So often now I'm meeting writers who, like myself, have taken up the craft in later years - perhaps having dabbled in their youth, perhaps having written "professionally", but only coming to being truly creative in later life. By which time, of course, they (we!) have so much more to write from - years of experience of work, family life, people, places, the everyday and often the extra-ordinary too. And often I find the realisation of a shrinking time frame focuses the mind sharply - let's get on with it whilst we have the time to do so! I've read many authors who have been prolific in later life and who have enjoyed commercial success too; Mary Wesley was well into her sixties before she started to write fiction and she became a best seller in her seventies. A great role model for all of us "oldies"!
U3A's (Universities of the Third Age) around the world have become focal points for many retired and semi-retired people in recent years and often have very active creative writing groups. This morning I had four members of Newport U3A Creative Writers as my guests on The Writer's Room at NHSound - Pam Cocchiara, Ian Lumley, Glyn Sutton and Martyn Vaughan. The group recently published 'Musings', an anthology of their work, which I'm much looking forward to reading. Their contributions today included poems that had us laughing out loud and short stories that prompted much deeper thought.
I do hope our visitors enjoyed their visit as much as the listeners and I enjoyed hearing about their lives and their writing and listening to some fascinating work - it was a very interesting morning.
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| Pam Cocchiara |
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| Ian Lumley |
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| Glynn Sutton |
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Martyn Vaughan
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