Group Notes (and some fabulous writing!): Writing for Change April 2025

We wrote 'Letters to the Editor' about the Supreme Court judgment!

Good morning all on this beautiful early summer’s day! For those of you who are new round here, each month I run a writing group via zoom, Writing for Change, where we focus on making a difference through our words. If you want to get a flavour of our sessions over the past year or so, you can browse the archive here.

Last week we met and made some space to talk about the Supreme Court judgement, and, through talking, brainstorming, spidergrams etc, we honed our thoughts and then took on the task of a ‘letter to the editor’. I think writing a ‘letter to the editor’ is a fantastic writing exercise: in most cases, letters must be 100 to 200 words max. What you find when you sit down and try to squeeze all of your passion into such a low word count is that a) you become very clear and pithy, and b) rather than (as we all often do) feeling intimidated by a higher word count, you positively relish the thought of being able to stretch out your ideas into another few hundred words!

So what you end up with it two wonderful things: a short and very clear piece of writing, and the basis and energy for something longer.

It’s also a fairly quick exercise, you should be able to get it done in 30 mins or less - we took around ten to fifteen in the session. Perfect for busy lives.

Plus you also learn a lot about how to cut the crap and get to the point when you cap your word count at 150!

Without further ado, here are some examples of the absolutely fantastic work produced in the session.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 29th MAY at 6.30pm UK time, and we will be doing a session on ‘getting started on substack’. Hope to see you there!