About Wordwatchers

Wordwatchers is a collective of authors based in and around Newbury, Berkshire, United Kingdom, which meets regularly to support and promote each other's work.

The Group was formed in Autumn 2001 as an outcome of attending a Creative Writing Class at Newbury College.  Although the membership has changed over the years, some of the founding members remain part of the group.  Numbers vary between six and twelve, always with a fairly even gender split.  Meet the present membership on the Authors page.

The objective of the group is to provide a forum and support for those wishing to undertake more ambitious projects than could be catered for in an evening class or writers’ workshop.  The group welcomes writers with differing aspirations from full-length works of fiction in all genres to travelogues, local history and magazine articles. 

Wordwatchers expects a level of commitment from its members to attend meetings regularly, critique each other’s work and contribute to group discussions.   From time to time members have moved away or found the commitment too great, so the group is continually changing, but maintains its original character.  Meetings focus on a variety of topics ranging from a detailed review of the work of one of the members to more general discussion.

Most meetings have their lighter moments and social activities are a regular occurrence.  At least twice a year, the group has a bigger get together with partners and past members invited for a restaurant meal or barbecue. To get an idea of the group’s activities, look on the News section of this site.

The bi-annual get together is the occasion for announcing the prize winners in the group’s hotly contested short story competition.  The competition has both its fans and its detractors.  Despite the latter two competitions have been run each year since the beginning with very few members opting out.   The members carry out the judging and there is an ancillary competition to guess the author.  This challenges members to write outside their normal style and tackle different genres.  There are some examples of members’ short stories in the Showcase section of this site.

It is hoped that this site will attract agents and publishers, as well as potential new members.  Anyone who, like the members of Wordwatchers, is serious about writing is welcome to browse.  If you wish to contact the group, then please e-mail peterpheasant@aol.com