Numbers were down at this month’s meeting, with only 14 people present, but the sudden onset of summer was a likely cause. Please mark your calendars for next month—Father’s Day—when Sara Hall will give her much-anticipated multimedia presentation on the DIY book launch. Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201705
Guest speaker Zita Podany was unable to attend due to illness, but has been rescheduled for August 20th – mark your calendars. With the off-schedule timing for the meeting (due to Easter) causing a lower attendance this month, let’s hope for more people to be here when Zita joins us in August. Meanwhile around twelve of us enjoyed a BYOS meeting (Bring your own snacks, and bring your own speaker), with an impromptu writing exercise taken from the Creative Writer’s Notebook ($8.98 from Barnes and Noble) inspired by our next contest. We also enjoyed receiving contest awards filled with wonder for the Wonder contest, pondering contest entries for the next few months, and critiquing the third enticing chapter of Matthew’s novel. Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201704
Opening question: If you were to write a memoir or personal essay, what would it be about? Continue reading Mining Your Life Story, Notes from Nancy Linnon’s Talk, March 2017
Twenty people enjoyed a fantastic workshop from Nancy Linnon (http://www.themovingpen.net/) on March 19th at the library. A gifted speaker, teacher, editor, writer, writing coach and more, Nancy came armed with excellent handouts including a great list of resources, and she invited us, right from her very first question, to look more deeply for stories in our own lives and those of our characters. Lots of members left energized and excited to realize they just might have a story worth telling in their past. Continue reading Writers Mill Minutes 201703
Carolyn began her talk with some groundrules:
We may have started the year late but we started it in style with a wonderful February meeting where everyone participated, everyone had something to say, and everyone learned something. Carolyn Martin’s talk was such a success we’ve asked her to return in November, so if you missed this one, make sure you don’t miss the next one! Continue reading Writers Mill Minutes 201702
December’s meeting was more sparsely attended than usual due to snow and ice, but we still had 13 people celebrating the achievements of 2016 and setting goals for 2017. Some of those goals were goals for our future meetings, so feel free to email your opinions to SheilaD at Portlandwritersmill dot org too add your voice to our plans. This is YOUR group and these are YOUR meetings! We aim to please – and to be “writers helping writers.” Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201612
began with some questions. Continue reading How, when, where and why to critique (from Ron and Sheila’s talk)
18 members attended November’s meeting, where Ron and Sheila gave a joint talk on the art of giving and taking in critique (see below), copies of the journal were handed out (email Sheila if you’ve not received yours), orders were taken for Zeus and Bo and Fred and Joe and Co (email Sheila if you still want to order it), and Jean led a fascinating discussion (also below) as we critiqued Patty’s prolog. Plus we had one new member, another Ron! Welcome! Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201611