by Tim Blackmore – From Wireless to Radio. Tim worked for the BBC and Capital Radio as a producer for many years so do come along and hear his stories. Visit the-tg.com