IT HAS been a long time since I was the sort of person who would just wander into a pub for a pint. I know it, you now know it, and it quite obviously shows.

"Are you looking for something?" says the girl having a smoke just outside the front door of the Keyberry Hotel, Newton Abbot.

It's not the sort of thing you expect to be asked as you make your way into a drinking establishment, although I did commit the schoolboy error of making for the lounge bar door first, which must have marked me down as someone not used to this sort of thing.

"Er, the writers..." I say, holding my hands up in plaintive admission that I am not just casually happening in for a pint of mild and bag of pork bits.

"Out the back. Go through there, right to the back of the bar and they're in the sort of kitchen area."

I do as instructed, picking my way past the few early regulars adorning the bar stools and chairs, and through an archway to the rear. There, a small area is set aside behind one of those low indoor brick walls you sometimes get in pubs, with additional privacy provided by a metal grille and the gathered folds of net curtains.

Inside this unlikely grotto I find the members of Newton Abbot Writers Circle, sitting, somewhat misleadingly, in a long line.

I'm late. Only by a couple of minutes, I am sure, but still enough to have missed the opening address of chairman Marion. First deadline missed.

"Any successes anyone?" asks Marion of the group assembled along both sides of a string of wooden tables. None are offered openly, although John, seated at the far end away from me, does mutter something about a couple of quid passing under a table somewhere for something.

Now, turning words into cash is the greatest trick any writer can pull off. Being told that what you have produced is worthy of payment is most gratifying. Much like it must be for an artist, fashion designer or professional hedge sculpturer.

The trouble is that rejection is just as hard to take. Harder in fact. Being told that what you have done is not good enough is like having your hopes, dreams and sensitive artistic side dragged straight from your chestal area by a rusty hook.

It's not quite the same for journalists. We get paid whatever, the judgement on our ability is taken once, at first, and then as a given.

That said, we — and by 'we' I mean my brothers and sisters of Her Majesty's Press — have all heard at one point or another that most withering of put-downs, '... and someone actually pays you to write this rubbish?'

I often wonder if I could do it any other way. Just for fun, with no obvious financial incentive, as members of a writers circle do.

While I ponder that, Marion announces that the group will spend the first part of tonight's meeting 'warming up'.

This involves writing a short passage based on a single sentence, picked at random from a book which happens to be lying around. This being a writing club, those which are lying around are not doing so as randomly as they might elsewhere.

From a choice of 'Writing the Blockbuster Novel', 'Writers Market UK' and 'Non-Fiction', Elaine picks up the first and flicks through to a sentence which ends: 'Thank god he hasn't guessed the rest of the story'.

"Right, then," says Marion, "there you go. Twenty minutes." And then: "Will you be joining us, Mike?"

"Ah, er, um," is about the sum of my reply, before I steady myself and make some sort of excuse based around being here merely to observe. I think what I might laughably call professional pride is what stops me.

Seriously, what if what I write is boring, unprintable, just plain awful? And at the back of my mind also is an acknowledgement that I do not respond well to criticism. Which is putting it mildly.

Whenever I run anything past the very patient and admirably objective Mrs Baker and she finds fault of any kind, offers advice even, my inner toddler tends to emerge. Wobblies are thrown, mists descend, and offers to read draughts in future are withdrawn. I don't want to inflict this on a group of strangers.

And so silence envelops the kitchen/dining chamber.

A steady string of inquisitive patrons wander past, with some pretty impressive beer-fashioned silhouettes visible through the net curtain on their way to the gents. I think Ireland are playing Brazil at football and it must be half-time.

"Two minutes," says Marion over the muted strains of the Go Compare advert playing on an unseen TV in the saloon bar.

Soon enough pens are put down and reading voices are prepared for action.

Marygwen starts with a slightly obscure tale about a dog escaping from its young owners who search for it in a sort of Famous Five style. Her delightful, some might say posh, intonation paints an authentic, infectious picture. I think I could happily listen to Marygwen read the FTSE index aloud.

"The dog was run over, obviously," she tells us matter-of-factly as she sits down, before recounting memories of her own beloved but long since departed family pet.

A group critique follows, with enough supportive and constructive criticism for things to remain cordial.

Next up is Elaine, who admits her effort is 'very dull and very obvious'. It is neither, in truth, and concerns the whereabouts of a missing wife, some swimming lessons and cats being let out of bags, 'with hackles rising'.

"I liked the hackles rising bit," says Helen as the rest of the group appraise Elaine's efforts.

Kate and Warwick weave similarly inventive but entirely original tales before we come to me. "Have you anything for us, Mike?" asks the chairman, having apparently forgotten my earlier worming out.

"Ah, well," I say, "I was writing stuff down but it's all rubbish. You know. Er. I should just carry on with the group."

I sense a certain degree of disappointment in the look which comes back at me. But not having done and disappointed, in this case, is, for me, still better than having done and disappointed more.

Alan, next to me, writes all in capitals, which form an almost solid block of text on his A4 pad.

"I was on the way," he says in defence of not having been able to finish what he started. "With another three hours..."

Interestingly there is very little evidence of crossing out on Alan's pad, nor is there on any of the others I can make out at my end.

Now I come to think of it, it is also intriguing to note how many of the group write on paper by choice. There are other works contained within the feint lines of pads all around the table. Again, very little ink appears to have been spilled in correction.

Like most of my generation I have evolved beyond being able to use a pen and paper to write anything other than a shopping list. With a tendency towards changes of mind, heart and direction I don't think there would be enough trees to cope.

Writing to me has come to mean typing. Or should that be the other way round?

Anyway, warm-up over, it is time for the main event, in which members will read aloud a 1,000-word, non-fiction piece they have composed on a particular subject, drawn from a hat last month.

John, who follows Bridget, pulled out the topic: 'Beekeeping for beginners'. "I'm not very happy in non-fiction," he says. "I'm far happier with storytelling."

But I would beg to differ. His tale of a first trip to 'the bee man' in Tavistock market is wonderfully brought to life by his deliberate, self-deprecating delivery. Those on the toilet run must be wondering what all the laugher is about.

Jean then tells us a tale of what really goes on in a women's prison in New Mexico. And she would know, having actually worked in one. Karen delivers a eulogy to her grandmother which exposes one of the inherent problems with eulogies, that being the person who would most benefit from hearing the kind words is the one least able to hear them.

During a quick break in proceedings one of the pub's staff comes in and does something in the kitchen, after which there is an unmistakable smell of roast ham, and the slowly escalating aroma of deep frying chips.

It transpires that the darts team has finished early and is in need of refuelling after their travails. There is no such food for our thought.

Alan kicks off the second half with a story about three elm trees in a local graveyard entitled 'The Three Elms', while Warwick has crafted something special about 'fruits and nuts' from British history, again read aloud, with unabashed gusto, from red-inked capital letters in the barely fixed pages of his A5 Woolworth's notepad.

"My eternal thanks to whoever gave me wildlife habitats," says Kate, before running us through a Wikipedia-like lesson. "I found most of that from a school science website," she says afterwards.

"I don't really do non-fiction," says Elaine, before reading a detailed account of time spent in a coffee shop.

Helen ends the evening with a long but well-informed piece about fractured families and step-parents. As with most, there follows a brief discussion about where such an article might see the light of day in print.

Clearly, there is something of a desire here to see some of their words within the papery embrace of a publication, periodical, book or document of some kind, but I do not get the sense that it is the driving force behind the writing.

"We have had some successes in the past, we do try to get published," admits Christine, a former chairman of the group, afterwards.

"We do write for fun though, although it takes up a lot of time, having to think about what you're going to write. I found when I was chair I just couldn't do the writing as well.

"I'm actually having a bit of writer's block at the moment. You'll get an idea in the shower, but you have to write it down or it's gone forever."

I get those quite a lot, although I tend to wait until I get out of the shower before writing anything down. I did just that for this very column, believe it or not. Although I'm not going to tell you which bits were inspired moments of creative juice capture, and which just flew right off the top of the old noggin.

After all, someone is actually paying me to write this rubbish. Which, unless you're stealing it for free off our website, is, well, kind of you really.

I honestly don't know how to thank you enough.