Hayrick

Our next meeting is 10 June 2025 at 8pm in the Parish Room, The Old School, next to Bottesford library.

Our completely optional theme for the next meeting is “hayrick”. Well, I did ask for a random word and if nothing else I’ve learnt something new about thatching.

Alternatively, you could use one of the picture prompts from the other month. I loved the hook-a-duck haiku it inspired for our last meeting. (Get in touch if you want a copy of the prompts.) And, of course, you can ignore the theme and bring along whatever you’ve been working on or just yourself.

The imaginary Belvoir bibliography is growing. Recent cited works or, in other words, books that we discussed a bit include:

• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tart
• There are Rivers in the Sky by Shafak Elif
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

On the craft of writing we heard about Story Genius by Lisa Cron. She has a load of free resources at http://wiredforstory.com/free-resources.

And you can read the full version of Clare’s article “Face Value: Translating Divergence” on Words without Borders.

We’ve had two bookshops open near us relatively recently. The Reading Room is in Grantham, appropriately located inside the George where Charles Dickens stayed when it was a hotel and which he described as “one of the best inns in England” in Nicholas Nickleby.

Over in Radcliffe-on-Trent you can find One More Chapter. No idea if anyone notable did anything in that building at any point, but maybe one of us will get a blue plaque there one day.

Away from books we found out about the mysterious Marfa Lights. It’s the number one thing to do in Marfa, Texas, even more popular than the dog park or art supplies shop, according to Trip Advisor. I think there was a rational explanation for it all but it’s got to be aliens really, hasn’t it?

And I’m blaming aliens for missing these updates over the last couple of months.

If you’re not already a member and you’d like to join our next meeting, and see if anyone does write anything even loosely connected to hayricks, please email words@belvoirwriting.co.uk. We’ll also add your email address to the list to receive updates on meeting dates, themes and matters related to the group but please say if you’d prefer not to receive these messages. We usually send two emails each month to the group with one of these being a meeting reminder. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Image: "The horse and the hayrick (c.1900)" by pellethepoet is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .