Wednesday Writers

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Writers’ group established 2018

Hosted by Anne Rainbow and Christine Cooke

Enjoy a monthly ARTIST’S DATE as recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way
  • Discover fresh techniques in creative writing, self-editing and marketing/publishing
  • Share your writing journey in a supportive, safe environment
  • Meet and network with other new and experienced writers
  • At literary lunches, talk to published authors/experts about their craft and experience

The inspirational view from the Cottage Hotel, Hope Cove

Where do the WEDNESDAY WRITERS meet?

At The Cottage Hotel, Hope Cove, Devon TQ7 3HJ

When do the WEDNESDAY WRITERS meet?

On Wednesdays!

  • In 2020: 4 March, 1 April, 6 May, 3 June, 1 July, 23 September, 21 October, 18 November

10:00 – 16:30 with a break for lunch at 12:45-14:00

*Lunch, with us and our guest speakers in The Cottage Hotel restaurant, is optional and at your own cost. Or bring a picnic to enjoy on the beach or on a bench overlooking the sea!

What’s in the PROGRAMME for the WEDNESDAY WRITERS?

There will be a varied diet … with wordcraft workshops on a range of topics

  • Hooks, lines and sinkers – how to grab your reader, maintain interest and end well
  • Setting the scene with people, places and props
  • Creating three-dimensional characters
  • Dialogue – making it real
  • Editing your first draft; polishing your final draft
  • Marketing yourself and your writing: pitching, covering letters, synopsis writing

And, in addition to your two hosts, we have a sprinkling of guest speakers:

  • 4 March 2020: ANNA VENTURA: Tell a Book by its Cover
  • 1 April 2020: JANET M SMITH: Writing Children’s Fiction
  • 6 May 2020: PAUL DODGSON: Writing from Life
  • 1 July 2020: KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE: Psychogeography
  • 23 September 2020: DAVID CLARKE: Marketing on Air

Your hosts

Anne Rainbow has an extensive publishing career which can be viewed on her LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/anne-rainbow-69b3945/

Anne Rainbow wears three hats: writer, mentor and teacher.

Her blog on the ScrivenerVirgin website encourages writers to use Scrivener, the sophisticated writing tool, which can take an author from blank page to self-published book.

Her website is also the door to RedPen through which Anne offers online training for writers in self-editing, publishing and marketing.  For a few students at a time, this provides access to her RedPen Mentoring scheme.

In her ebook, EDITING The RedPen Way, Anne explains her tried-and-tested approach to self-editing. Anne’s objective is always to help budding writers to learn how to edit their own words, and therefore to maximise their chances of having their manuscripts accepted for publication. And, she makes it sound fun!

When Anne is not working with other writers, or devising courses, she makes time for her own writing: writing plays and novels. She takes part in NaNoWriMo each year, writing 50K+ of a new novel during the month of November.

Christine Cooke has written creatively since childhood and is a lifelong journaller.  Writing is simply part of her being.

Christine has lived and worked abroad, is a qualified person-centred therapist, and multilingual.  Her articles on expat life have been published in newspapers and magazines.  She grew up in Lincolnshire and studied English at Oxford.

She enjoys experimenting with form in prose and poetry.  Christine writes memoir, flash, short stories, poetry, travel, fiction, and about writing and creative living.

To see examples of her extensive portfolio of writing, including Christine’s real-time memoir, the blog The Long Bright World, and her resources for writers, visit her website JourneyWords.

Passionate about living creatively, Christine has settled in a former watermill in a hidden valley near the sea in South Devon with a 20 acre smallholding and five historic holiday cottages where she runs and hosts writing workshops and retreats. For the writing workshops, Christine works with a network of writers, authors, editors, creatives and alternative health practitioners – and offers a ‘Walk with Words’ guided literary walk around the Gara Valley.  You can enjoy a morning or afternoon stroll, hear who lived there and what they wrote, see what they painted afterwards as you enjoy cake and refreshments by the stream or by the fire.

The 2020 guest speakers

Anna Ventura owns the Tidal Gallery in Kingsbridge. She is an artist and designer, born in Barcelona and currently residing in Devon.

Anna studied a combined degree of Fine Arts and Graphic Design at the University of Barcelona and, in 2010, she completed her degree with a final project in Illustration at The University of Plymouth. With the capacity of working in either modern and traditional arts, Anna develops beautifully simple and effective graphic work. Her customer base is varied and so have been her projects so far, which range from developing branding for small businesses, giving identity to local events, developing rural and urban maps, to creating all kinds of publications for print from start to finish.

Anna will be advising us on how important it is to establish images (fonts / colours / book covers) to promote ourselves and our products, ie our books and/or services.


Janet M Smith writes children’s fiction.

Prior to moving to Devon three and a half years ago, Janet  trained and then worked as a psychodynamic psychotherapist in the NHS for 27 years.

Janet says: ‘Since retiring in 2015, I have completed: Tony Plumb and the Moles of Ellodian. My role as a psychotherapist was incredibly worthwhile, interesting and engaging, however, I always wanted to write. One year, I decided to use my annual leave to take a residential creative writing course at Oxford University Summer School. This terrific experience explored plot, characterisation and internal monologue and inspired me to write about a teenager; Tony Plumb, who struggles with relationships and mental health.

Paul Dodgson is a writer, radio producer, composer and teacher.

Prior to going freelance in 2002, as a staff producer for the BBC, Paul made many programmes that involved helping people tell stories from their lives, and two of Paul’s most recent plays, You Drive Me Crazy and Home, have been radio memoirs.

In his writing life, he has written fourteen plays for BBC Radio 4, spent eighteen months as part of the Eastenders writing team and was the writer on the award-winning drama-documentary series Monsters We Met for BBC2.   

Paul has also written the music and lyrics for four musicals commissioned by Theatre Royal Bath, and directed and produced drama and documentary programmes for BBC Radio, including Ivan and the dogs by Hattie Naylor, winner of the Tinnison Award for Best Radio Play of 2009.

In 2009, Paul was Writer-In-Residence at Exeter University and, in the next two years, he developed and taught life-writing workshops across the South West UK and the Scilly Isles.

Since then, Paul has taught at Arvon and Ty Newydd residential writing centres and at literary festivals around the country, and given lectures and runs writing workshops at universities across the UK, Europe and Canada.

Kerry Hadley-Pryce was born in the Black Country. She worked nights in a Wolverhampton petrol station before becoming a secondary school teacher.

Kerry wrote her first novel, Ω`, whilst studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, for which she gained a distinction and was awarded the Michael Schmidt Prize for Outstanding Achievement 2013–14.

Kerry is currently a PhD student at the University of Wolverhampton, researching Psychogeography and Black Country Writing. She focuses on ‘writing with a sense of place’: how walking practice is linked to the art of writing.

Gamble is Kerry’s second novel.


Dave Clarke has over 25 years’ experience working with marketing content for global brands.

He know the rules and applies them to businesses of any size through a simple process to create podcasts for marketing though web and social channels. As a result, your audience … your fans will engage, follow and share what you do.

Dave will be taking us through the How Production ‘Creative Brief’ – a planning document that provides the foundations for successful ‘marketing on air’ through radio interviews and podcasts; a process which helps you to find your voice and develop your narrative into stories about how your work affects communities, why it changes society and its role in tackling some of the big issues that we face in the world; insight and opinion that cuts through the noise.

2020 prices

Annual membership (limited to 20 places):

  • £240 for full year (eight sessions); pro rata for those who join before 1 September. Deposit of £40 secures your place
  • Guest rate: From £40 per day (subject to availability)

Payment can be by bank transfer, or via PayPal.

For more details and/or to book your place, contact Anne Rainbow on 01548 844020 / 07721 695044 or by email at an**********@bt********.com

The 2019 guest speakers

Belinda Seaward

Photo by Nic Askew

Belinda Seaward’s writing has been described as ‘cinematic’ and ‘thrillingly observant’.  She has written four novels and is now working on her first book of narrative non-fiction.

Belinda’s work explores themes of identity, love and belonging.  Her novels Hotel Juliet and The Beautiful Truth were both published by John Murray, literary publishers of Jane Austen, Darwin, and Byron. Hotel Juliet, a story of love, loss and longing, set in Zambia, London and Scotland, was submitted for the Booker Prize.  Her new work, a philosophical memoir, explores in piercing detail the arc of a 20-year-friendship and examines how friendship shapes the most important decisions of our lives.

Belinda was born in Cornwall and grew up in Devon.  She was inspired to become a writer when Fay Weldon visited her school.  Belinda went on to work in journalism, writing for The Sunday Times and for newspapers in the Arabian Gulf.  Later, she studied for a degree in Philosophy which she teaches at A Level and to adults through her social education courses.  Belinda has a special interest in horsemanship and, in 2016, she co-founded a community interest company which offers education, health and well-being courses in South Devon.

Belinda is also a personal development coach offering wisdom and well-being courses to individuals and small groups who wish to develop self-understanding.  She shares insights from her work and life on her blog: www.belindaseaward.wordpress.com

Jane Rayner

Jane Rayner worked as a journalist in business-to-business publishing for 14 years, in different positions before becoming group editor across an environmental portfolio at Emap. Over the years, she’s redesigned magazines, launched websites, developed numerous reports and other publications and represented  magazines in the media. Alongside providing strategic insight in new product development, Jane has launched and developed awards and implemented conference programmes, seminars and workshops and provided marketing and PR support across the portfolio of products.

Jane set up Lulu Consulting, a communications company specialising in sustainability issues, helping to raise awareness of environmental, social and economic issues and providing support in businesses development.

She can help with all forms of the written word – journalism, blogging, press releases, copywriting for marketing materials, social media – as well as develop and implement your communications strategy. She also runs workshops on developing an online presence – ideal for writers.

You can find Jane on Twitter as @luluconsult, and follow her blog.

Julie D Jones

Julie D. Jones was born in Bovey Tracey on the edge of Dartmoor, before moving to Kingsbridge in the South Hams.

After finishing school, she trained as a nurse at The Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. She then moved to Australia, where she worked in the music industry before studying Journalism at The Australian College of Journalism. She currently lives in the Blue Mountains World Heritage area near Sydney, with her husband and two children.

Julie often returns to Devon, the place which inspired her to write the Moorland Forensic series. The first in the series ‘Moorland Forensics, Bound by Polaris’ is set on and around Dartmoor. Her second novel ‘Devil’s Realm’ is based on the coast around Salcombe.

Julie draws on the technical knowledge of her husband Terence who was a senior forensic chemist with the Australian Federal Narcotics Bureau. As a writer she likes to keep her readers intrigued, providing lots of twists, at the same time highlighting the varied and spectacular landscape of the South West.

Jill Treseder

Jill Treseder was born in Hampshire and lived all her childhood in sight of the sea on the Solent and in Devon, Cornwall and West Wales. She now lives with her husband in Devon overlooking the River Dart. They visit Cornwall frequently and these land and seascapes are powerful influences which demand a presence in her writing.

After graduating from Bristol with a degree in German, Jill followed careers in social work, management development and social research, obtaining a PhD from the School of Management at the University of Bath along the way.

Since 2006 she has focused on writing fiction.

My Sister, Myself (2018)

The Saturday Letters (2017)

The Hatmaker’s Secret (2nd edition) (2017)

Becoming Fran (2015)

A Place of Safety (2014)

The Wise Woman Within: Spirals to Wholeness (non-fiction) (2004)