Greetings from Glasgow.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping up on this blog, but moving to the UK has taken up quite a lot of my time.  Also the fact that I won’t have any internet in my apartment until December isn’t very encouraging.

I’m writing today to say this:  It is very helpful (if not essential) to join a writing group wherever you find yourself.

During my first week in my new Glasgow Flat, I managed to stumble upon an open mic night, which lead to me attending a writing group hosted by the nights MC.  I am now a proud member of the Word Factory writing group.

To say the least, my degree in writing is beginning to show its benefit.

I haven’t told anyone in the group that I’ve studied creative writing for five years, but I think some of the members are beginning to pick up on something.  During my first Word Factory group meeting, Marc (the head of our group) explained that over the next few weeks, we will be working on a narrative poem the revolves around the celtic mythology surrounding birds; every member was to select (or be) a bird, we were to figure out the general narrative as a group, and everyone was to write a poem (or poems) that contribute to the story concerning the actions and thoughts of their particular bird.

All well and good.  But then there was the matter of the story.  The story was very general and vague, so someone needed to write out a narrative that would explain everything and keep everyone focused as to what is happening so that the group didn’t end up telling seven different stories. 

The job of writing the narrative was left to me.

I was also given the job of altering the narrative to fit the stories told in the other poems and find the best locations for the other poems within the whole narrative.

I had known these people for less than seven hours, and already their leader had given me the most difficult job of them all.

The first draft of the narrative was a fifteen page epic.

The fifth (and tentatively final) draft, including the majority of the other pieces, was twenty two pages long.

The poem was first performed at the first open mic of November, before an audience of less than one dozen people.

At the end of the evening, my hard work had earned me a t-shirt with a large silk-screened picture on it.

To top everything off, after my first performance at the open mic, the mc openly admitted to the audience that he is seriously considering having me act as a “Featured Artist” for another open mic (regular readers only get 5 minutes to read, a featured artist gets half an hour to read and a coffee mug).  To make everything more wonderful, following the performance of the writing group’s bird poem, Marc issued me an invitation to join a poetry group that would be based out of Glasgow, perform as a group, and tour the various writing conferences and stages.

As a side note, I only started to seriously write poetry two years ago.

On another side note, Since coming to Glasgow I’ve managed to write over a dozen more pages for my novel.  That is the most work I’ve put into that project in a year.