Networking

Went to New Writing South's first Writer Hub at the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, last night, and meet some new writers.

Mmm, lots of "News" in that sentence.

Always great to be back at the NTR. As well as a quick catch up with some of the people I'm working with on the Living Memories Project I got to meet loads of talented, exciting local writers I didn't know about.

Which, was, of course the whole point of the night.

Writers, poor lonely, souls, need to break the chains on the laptop and talk to real people sometimes. Instead of just conversing with all those voices in their heads...

I'm ok. The lovely Mrs T always hides all the knives when she goes out.

Over forty writers across all the genres and disciplines turned out. A great response, and lovely surprise to the organisers, as they only expected up to twenty: But Portsmouth has talent! (New Simon Cowell vehicle there?)

So the coffee had to be rationed and only the fittest and quickest got a biscuit.

Two discussions were led to see what we, the writers, wanted from the Hub. Ours included a sort of impromptu tour of the magnificent theatre as our leader (tour guide?) the NTR's Director herself, the warm, witty and approachable Caroline Sharman, attempted to find our group a "quiet" space - whilst the Youth Theatre Group rehearsed on stage...

The resulting lists from each discussion were correlated to plan the next series of hubs. New Writing South are committed to organising the first three Hubs, including providing guest speakers, and then the plan is the Hub, or group, will run itself.

The evening duly drew to a pleasant close with informal chatting and quick draw business card gun-slinging.

There were only a few scriptwriters among us, so we gravitated to the corner of the bar in the time honoured fashion of our profession.

Most unfortunately there wasn't any actual alcohol available...

Upon the swapping of said bizzy cards one nice chap I was talking to, the friendly and witty comic writer Tom Pinnock, was delighted to discover he'd now actually met the "famous" Sheiky!

OMG - the reader.

Tom has just finished his degree in Comedy Writing, - the first in the country, apparently.

Staying (sorta) in the realm of the blogosphere I also met a friend of the our very own Lucy Vee - the esteemed Bournemouth Uni's senior lecturer in scriptwriting Dr Craig Batty, who is another very nice chap.

If you're reading this Dr Craig (yeah,yeah, he's another fan...) don't forget to browse my webby sitey: http://garethturpie.yolasite.com/

More networkery bizzy card swappery today too.

This afternoon I've been invited to attend the sold out Cibas/Screentime event at Portsmouth Uni (really excited!) and tonight is the Wrap Party (really looking forward to it!) for
Conway Street - the award winning radio soap I co-wrote 22 episodes for.

As the fat exec with the large cigar always says: "That's show biz for yer..."