First Drafts

To navigate through the first drafts move your mouse over the tab on the menu bar above called 'First Drafts' to reveal a drop-down box containing the writer's personal pages. Some of our most prolific writers have more than one page. Longer stories and poems are linked for download so that you can print them out and read them at your leisure.

This section of the website is designed to reduce the anxiety that new writers frequently experience when taking the decision to ask other people to read their work for the first time. We don't want our new writers to feel under pressure to produce perfect polished work before submitting it because for some that might mean that their work would never get seen.

There is a very real fear of being ridiculed, laughed at or exposed to humiliation and this can and often does act as a real brake on our creativity. New writers often are disturbed by the thought that others might think they are over-estimating the extent of their talent or that they somehow have an overblown sense of their ability; although this is seldom true. We would like to lower the fear threshold and dedicate this area to 'First Drafts' for budding writers to submit some experimental pieces, some work in progress and hopefully a labour of love.

We hope that exposure, feedback and encouragement will provide the necessary sunshine, wind and rain to grow some good writing. As you read through the work submitted in these pages it is clearly possible to see that this process has already begun. If, having read some of this work you would like to add to that sunshine, wind and rain then we would like to encourage you to click through to the 'Feedback' section where you can post your messages of encouragement, appreciation and any other constructive comments that occur to you for the writers to read.

New writing is almost by definition exploratory and experimental. This means that you will undoubtedly encounter writing here containing challenging, provacative and stimulating ideas and language. This site is intended as an unmoderated amateur writers showcase and we do not impose a formal editorial policy. Please do not hesitate to contact the webmaster if you feel that acceptable boundaries have been breached. We will, of course, remove anything racist, sexist or otherwise offensive.