Our second event couldn’t have been more different to our launch! Which, of course, was the intention. ‘UNFINISHED: Making it up as you go along …’ explored and celebrated the unfinished in writing, from our countless contributions to the Internet, to the pile of manuscripts littering our corners, begging to be revisited.

Participants were invited along to read or discuss a work-in-progress in the central session, sharing ideas of how to begin to finish them. The Bloggers’ Forum may well become a regular meeting, with the attendants very much enjoying meeting some of those previously known only on line, and finding out there’s such a healthy blogging scene in Medway (Bloggle may be a new word entering the dictionary – more on that soon!) Dark tales were enjoyed in our Basement Gothic event, courtesy of the fabulous Vicereine de Mornay – in her fist live public performance – Roy Smith, Peter Carter and Philip Kane.

The theme for this event was partially inspired by its location – coFWD, the coworking space in Rochester, is an awesome place, full of awesome people, which is still being shaped and changed by them. ‘Unfinished’ and the Bloggers Fourm took place in The Canvas, the large and airy upstairs room, while Basement Gothic, as you can safely assume, took place on the ground floor in The Bunker, the basement transformed into a mini Gothic mansion (if you used your imagination!).

It’s very much an ongoing project as the community seek to build on the very solid foundations already laid. Initially, meetings began in Tuttle101, a coffee morning social event. There followed Tipple (the evening equivalent) Nibble (with food) Shipple (on board a boat) and by natural progression – you know what’s coming – yes, we bloggers may well be bloggling at a Bloggle from now on!

Thank you to everyone who came along, Ben and his doodles keeping the children’s corner busy, and a specially BIG THANK YOU to David and Baljinder Bahir for keeping everyone fed with their delicious Cinnamon Girl snacks 🙂

What was said:

“This has been a brilliant day; great mix of people and like minds. Excellent discussions and readings and extremely helpful feedback. I will be using the space again. Thanks to everyone who organised/facilitated etc. Very worthwhile.”

“Great event. Fascinating, instructive and inspirational. Looking forward to further RLF events.”

“Brilliant, look forward to the next event!”

“Great to attend another LitFest event. Bloggers’ Forum was really interesting and socialising with other local writers is always encouraging.”

“Great and original idea! Now the ice has broken, as they say, this really ought to be the start of something ongoing.”

“Hmmm. Among the most enjoyable events/workshops I’ve been to about creativity. Why? The formalised nature of a ‘forum’ is very conducive to sharing … the discussions in both the writing/blogging forum were enlightening. Certainly there is a community (unbeknownst to me) of active writers who want to break on through to the ‘other side’ as Jimmy Hendrix put it. I particularly liked the discussions around internet publishing/society/activism having (or not) validity, growing into commercialism, being genuine, having actual social worth and having the momentum to snowball. Thank you to all involved.”