RedPen Café

The RedPen Cafe is a 2-hour face-to-face workshop … hosted by yours truly, Anne Rainbow.

WHO attends the RedPen Café workshops?

It’s for everyone/anyone who likes

• to read
• to talk about the books they’ve read
• to discuss with others what they’ve read
• to write
• to talk about what they’ve written
• to discuss with others what they’ve written

WHAT happens in the RedPen Café workshops?

Much depends on what reading/writing has been happening since the last time we met but the general plan is a smorgasbord of activities and exercises to stimulate those present.

• Catching up with each other / Introductions
• Looking at books written by the good and great and discussing what makes them such a good read
• Sharing material we’ve written and discussing the effect of such works on readers
• Flexing our own creative muscles with fun writing challenges – the outcomes from these exercises need not be shared …

At some meetings, we will be joined by a guest author and we will quiz about their published book(s).

• What inspired them?
• How long did it take to write their book?
• How has writing that book changed their lives, or the lives of others?
• What are they working on now?
• What does the future hold for them?
  

  Thurlestone Church meeting room

Our discussions (I hope!) will encourage everyone to read/write more.

• You might be new to writing, and maybe want to give it a go, but need support.
• You might be an established writer already and would simply enjoy spending time in the company of other like-minded folk.
• You might fit somewhere between those two extremes …

WHEN are the RedPen Café workshops?

1.45pm-3.45pm on alternate Wednesday afternoons

The Autumn terms dates for 2025 are:

• 10 / 24 September
• 8 / 22 October
• 5 / 19 November
• 3 / 17 December

WHERE are the RedPen Café workshops?

In the Thurlestone Church Meeting Room. If it’s sunny, we might sit outside …

There is a car park behind the meeting room, accessible via a track beside the church.

HOW MUCH does each RedPen Café workshop cost?

£10 donation to church funds.

Refreshments also available: tea/coffee @ £1. Or bring a flask of your favourite brew!

HOW can we keep in touch between meetings?

For those keen to write but maybe needing a nudge, a bit of motivation:

• I host RedPen Write-Ins 7 days a week via Zoom. 9-10am and 4-5pm. More details here.
• There’s a RedPen Cafe space where we can ‘meet’ online and everyone is welcome to access the resources available on my forum.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Christine Cooke and I created the concept of the Wednesday Writers. We’d hosted two successful weekend writing workshops at her home/holiday cottages in The South Hams. Yet, whole weekends were exhausting, so, in 2018, we launched Wednesday Writers at the Cottage Hotel, Hope Cove.

Over coffee and cake – or maybe soup and a cheese scone – we dreamt up this set of objectives and, before every all-day meeting at the Cottage Hotel, Christine would read them out, to remind everyone why we’d all come together that day.

My new face-to-face group, RedPen Café, is also on a Wednesday and my objectives are very similar to those Christine and I shared with writers so many years ago.