As I grow older and have more leisure, I’d like to put something back into the business and pleasure of writing that I’ve enjoyed these thirty years.  If you are a member of a readers’ group, it may be there’s something I can do for you.  Here are some thoughts on matters I could cover:

• Writing as a profession: the business and the experience.
• My own career and books.
• Work in progress: the evolving process – techniques and challenges in a current work.
• Your own work – a mini-workshop to review samples of your writing and give tips.
• How you can write your autobiography

In principle all of this is on offer for free.  As I say, I view the matter as partly a useful way of spending my leisure.

Groups in North Wales and the North of England are the most convenient for me, but I’m happy to consider locations anywhere in the UK, if they seem like places my wife and I might like to visit.

“I belong to a book club of 12 members. Meeting every month, we manage to cover a broad range of novels each year ranging from the classics to more current works. Having trawled the web for new ideas I came across the site for Jim Williams, featuring his current book ‘The Argentinian Virgin’.

I was intrigued to see that he was prepared to visit groups such as ours to discuss his books. This would be a first for us and members readily agreed to follow it up. We duly read Jim’s book which of course met mixed views from ‘loving it’ through ‘frustrating’ to ‘not really my thing’.

Panic set in as the day approached when we would come face to face with the man himself. How were we going to handle honesty with not wishing to upset this writer who had laboured over his work and taken the trouble to travel 250 miles to see us?

I really don’t know why we worried. Jim Williams was professional enough to start his discussion by stating that he would be suspicious of any group who unanimously thought his book was wonderful.  Once we had all been put at ease on this, we sat back to enjoy a most entertaining evening of discussion. His explanations of how writers formulate ideas, draw characters, write plots and choose locations was informative and lively.

Whether we had enjoyed his book or not (and I definitely did) we all agreed it had been an extremely interesting evening which we would thoroughly recommend to other groups.”

JP – South Nuffield

If you want to investigate this offer further, please leave a comment below.