Thanet Creative: Writers’ Tea and Chat

Hosted by Matthew Brown at his home in Margate, Writers’ Tea and Chat is a weekly gathering of writers. It grew out of a creative solution to delays to another event and has since become a staple of our community.

There is usually no agenda and the topic of conversation is whatever the people want to talk about. Most weeks we exchange work to read and give feedback on. Sometimes there is cake.

What happens at tea and chat?

While some weeks we tend to share work and receive valuable feedback we have no fixed agenda and will talk about whatever the writers at the gathering wish to talk about.

Using creativity to help each other

I love the fact that we were able to combine our skills as writers to truly help another person and make the world a little bit better.

Matthew Brown (Thanet Creative’s Chair)

One week, we helped an attendee revise her CV and since then she has had a lot of interviews whereas before she was getting very few. She is now happily employed and often too busy to come along to Tea and Chat. But that is what we are here for.

Sometimes people come along to Tea and Chat with a creative project that they are wrestling with. The evening may turn into a brainstorming session as attendees help cook up creative solutions and ideas.

Planning creative endeavours

Many of our projects start out as discussions at Tea and Chat. There are a number of funding bids in the works as a result of member driven ideas and innovation.

The All-Genre Feedback night started as a member proposal at Tea and Chat.

Our Summer BBQ was inspired and organised by members at the Tea and Chat. What is now becoming our annual BBQ where we invite all the other writing groups to share food with us is simply a product of our amazing participants.

Sharing Work

We use our standard format for sharing work as many of our writers are more comfortable with this format. We bring multiple copies of our work. And allow others to read to themselves, write comments on if they wish and usually give some verbal feedback too. Reading aloud is an option if that is something you want to do.

Some writers like to focus on proofreading while others will address issues such as character or pace. The areas of feedback you will get varies from one reader to another but it is almost always very constructive and encouraging.

More information about Writers’ Tea and Chat

For more information about feedback and critique events check out the guide posted to our Facebook group.

We meet every Thursday at 7.30pm. The address and phone number should at the bottom of every page. There will be tea (lots of types of tea), a cat, laughter, and a warm welcome.

Leave a Reply