The stress of catering

For the past month I’ve been aware that I was responsible for catering for the nibbles at this month’s writers’ association meeting. Oh the stress. I used to hold dinner parties for 12 with everything home made with tomatoes from my garden. Those days are gone unfortunately.

I finally succumbed to the trend and went for a grazing platter. My niece gave me some tips and I did a quick Pinterest search.

It was a success and I had a great chat to one of the other writers who was rapt to see it was mostly plant based and apart from 2 kinds of crackers, gluten-free. I wanted to get a photo of how good it looked and got talking the Gary, a fellow plant-eater. By the time I got to it, it looked like this…

I think everyone enjoyed it.

---

Had a bit of an epiphany yesterday – the writers’ association seems to be made up of 90% non-fiction writers and 9% fiction. The other 1% are either still thinking about it or have a foot in both camps. These are not scientific statistics; I haven’t done any research other than seeing a show of hands. It made me wonder if I was actually in the wrong place. I’m not much of a joiner at the best of times (INFP, what can I say…) but I think I need to create a fiction writers’ group. I have talked vaguely about this before; I’m partial to calling it Write Club but someone already has a Facebook Group with that name that hasn’t had any action for about 18 months. Oh and there’s one on Medium. I’ve been thinking about writing on Medium again next year so maybe I’ll join them. They look hardcore, man. Maybe GC Write Club, GC Fiction Writers, (Just Write the Damn) Book Club…? There’s already one of those, too. Oh, sod it… this is just like the time I tried to think of a name for my imprint!

The only reason this matters to me is that I have the opinion that the fiction writers I know are in it for the long haul, whereas many of the NF writers seem keen to write a book to further their career as a consultant, speaker or other professional. There’s nothing wrong with either, they are just different and require different approaches especially when it comes to the publishing side of things. Put it this way; many in the group yesterday seemed very interested in the logistics of getting a celebrity to endorse their book. The writing skills workshop on synopsis writing diverted into a discussion on securing a publisher. Is it immature that I really want to be inspired to write before/after and during the meetings? Instead I often leave feeling as though if I don’t publish my work I am somehow a big loser. It reminds me of when I used to go to playgroup with my son and after each meetup went home feeling like a failed mother due to all the passive agressive mums saying things like ‘Oh, can’t he drink through a straw yet?’

Feature – Henley Design Studio