Welcome to the Writers In The Peak website!
You can find information about our group, including contact details, in the About Us section to the right. Please feel free to browse our Members’ pages, and a selection of the group’s work in the Library.
Please check below for our latest updates.
The votes have been cast, and Writers In The Peak is pleased to announce that its new chair for 2012 is Kath Aspinwall. Congratulations to her; also, Hail To The Chief! (Pom pom po-pom pom po-pom po-pom pom da da…)
We’d also like to thank outgoing chair Suzanne for the excellent work she’s done co-ordinating us all over the course of her term.
In other news, if you haven’t been to a meeting recently, rumours abound of a Writers In The Peak anthology possibly-maybe being produced. If you’ve any ideas, thoughts, fierce opposition, fierce agreement, anything like that, please drop a comment on the site or fire an email at us.
Gentle Readers, we here at your website hope that the year so far hasn’t been too taxing: and come to you with a proposition. The idea has been ventured to do a regular slot on showcasing professional authors, and so we wondered…
That there are many worthy of such a slot is of no question, the questions we would ask are:
Who would you like to see in such as series, who are your favourite authors and their works? Tell us a little about them, together with why they’ve had such an influence on you, your favourite recommended work of theirs, together with why you’d recommend it to other writers and we’ll do the rest 
Genre, length and style no object – it’s open to any of your favourites. Hopefully we can make it into a regular feature which everyone can share and enjoy. You can drop a comment here by preference, that way we here at your site can keep a record of suggestions
As we wind up for the celebratory part of winter, a new years resolution for you all to think on: set yourself one to do with writing – a measurable one, so that you’ll know when you’ve succeeded ;p
Alternatively: get a cat…
Seasons greetings and blessings to all: see you in the new year
On Tuesday just gone, which I make the 20 December (although dates find it surprisingly easy to confuse me), the Writers In The Peak gathered severally in the merry surroundings of the Nice Cafe Bistro, Bakewell, for a Christmassy evening of poetry and prose, and a spot of socialising between members old… Ahem, I mean ‘established’… and not so old new.
A very enjoyable evening it proved to be, too, with some excellent contributions, mostly on a festive theme, and some very nice edible goodies provided by the welcoming staff at Nice (I wouldn’t want to give the impression I’m easily swayed by food, but put a skewer of spicy chicken bits and sausage roll chunks down in front of me and I’m pretty much all yours). And that hot spiced apple juice was delicious.
What? Stop talking about food and get on with it? Oh, all right. We were treated to some excellent work and taken through a wonderful range of moods and shades. A few announcements were made, including a hearty thank-you to Suzanne for her fine work in the chair, taking a bundle of wayward creative impulses and fashioning them lovingly into an ornate and structured work of glittery crystalline… what? All right, all right…
Kath took away the coveted prize of Writer Of The Year. Congratulations to her; and congratulations also to Gill as the runner-up – fantastic work, both.
So that was that. Good times, and no doubt much more to come.
We’d like to wish all our readers – regulars, guests, and first-timers – even those of you who’ve stumbled across us purely by chance as the result of a freak Googling accident – a very happy Christmas, and a happy, creative 2012.
One does not simply write a story. Its paragraphs are guarded by more than just capital letters and careful punctuation. There is evil there which does not sleep, and the Grammar Nazi is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland riddled with metaphors and allusions, the very words you read are a confused jumble. Not with ten thousand men could you do this, it is folly.
Your turn 
Also, if you haven’t already, e-mail Mid and tell him you’re coming to the Christmas Celebratory Do. If you intend to attend, go do it now, and then come back and write a little something in reply 
Please e-mail for further details: poetryslamuk@aol.com
Anyone can write, but your actual sentence construction, the proper use of grammar, and punctuation marks are a whole technical ball game. With that in mind, and the fact that we all want to become better writers WITP presents a series of articles written by Suzanne on the more technical aspects of our craft:
How to… use a colon and semi-colon
Other than in smileys http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/ascii/smileys.html, when was the last time you used a semicolon http://www.answers.com/semicolon&r=67 or a colon http://www.answers.com/colon&r=67; what do you mean, you never have? Well, we can change that.
Short Story Day with Sarah Hall
Saturday 19th November 2011 at Bolsover Library
Writing workshop – 10.00am – 1.00pm
Author talk – 2.15pm – 3.45pm
Tickets: £5 for the workshop; £5 for the talk; £8 joint ticket for the workshop and talk
Available from Bolsover Library on 01246 823179
In celebration of National Short story week award winning author Sarah Hall will be running a short story writing workshop and talking about her work.
Sarah is the author of several novels including The Electric Michelangelo, Haweswater and How to Paint a Dead Man. She has contributed to Litmus, a new anthology of short stories inspired by science and her first collection of short stories The Beautiful Indifference will be published soon. Sarah is a regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation.
Launch of Alison Baverstock’s book on self-publishing, The Naked Author
Friday 25th November 2011, 7.30pm at Glossop Library
As well as a talk from Alison, the evening will feature contributions from three local authors, June Davies, Peter Mountain and Lynne Quirk, who have all recently published their own books. Free, but please book tickets in advance at Glossop Library on 01457 852616
With thanks to Tony for this advice on active versus passive voice. (And apologies for the delay in getting it posted up here…!)
Writing that describes an action is in either the active voice or the passive voice.
In the active voice, the subject performs the action. Here is an example of the active voice:
I threw the ball.
In the passive voice, the action IS performed BY the subject. The passive voice always includes “is,” “was,” “were,” “are,” or some other form of the verb “to be.”
Here is an example of the passive voice:
The ball was thrown by me.
The active voice is usually a better choice. It makes your writing more immediate and dynamic.
Sometimes it is easy to make the passive voice active:
Passive: I went to the store and I was completely ignored by the clerk.
Active: I went to the store and the clerk completely ignored me.
Sometimes, converting to the active voice is more difficult:
Passive: My car was broken into.
To make this sentence active, I will have to say who broke into my car.
But I don’t know who it was. Here is one solution:
Active: Someone broke into my car.
The active voice is not always best.
Sometimes the action is important and the performer of the action is not.
For example, consider a news report where a celebrity has been found dead:
Johnny Diamond was found dead in his home on Tuesday night.
Most readers don’t care who exactly found the body.
Here is another version in the active voice:
George Wilson, a local plumber, found Johnny Diamond dead in Diamond’s home on Tuesday night.
The first example, although it is in the passive voice, is much more effective and gets to the point.
Use the passive voice when you want to de-emphasize the person responsible for the action:
Mistakes were made.
Use the passive voice when the source of the action is unknown, unimportant, or difficult to describe:
These shoes were made in China.
There is no point at all in saying, “Some people in a factory somewhere in China made these shoes.”
it’s me, writer…
Just in case the presentation at our last session got you all fired up to go out and tackle creating your online presence, there’s a book based on Kristen Lamb’s writing blog, which might just be of use. Are You There Blog? It’s Me, Writer, can be purchased on Amazon, or you can go look for free at the blog it’s based on HERE
Another useful page I found for writers is HERE
