This month's Creative Writing group had plenty of variety with Wendy revealing the first part of her genre mash up and the several ways the rest of the story could go. Fiona read her completed story based on the ferris wheel picture prompt from several months back. Both admitted they have several incomplete stories as works in progress, which neatly shows how our monthly meetings and the snippets from Writing magazine provide much more than a month's worth of inspiration. This led to a discussion on the creative process and useful resources. Everyone has a notebook: physical or virtual with various jottings of ideas, plus incomplete and completed stories. Michelle needs a long journey to get her creative juices flowing and Fiona needs a way to capture the ideas that come to her whilst driving. The virtues of Google Docs were discussed for joint projects, such as viewing and possibly editing each others work, as well as the way Wendy uses it across several devices so she can always pick up story, no matter where she is. A gmail account is needed for this if you don't have one already. Fiona recommended thesaurus.com (and its partner dictionary.com which is there in a separate tab when you take the link) for exploring words, synonyms and their meanings. She also finds rhymezone.com useful for her poems. Michelle revealed the theme of the writing competition she'd found the day before, sponsored by Hortus magazine, namely The problem with gardening. An interesting discussion of how this heading could be explored, with several useful avenues identified to flesh out on the planned next step: the creation of a mind map. This highlighted the value of having a group to brainstorm ideas with, even at the start of the creation process. The group are also trying to find an external writing group to widen their potential network and to see how other groups are run successfully. If you know of one locally, do get in touch with Wendy, Clare, Fiona or Michelle. In the meantime, Michelle has found this website, with some useful looking tips for running a successful writing group. For next month's meeting the group are returning to their roots for their next prompt. A hat and Below stairs were the object and location selected for the next story. Judging by the smiles on everyone's faces, the ideas had already started to flow.