childrens, Minutes, publishing, self-publishing, Writing

Writers’ Mill Minutes 202105

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May’s meeting was well attended, and we delighted in the mix of new and old members, prompting discussions of how we will meet when real-world attendance becomes possible again. Laura assures us the library is planning to set things up so distant members can continue to attend by Zoom. Like many other library groups, we look forward to welcoming back those who couldn’t Zoom, and continuing to welcome those who’ve joined us because of Zoom. Watch this space…

Peter opened the meeting with the results of the May mystery contest, a contest that drew a wide variety of entries:

·        FIRST – Michael Fryer for “The Mystery of the Second Fiddler”

·        SECOND – Darrel Boyd for “Who Am I?”

·        THIRD – Von Pelot for “The Visitor”

 Other Entries were:

·        Enigma (poem) by Steve Cooper

·        Faith Just Confuses Things by Iain Yuill

·        From 1942: A Note to the Milkman (poem) by Jean Harkin

·        From Schoolgirl to Crown Princess by Jessie Collins

·        It’s a Mystery (poem) by Catherin Violante

·        Kitkit and the Mysterious Box by Sheila Deeth

·        Love: It’s Soooooo Confusing (poem) by Iain Yuill

·        Past Tension Imperfect by Judy Beaston

·        Presumably Lost at Sea by Karin Krafft

·        The Deserted House (poem) by Robin Layne

·        The Invincible Goose by David Fryer

 UPCOMING CONTESTS – all genres, with 1200 word-count limits, deadlines at the end of the first Sunday of the month, and voting till the Wednesday before the 3rd Sunday, entries by email

·        JUNE: Entries being accepted now. Deadline is June 1st
THEME: Meeting My First Stranger (host: David Porter)
–what actually makes someone a super-stranger? Looks? Culture? Beliefs?
–How did you, or might your fictional character, respond to someone at polar opposites from how you view yourself, your beliefs, your choices, etc.

·        JULY: contest host is David Fryer
THEME: Why the answer is yes
–what leads to that decision in self or fictional character

·        AUGUST: contest host is Karin Krafft
THEME:  Serenity
–what it means, how you respond, effect on others and so much more is possible within this theme

Other things we do, besides contests, are having workshops or speakers during  monthly meetings, sharing critiques, writing to prompts (when there’s time), and at least one weekly critique group… plus we do our best to offer general writing encouragement. Ruth, Mark, Daryll, and Catherin asked for more information about the weekly critique group. If you would like to know more as well, please reply to this email. And don’t forget, if someone has forwarded this email to you, you can get your own emails by signing up where it says “sign up” on the website – just follow the instructions.

News

·        Karin announced that she now has a US passport. Unfortunately travel is still somewhat limited, but we’re all looking forward to the end of Covid.

·        Ruth had a piece accepted for Timberline (congratulations!).

·        Also, Ruth is leading some occasional First Writing (first draft) writing groups which we would be welcome to join. They have a welcoming approach to helping with new writing (first drafts) and are currently involved in “write around the world.” Get-togethers last 2 -3 hours and start at $5. Find out more at https://amherstwriters.org/

·        Robin has been involved in a similar group, Write around Portland https://writearound.org/ , which gives people a chance to write and get some exposure. It offers writing prompts, encouragement and assistance, zines, and even meetings to read aloud with an audience!

·        Robin’s news is that she’s finished the 1st draft of her YA vampire novel and is now working on her second book. Also, she got all her files organized (yay!)

·        Sheila, failing to get her files organized, lost several days’ editing when a file became unreadable. Her son recommends you don’t just back up your files once a week, but also back up those you’re working on once a day. If you have two copies, maybe one will stay readable.

·        MaryJane is ready to publish her book of healing poetry and photographs. She has a great cover photo, and is not researching publishers. Her aim is to find one which will respect all faiths and still appeal to people of faith.

·        Sheila shared some cool Word tools:

  1. Word & insert symbols (Insert>symbol, then select wingdinds from the left hand dropdown). You can find some very cool script-style letters there too. And no permission needed to use them in publication (at least, not as far as Sheila could tell, but you should probably Google it)
  2. Word insert icons (Insert>icons and choose your category).
  3. Word insert drop caps (Select the first letter in the paragraph, then insert>drop caps and choose the type of drop capital that you want.

Book Recommendations

·        Steve recommends Calvin and Hobbes

·        Robin recommends Super Fake Love Song by David Yoon https://www.amazon.com/Super-Fake-Love-Song-David/dp/1984812238

·        Steve recommends the Temeraire by Naomi Novik https://www.amazon.com/Temeraire-Majestys-Victory-Serpents-Crucible/dp/B01BPQ5GXI/ , Silas Marner by George Eliot https://www.amazon.com/Silas-Marner-Signet-Classics-George/dp/0451530624/ , and The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Books https://www.amazon.com/Second-Mountain-David-Brooks/dp/

·        Ruth recommends Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon edited by Liz Nakazawa https://www.amazon.com/Deer-Drink-Moon-Poems-Oregon/dp/1932010165

·        Catherin recommends Ann Carson’s Float https://www.amazon.com/Float-Anne-Carson/dp/1101946849/

·        Iain recommends The Poems of Norman MacCaig who, according to Catherin, describes the ordinary with a few profound words, making it un-ordinary https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006WB2E7S/

·        Peter Letts recommends Love that Dog by Sharon Creech https://www.amazon.com/Love-That-Dog-Sharon-Creech-ebook/dp/B00O0ZCO2S/ . Apparently, there is a sequel https://www.amazon.com/Hate-That-Cat-Sharon-Creech-ebook/dp/B00O0YFUNO/

·        Darryl recommends Frank Delaney’s Ireland https://www.amazon.com/Ireland-Novel-Frank-Delaney-ebook/dp/B000TU16QS/

·        And Iain doesn’t necessarily recommend American Sonnets for my past and future assassin by Terrance Hayes https://www.amazon.com/American-Sonnets-Future-Assassin-Penguin-ebook/dp/B076NWZ1YM/  . The author has a rather individual idea of a sonnet, turning Shakespeare upside down.

Websites

Go to https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/links/great-sites-for-writing-tips/

Self-Publishing

If anyone is interested in publishing a chapter a time, possibly getting (small) payments, and hopefully getting feedback from readers, you might want to look into Kindle Vella https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GR2L4AHPMQ44HNQ7

We’ve used Kindle KDP for our anthologies (all d-i-y), using the library’s account. It allows us to publish with zero cost, ebooks and print, and members can buy the print anthologies for the price of printing plus postage. We don’t use Amazon’s automatic conversion from ebook to print as, so far, the results seem less than optimal and leave lots of widows and orphans on the pages.

Anthology

We’ve released almost annual anthologies at Christmas for several years now.

Deadlines

·        entries by end of first Sunday in September,

·        edits by end of first Sunday in October

·        formatting by end of first Sunday in November

·        orders at November’s meeting (where some lucky person gets to upload to Amazon in front of the group)

·        Pick up copies at December’s meeting. Catherin, Karin and Ruth volunteered to help. Please reply to this email to join them … PLEASE !!!!!

Rules

·        No more than 5 entries per person

·        No more than 5,000 words per person

Suggestions

We try to choose themes that match the contest themes. So, oOnce we’ve chosen a theme, ask if one of your contest entries will fit. If so, submit it. If not, consider how you can make it fit. BUT, don’t forget

·        Publication in the anthology IS PUBLICATION. You can use it as a publishing credit when trying to get published elsewhere. But

·        Entries in the contests are NOT considered published, as the website is password protected. If you want to publish your contest entry elsewhere, you probably shouldn’t send it to our anthology.

We discussed the possibility of having separate anthologies for stories, poems, etc, but would prefer not to because:

·        It would take much more work to create more books, and

·        Having all types of writing in one anthology better expresses who we are a group.

We discussed not having a theme for the anthology – just having “chapters” or sections on unrelated (contest) themes – but

·        it’s easier to sell something (and easier for readers to find it – even when those readers are our best friends) if the title is, say, Journeys through Chaos, rather than the Writers’ Mill Journal Volume 7.

·        And it can be quite time-consuming, with pre-planned sections, to make sure you don’t end up with a one-entry section, or with one section filling half the book. Having a theme gives us more freedom to move things around.

WE NEED Volunteers – so be thinking about what YOU can do.

a.      Can you pre-edit entries (using “normal” styles, removing tabs, using “format” to indent paragraphs, removing double spaces, making sure the use of italics, emdashes, ellipses etc follows consistent rules)?

b.      Can you order entries into a single master document with well-defined styles for prose, poetry, centered poetry, headings, subheadings, etc?

c.      Can you edit – readability edits and/or copy edits?

d.      Can you format the master document for page size, margins, gutters etc., including adding title pages, contents lists, front and back material?

e.      Can you edit the final document to avoid awkward spacing, shrinking or expanding text or spacing where necessarily for readability? At this stage you would add sections, headers, page numbers etc.

f.       Can you create formatted pdf files? (We’ve used Word for this. Catherin recommends a good formatter—see above—but maybe it’s something more of us should be learning to do for ourselves – also d-i-y is free, fitting our aims as a group.)

g.      Can you research titles on Amazon, Google etc?

h.      Do you have and can you use Photoshop to create a cover?

i.       Are you a cover artist, or do you know one?

j.       Can you advertise or market the book? Maybe use the blogging tool on our website, or use Facebook, Instagram etc, or contact local papers?

Please also be thinking about choosing and preparing your work for submission. We will open for submissions soon and give you the email address to send them to.

Critique

Matthew led a very lively critique of Steve’s children’s book. Hopefully Steve felt he got something from it. I’m sure the rest of us did, as conversation ranged through many writing topics.

·        Titles: Steve’s title is “Don’t eat your Seed Corn”

·        The word “Don’t” attracts kids – think about what children “see” when they read or hear the title

·        The message is clear in the title and attracts adults – think about what those who actually buy books see.

·        Short titles aren’t always better. “Seed Corn” for example might attract a market gardener rather than a parent.

·        Message: Steve’s message is obvious from the title. We discussed whether less obvious options, but kids don’t read the title, and adults choose because of the title.

·        Books often have secondary messages. Here, growing up is part of the message, but wouldn’t make such a good title.

·        How well the message goes across with parents and guardians of children might depend on it being clear, not raising false expectations—for example, that the story will be about giving back when it’s about being an entrepreneur.

·        The author needs to know and stick to the message.

·        Series: Steve’s book is the first in a series about entrepreneurism where the main character has cameo in each book

·        How do you attract small kids to a series of books? Maybe through the main character, but

·        How do you make the main character interesting, especially if he’s an adult?

·        Good writing helps, good illustrations, and good stories. We hope Steve will release book 2 soon!

·        Illustrations: The first book is published as a picture book, but Steve doesn’t have an illustrator for book 2. https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/digital-illustration?source=gallery-listing might help.

·        Age range:

·        Some suggested age 8-12, others K-3. What difference does it make?

                                          i.     K-3 for a picture book. Picture book needs to tell a lot with fewer words. The illustrations give details that are left out – e.g. pictures of healthy and unhealthy corn.

                                         ii.     Age 8-12 would expect fewer pictures and perhaps more words.

·        Sometimes the illustrations give part of the story, or parts of the detail that older kids expect to find in the text, such as:

                                          i.     What is seed corn?

                                         ii.     What good ideas does the character have?

                                        iii.     Why are his ideas rejected?

·        Dialog: Some of the “missing details” can be given by dialog as well as by illustrations, or by single-word descriptive additions to the text. “Stored the best, fattest corn” for example, rather than “stored the best corn.”

·        Moral of the Story: Steve’s story is simply about being wise and patient

·        What happens if you try to make it about being kind as well – can you have more than one moral, or does it get over-wordy/over-complicated?

·        What happens if you try to make it about learning more complex skills – bartering vs simply “giving back”?

·        What happens if you include concerns for other “poor” people when your character is rising above poverty?

·        How does a picture book stick to the point? What about a novel? What about a middle-grade book?

·        How do we avoid distracting from our message with digressions to answer other points?

·        How do we give a less-common message to kids – e.g. it’s ok to be rich.

·        Details: How is choice of detail read differently by different people – know your audience?

·        Sheila liked the repeated thirds and repeated words

·        Matthew pondered how to split square fields into thirds with common borders

·        Character: Kids’ stories often involve single-trait characters

·        let the illustrations round them out, or

·        add secondary characters who can talk to them

·        add females

·        For a picture book, how much does the author need to know? Maybe the illustrator chooses to make the farmer female or African-American.

·        Descriptions: Use of repeated words or lists of adjectives can really appeal to kids

·        Dialog: should be casual for kids

·        Tense: Steve’s story tells the childhood of a present-day adult – goes from present to past. We looked at “was not always…” vs. “had not always been…”

·        Names: How do we choose them?

·        Easy reading? Or

·        Meaningful names (name means generous),

·        or both, of course

Next meeting

June 20th, Kate Ristau (a great middle-grade / YA fantasy author) will be our speaker, and, of course, there’ll be the results from “first stranger” contest. Plus a critique? If you want to be critiqued or to lead a critique, please reply to this email.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to join the Facebook page for more news https://www.facebook.com/groups/973617269358971

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