Sadly we still can’t share Christmas treats or exchange books at our end-of-year Writers’ Mill meeting, but 16 of us met over zoom and enjoyed the chance to celebrate achievements and set goals for 2022.

Contests

The meeting started with contest announcements from our December contest. First second and third places went to:

• 1.      ONE – Steve Cooper for his essay – Richer By the Dozen
• 2.      TWO – Karin Krafft for her story – Annual Christmas Nightmare
• 3.      THREE – Zita Podany for her poem – Getting Ready For a Family Gathering

OTHER ENTRIES were:

• ·        A New Game – Peter Letts
• ·        As Time Goes By – Jessie Collins
• ·        Family, A Country Song – Judy Beaston
• ·        Jessica -AND- Kitkit Learns to Count – Sheila Deeth
• ·        Tatooine Detective – David Fryer
• ·        The Case of the Family Gathering – Michael Fryer
• . Key – Robin Layne
• . With Good intentions (not for voting) by our host Von Pelot

 And our NEXT contests (deadlines end of the first Sunday of each month; genre any; wordcount maximum 1200 words; SEND ENTRIES TO contest @ portlandwritersmill . org) will be:

• ·        January: My New Year’s Resolution (host: Von Pelot) – Deadline Jan. 2nd
• ·        February: The Elegant Universe (host: Steve Cooper)
• ·        March: Mistaken Identity (host: David Fryer)

Find out more at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-contests/ and enjoy the entries from December’s contest at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/december-2021-contest/dec-2021-entries-voting-page/ if you haven’t already read them!

In later discussion, there were several comments about how much entering these contests has improved our writing, so, if you’re not already entering, please join us. We are “writers helping writers,” and our goal is to help each other write more, write better, and better achieve all our writing goals.

Achievements

Which leads to those goals written on cat-calendar pages in the green box with its red ribbon. The box was a gift from Becky’s mom—Becky being the person who started the Writers’ Mill. And the cat-calendar pages are a continuation of those that Sheila’s mum handed over at the end of her cat-calendar year. Each year we write our writing goals for the next year, anonymously, on cat-pages, then we take the goals from the box and see how many goals have been reached. By the time the box is empty, everyone will find they’ve achieved something, even if they didn’t achieve what they intended, which makes us all winners.

Achievements from 2021 included:

• ·        Doing research aimed at a writing task: 5 people
• ·        Getting organized: 2 people
• ·        Organize things you’ve written – collate and index so family members can find them: 1
• ·        Writing at least 2 poems: 5 people
• ·        Writing something amusing based on life: 4 people
• ·        Write something based on objects or quotes: 1 person
• ·        Write outside our comfort zone – new genre or style: 3 people
• ·        Working on a childrens’ book: 3 people
• ·        Working on illustrations or working with an illustrator: 3 people
• ·        Collaborate on writing with a family member: 1
• ·        Writing a 50,000 word draft: 1 or 2 people
• ·        Finish something: 2 people
• ·        Finish 20 short stories to form a book: 2 people
• ·        Finish a novel: 1
• ·        Finish a draft: 2
• ·        Publish a book: 1
• ·        Work on family history: 6
• ·        Get published outside Writers’ Mill: 3
• ·        Get published with the Writers’ Mill: 10 (in our annual anthology)
• ·        Enter every Writers’ Mill contest: 5

After celebrating these achievements, we went around the table (or more accurately, the zoom screen) introducing ourselves to each other, describing our greatest writing achievements of the year, and setting our goals for next year. If you weren’t there, feel free to reply to this email with your goals and Sheila will add them to the green box. Then, next December, we will open the box and see what we’ve achieved in 2022.

Group Goals for 2022

Next we looked at the goals we set, as a group, for 2021, asking how well we approached those goals, and setting new goals for 2022.

• ·        Anthology: We successfully included more people in creating this year’s anthology. Goals?
  • o   Next year, Sheila wants someone else to be in charge of organizing the helpers.
  • o   We need more discussion on:
    • §  Why we create the anthology: How do we balance creating something that will sell with creating something that allows everyone to experience being published?
    • §  What sort of anthology: Would it be a good idea to have a single theme, rather than including all the contests? And would it be a good idea to have a “saleable” theme, such as an anthology describing how a group can create an anthology?
• ·        Marketing wasn’t one of last year’s goals, but it could be one of this year’s. Various members are already marketing our anthology through press releases, contacting the Beaverton Valley Times, writing blogposts, mentioning it in their Christmas letters, telling strangers that they meet… Goals?
  • o   We’d like to set up a display at the library. Alice says we should let her know when we know what we want. Please would someone take charge of this.
  • o   Writing that we don’t get paid for can create sales. Where can we submit our writing in a way that advertises our anthology?
  • o   Having a presence at the Oak Hills Bazaar, the Beaverton Library event, etc. will increase our visibility. Depending on Covid, Sheila might get a table at Oak Hills. Who is willing to help with that or do other things?
• ·        Poetry: Carolyn Martin gave a great workshop again this year. Goal?
  • o   Would Carolyn be willing to do it again?
• ·        Genres and ages: We had a mystery writer speak to use in July, and we had a young adult speaker in June. Goals?
  • o   Mysteries in July would be a good annual event.
  • 0 Sheila will send around a list of recent speakers and ask who we’d like to invite back soon.
• ·        Writing exercises: We had a few writing exercises, aided by story cubes, this year. Goal?
  • o   Yes, let’s have more
  • o   Also, let’s set up a page where we can post writing from group members, just for reading and critique. Would someone like to volunteer to take charge of this?
• ·     Splitting into smaller groups: It’s certainly easier to get to know people in smaller groups, and we did split during one meeting this year. Goal?
  • o   It might be nice to split into smaller groups more often
  • o   Maybe we should encourage more small critique groups to meet separately from the monthly meeting. At present we only have one. Who would like to start another one?
• ·        Editing: Goal?
  • o   We’ve had editors speak to us in the past. Maybe another editing (and self-editing) talk would be good.
  • o   If we can’t find a speaker, maybe a group discussion where everyone says what techniques and technology they use would be good.
• ·        Websites: More people are involved in keeping our website up to date now, but more help is still required. Meanwhile, goals?
  • o   We will ask Zita if she can repeat her excellent talk on how to create a website.
• And finally:
• ·        Our main goal for 2022 is to continue being “writers helping writers.” Be positive. Be helpful. And write!

Critique

Finally Joe led a critique of Matthew’s Chapter 8 (and we’re all eager to see Matthew finish this novel in 2022, please!). Things that we discussed included:

• ·        What sort of thing make something interesting to read? Convincing detail and smooth flow of writing help a lot.
• ·        What makes details convincing? Including things that people know a little about, and showing them through the eyes of characters helps. Perhaps also avoiding details that are true but will sound false to the reader.
• ·        What makes dialog convincing? Use of appropriate words helps, but sometimes might distract if the words sound false to the reader.
• ·        What makes internal dialog convincing? Sticking to a convincing view-point. Allowing the character to grow and change. How do you portray a character’s identity crisis?
• ·        Importance of first sentences – in chapters, stories and novels. How do extra words add or detract from drawing the reader in quickly?
• ·        Importance of repeated phrases – how to convey that the “phrase” is in the character’s head, as opposed to the phrase being a clue to what comes next.
• ·        Research – Matthew has (successfully) done an amazing amount of research, and even showed us a video of one of the events portrayed in the chapter: Volunteers build replica plane from historic 1912 flight

Next Meeting

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

And we’ll hope to see you all again on the third Sunday in January, Jan 16th 2022.