Writers’ Mill Minutes 16th October 2022
Seventeen members attended October’s meeting, including several new and nearly new members—you are very welcome, and we hope you’ll stay with us! This was only our second hybrid meeting, and this time we had more in-person attendees than online—which means we’re looking for feedback again, from any and all of you, about how we can make these hybrid meetings even better. We’re very grateful to the librarians for all their help.
Library News
Our librarian, Will, began the meeting with some announcements about upcoming meetings at Cedar Mill Library and Bethany Annex:
- Tuesday, October 18th at 6:30pm – Making corn tortillas at Bethany Annex
- Thursday, October 20th at 6:30pm – Graphic Novel Book Club Author Joshua Williamson at Cedar Mill
- Tuesday, October 25th at 6:30pm – Making Chicken Tinga at Cedar Mill
- Tuesday, November 1st at 4pm – Dia de Los Muertos at Cedar Mill
Hybrid Meeting, request for Feedback
Sheila introduced some new features added by the librarians for online attendees.
- Click on the Transcription icon (looks like a tape player) at the bottom of your screen, and click “start subtitles” to start transcription—this should help you understand what is being said, even when the volume is low.
- Click and drag the box containing the subtitles to put it in a more convenient place on your screen.
- Click on the Chat (looks like a speech bubble) at the bottom of your screen and the chat window will open. If it opens in front of all the pictures, click on the three dots at the bottom right of the chat screen and click on “merge to meeting window” to make it move to the right.
- Click on the arrow next to “everyone” at the bottom left of the chat window if you want to “chat” privately with someone.
- At the top right of the main window (where all
the pictures of attendees appear) you can click on view then choose
- Grid to see everyone
- Speaker to see a large image of the speaker (This will change to a new speaker whenever someone else speaks)
- When you’re in grid view, move your mouse over the image of, say, the library meeting room, then click on the three dots that appear at the top of the image. Click on pin, and that’s the image you will see, even if they’re not speaking. Click on “unpin” at the top left to go back to seeing everyone.
We hope this will help online members join in more effectively. Meanwhile, for in-person attendees, we reiterated the need for them to be able to see the microphone and the computer when speaking, so online attendees can see and hear them. Basically, the online attendees should be imagined as sitting at the other side of the table, behind the computer, and we should remember to address our comments to everyone, not just the person sitting next to us. Which is totally antisocial in terms of in-person communication, so we plan to mute the meeting room in the middle of each meeting, taking a break where attendees can interact more socially with each other. This is one of the areas where we need some feedback—
- how long should the break be?
- is the middle the meeting the best place for the break,
- or should we shorten the online part of the meeting, giving a potentially longer opportunity for in-person attendees to interact at the end,
- or… Please contact us with your suggestions!
Contest
Judy announced the results of Von’s October contest on the theme of Imagination.
- FIRST – Michael Fryer for “A Matter of Finding Karl”
- SECOND – Gary Romans for “How Max Made Money” and Judy Beaston for her poem “A Beginning”
- THIRD – David Fryer for “Smilodon Predicament”
OTHER ENTRIES:
- Courtship BY Robin Layne
- Fairytale BY Lyndsay Docherty
- Flights of Fancy BY Moira Leffler
- Imagine (poem) BY Sheila Deeth
- Just My Imagination BY Ruel McKenzie
- Kitkit Imagines BY Sheila Deeth
- Not My Imagination BY Jessie Collins
- Thoughts BY Peter Letts
Upcoming contests—1,200 word limit, any genre, entries to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org by the end of the first Sunday in the month. New members and old, please join us!
- November, Gratitude
- December, a hundred years from now
- January, change (with an optional “challenge” to include dialog with minimal use of dialog tags)
The contest entries and contest information can be found on our website at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/ Remember to sign up (see the sign-up tab: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/newsletter/ to get our newsletters and further information, and remember to check your SPAM folders, in case our emails, from admin @ portlandwritersmill . org, get sent to SPAM by your email system). NB, remove spaces from email addresses before using them.
The World of Editing
Our speaker for this month went down with flu, so Sheila gave a presentation on editing—a topic close to the hearts of those who’ve been working on this year’s anthology. She started with a newspaper article about activists throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The painting, we are assured, was not damaged. But if it had been damaged, art restorers would have been given the task of repairing it. The restorer’s job is to make repairs so the painting becomes exactly what the artist intended—they can’t make the sunflowers more orange, for example, because that’s not what Van Gogh originally painted. Similarly, an editor’s job is to “repair” the author’s manuscript to reflect what the author intended, removing those typos, distractions, deviations, etc. that stop it from appearing to its audience in the way the author intends.
The talk ended with some sample paragraphs, with everyone invited to shout out their own suggested edits.
Notes from Sheila’s talk can be found at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/17/the-world-of-editing-sheila-deeth-16th-oct-2022/ .
Member News
After a break, everyone introduced themselves to each other, and each of us proved to have a “story” to tell of why we write, what we write, and what brings us to the Writers’ Mill. What’s your story?
Anthology News
This year’s anthology has now gone to Zita for formatting, and we thanked the editing team and the playlist/title/cover team for all their hard work. The subtitle of the anthology will be
The Writers’ Mill Journal Volume 10
And the title will be
Millworks—Framing Life
We considered going for a one-word title, Millworks, but the decision was made during the meeting to stick to three. For an explanation of the title… buy the book! Thank you everyone.
Writing Inspiration
The next contest—entries due by the end of November 6th—has the theme of Gratitude. Bearing in mind that creativity is often inspired by trying to put together more than one idea, Sheila suggested a way to find that second, unrelated idea.
- With eight books on the desk, we asked for a number between 1 and 8
- Looking at the number of pages in the chosen book, we asked for a number between 1 and the final page
- With three paragraphs on the page, we asked for a number between 1 and 3
- Then we counted words and asked for a number… coming up with History.
Various suggestions were made, tying History to Gratitude. Then, to make it more complicated, we tried asking for a noun or a verb and took the first appropriate word from the paragraph. So… if you’re looking for inspiration at home, pick up a pile of books and start thinking of numbers! Add the usual questions: who, what, where, when, how, and why, and you’ll find you have the beginning of your contest entry.
Next Meeting
Our next meeting is November 20th when we’ll upload the anthology before your very eyes. Anyone who wants to know how to create an amazon kdp account, prepare a book for upload, create a paperback, hardcover or ebook, make a nice cover and write a cool blurb, or just see what the possibilities are before daring to try it… be there or be square!