The Young Writers Lab started - for me, at any rate - last March, during the Bath Literature Festival. I have always wanted to be a writer, so I decided to go to one of their writing workshops. The workshop itself, while very interesting, bears little importance to the rest of our story. So I will skip most of it, save for one small detail. At the very end of the session the prospect of a monthly writing group was brought up. While I liked the idea, I didn't believe it would actually happen. So it was a surprise when a few months later I received an email informing me tickets for the very first Young Writers Lab sessions had just gone on sale. I immediately decided to book, however an unfortunate scheduling conflict meant that it was several sessions before I was finally able to attend.
We met in a small, vaguely odd looking hut, outside an art gallery called The Holburne, who would host us for some months until we eventually moved to holding sessions in the Egg Theatre. When I arrived for the first session there were only a few of us, but we soon formed a small team. Alice Maddicott, who had overseen the original workshop was running the group and was an immensely capable leader.
I cannot remember whether it was my first or my second session when the Chancery was brought up. Of course, back then it had not been a Chancery. It was merely a writing installation of some sort for the Literature Festival, which would deal with alternative versions of Bath. As the project developed, our numbers grew to a kingly seven, and then shrunk to a princely six. We each had our own vague ideas of cities, and the experience of discussion helped generate new ideas and clarify existing ones. One of the key things I have found from both my writing groups (this group and the Trowbridge Young Writers Squad, the latter run by Sarah Benwell author of The Last Leaves Falling and an inspiration for several of my characters) is that constructive criticism is really useful. I would suggest starting a discussion group if you cannot find a pre-existing one to join. Via the discussions we solidified our ideas, just as the Chancery self-solidified, gaining a name, a space and then finally, a deadline. We watched the project being set up as Hazel and Alice scouted for useful furniture items, and we wrote as much as we could to fill the space, planning how we wanted our own sections to look. We were given a tour of the secret rooms of the Bath Archive to find broken bits of junk to fill the space with and finally, we set it up.
Standing in a room full of members of the public browsing something you have written is one of the greatest feelings ever. The space evolved and changed over ten days becoming something new and beautiful. It was a truly amazing experience.
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