Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 3)

Writers Corner is back! With the June event having been cancelled due to Covid restrictions, July will pick up where we left off with a discussion of social media for writers.

Do you have followers or are you a follower, perhaps a blogger or a vlogger, tweeter, snapper, and or a chatter?  Maybe you just enjoy a surf, virtually speaking from a digitised reality. 

Is it a matter of sitting in front of your keyboard and tapping away, word after word, sentence after sentence – taking the words straight to the world wide web? Is social media the ultimate in self-publishing – do it anytime, anywhere, put it out there? Well, maybe not.

Building content is difficult. Reaching and keeping followers (audience) is not easy. Just because you have built it, they may not come.  But you should come to Writers Corner and tell your social media story.

Come along on Tuesday 6 July at 2pm at the Bunch of Grapes in Pleasant Street, Ballarat, and join the Writers Corner discussion about social media and putting yourself out there in the digital universe.

Following on from the AGM this month, the committee welcomes Nicole Kelly to the role of Competitions Co-ordinator!

Last year’s co-ordinator, Megan J. Riedl, has moved to a general committee position.

The committee thanks departing general committee members Zoe Werner, David Mellows and Brooke Vogt for their contributions last year.

Otherwise, familiar faces abound!

The 2021 committee is:

Chair:                                                  Rebecca Fletcher      

Treasurer & Membership Officer:     Kirstyn McDermott  

Secretary/Public Officer:                    Laura Wilson             

Publicity & Media Coordinator:          Jason Nahrung

Competitions Coordinator:                 Nicole Kelly

Unassigned Committee Member:      Megan Riedl  

Unassigned Committee Member:      Phil Green

The committee welcomes contributions and suggestions from members. If there is a project you think would be well suited to Ballarat Writers that you’d like to be involved in, please feel free to get in touch at a Members’ Night or through this website.

If you’d like to contribute to the blog, please email the Publicity and Media Coordinator (publicity AT ballaratwriters.com).

By BWI chairperson Rebecca

There’s nothing that I can say about 2020 that hasn’t already been said.
As a hobby group in a year that has focused on ‘essential services’, it
was hard to know what shape we would be in when all of this passed.

I am pleased to say, however, that the Ballarat Writers community is a
tremendously robust group who clearly care deeply about writing, and
each other, even when there’s not a bar involved. It has been lovely to
see so many of you coming along to the monthly Zoom meetings, and many
of you braving Discord for the weekly Write Club meetings (which have
now resumed at Racers). I know that both  critique groups were keen to
meet up again in person as soon as they could as well. With such strong
participation in both the Pamela Miller Prize and Martha Richardson Memorial
Poetry Prize this year, it’s clear that there’s still a lot of passion
and creativity in the Ballarat Writers crew.

I want to say thank you to every single person who has continued to open
their emails, check Facebook or find some other way of keeping in touch
with us and continuing to be a part of this amazing community. I also
want to thank the committee for their outstanding work in keeping the
wheels turning and being so adaptable in a year that has demanded it.
Your work has not gone unnoticed and is deeply appreciated.

I hope you all have a wonderful end of year break, and we look forward
to seeing you all (hopefully in person!) in 2021.

Merry Christmas!

This is a copy of Rebecca’s address at the end-of-year meeting in November.

We’re sorry to advise that our email has been caught up in a virus attack and has been sending out weird emails, many dredged from archives, with potentially nasty attachments.

If you have received or do receive one (or more), we advise sending it straight to spam and running a virus/malware check on your device. Do not open the attachment.

If you have concerns about your anti-virus software, Malwarebytes is a free program that may help.

We’re trying to get to the bottom of it and stop the spamming.

We’re so sorry for the annoyance and confusion this has no doubt caused.