Our end-of-year Writers’ Mill Zoom meeting was well-attended on Zoom, with one future speaker and one new member joining us. Jim Mockford, February’s speaker, was able to introduce himself, his book, and his website, https://kumquatkids.com/, where the events page lists, among other things, the gentle art of book unmasking and his upcoming talk with us. Don’t miss February’s meeting for more on children’s books, picture books, bilingual books, and innovative promotion ideas!
Judy announced the winners of December’s writing contest: Beginnings and Endings. Third place went to Sheila for My House, second to Jean for Beginnings come to an End, and first to Von for Rebirth. There were lots of really cool entries, and you can still read them if you go to the contest tab on our website: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests We are all really grateful to Judy for keeping these contests going, month after month and year after year.
Upcoming contests can be found at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/january-2021-contest-page/ and https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-2021-contests/ Contest entries go to “contest@portlandwritersmill.org” and are due by the end of the first Sunday of the month, so see what inspires you: January, Dreams, February, Let me Count the Ways, March, Winds of Change, April, The Sea and Me… and don’t forget, your contest entries are always password protected, so you can still get them published elsewhere after receiving feedback from our members. (Current password is DreamsJan21) Also… you can get them published in our annual anthology. Go to amazon.com/author/portlandwritersmill to see our previous works. (Sheila has just tried to add Journeys through Chaos so it should appear there soon!)
This being the “review of the year” meeting, we went on to look (in the green box) at the goals we set for 2020 (all written on cat-decorated pieces of paper). Of course, Covid has changed many plans – one of Sheila’s goals was to get a book into a bookstore, but next year she’s just hoping she might walk into a bookstore herself.
The aim of the “review” is to show how, even when we fail to meet our own goals, we do in fact all achieve someone’s goals, so we’ve all done something well worth celebrating. Here are the goals we celebrated achieving this very strange year, with the number of people present who reached each goal:
- 10 managed to enter most Writers’ Mill contests
- 9 votes in most contests
- 4 Finished writing a book
- 6 Wrote every day
- 2 conducted Interviews for books they are writing
- 4 completed at least one entry in larger writing project
- 10 were Published
- 12 Learned something new
- 3 Undertook research for a new writing project
- 1 got a book into store
- 2 put material for their memoirs together
- 8 produced 12 things they’d be proud to share
- 2 were published outside the writers’ mill
- 4 got portfolios of their writing together
Usually we write our goals for next year (anonymously) on bits of cat-decorated paper and store them in a box. This time it was all a little less anonymous, but we introduced ourselves to each other around the virtual room and Sheila noted down all our goals. She has put them in the green box and we’ll hope to meet physically and read them next Christmas!
Our next task was setting goals for the Writers’ Mill for 2021, and to thank Jean for the fantastic job she does arranging speakers for us. So far, in 2021, we have:
- January: Maren Bradley Anderson from the Timberline Review, who will educate us on the whole submission process for an anthology. Submissions are currently open (till the end of the month) so go to https://willamettewriters.submittable.com/submit and click on Member or Guest submissions for Timberline Review and Kay Snow awards to find more details. The theme is “Time Capsule” to be interpreted however you choose, and there are lots of options. But… please note… there are also VERY CLEAR directions on how your submission must be formatted and, as Maren will explain in January, writers are expected to obey the rules!
- February: Jim Mockford, author of The Kite that Touched the Sky: https://www.amazon.com/Kite-that-Touched-Sky/dp/0692066616 will talk about children’s books, pictures books, multicultural books, bilingual books, the book process and book promotion, including some fascinating promotion ideas.
- March: Cindy Brown’s Novel Writing Workshop!!!!!
- July: Carolyn Martin’s “It happens this way” workshop!!!
But what else should we plan?
We have group critiques scheduled for January (Robin’s poetry, critique leader Catherin) and April (Mary Jane’s poetry, critique leader… TBA) and Matthew is willing to lead a critique in February. Please consider whether you will have something ready for critique by then. Critiques have proven invaluable both to authors and critiquers, as a way to learn how different people read and react to the same pieces of writing.
Other things that were suggested for 2021 included:
- Annual anthology – we have a great group of editors, led by Judy, helping with this, but we need a group of formatters and publishers as well! Maybe we need a formatting and publishing meeting (though we did have one in November… maybe we just need volunteers who could then demonstrate their new skills next November)
- Poetry – many of us could relate to the concept of “not really knowing what we’re doing” when we write poetry. Perhaps a meeting with a poet who would introduce us to the different poetic forms and their rules would be useful, and might encourage us to try new things.
- Writing prompts – for poetry or very short writing. We could incorporate prompts into some meetings, and break into smaller groups to discuss what we’ve written. It’s possible to do this over Zoom.
- Different types of writing, to get us out of our comfort zones: Zita mentioned reverse poetry: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Book-Reverso-Poems/dp/0525479015 where the poem can be read forwards and backwards, and Huffington Post’s limited word-count stories: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/six-word-story_n_5332833 Then we did an exercise in 10-word stories!
- Adapting a fairytale into something else…
- Grammar and all those other things Spellcheck can’t find (and editors can). Can we find a speaker to tell us about them – and to give hints how we can avoid the various pitfalls?
- Homographs (words spelled the same but sounding different and having different meanings – wind blows, and wind up the clockwork toy, for example)
- Homophones (words that are spelled differently but sound the same and have different meanings – to, two, too, for example)
- Homonyms (words that are spelled the same, sound the same, and still have different meanings – like baseball pitchers drinking from a pitcher of water)
- Outdoor activity/inspiration from nature – maybe we should encourage more small groups, like the small critique group that meets on Fridays, or other groups that other members belong to.
- Middle-grade, YA writing, and publishing – we might ask Kate Ristau from Willamette Writers
- Picture books, childrens books, children’s non-fiction: how do you find an illustrator? – maybe invite Ripple Grove Press for a return visit.
- Web sites and social media – Zita did a great website presentation last year!
- How to write through difficult times (Catherin might have a contact – Anna Whiston Donaldson)
- How to write an engrossing memoir, and what might be the legal issues when including real people and photographs
- Getting connected: https://www.pdxplaywrights.org/wp/ is still writing. What other places should we try to connect our writers to – could include real places and online places like Goodreads etc.
With no chance to do a “book exchange” this year, we repeated last year’s “first lines” discussion using the first lines of short stories in books from two other writing groups (run by Sheila’s sister-in-law in England). Then we tried a writing exercise (also inspired by Sheila’s sister-in-law). The aim was to write something so short it could be told in 10 words, and the prompts were provided by Jean’s story dice. So… we wrote our 10-word stories inspired by:
- A magnet (or horseshoe), a fountain and a flashlight
- A keyhole, a magnifying glass and an alien (or a person in a mask)
- The moon, a light bulb, and a credit card (or a letter, or a notepad, or…)
The results were quick, amusing, and great fun to share. So… if you missed the meeting, you missed some good fun, and you really should join us next time!
Sheila has now hidden all our goals in the green box ready for our next “review of the year.” May it be a better year! And thank you all for making the effort to keep attending Writers’ Mill, and to keep our group going through the pandemic! Thanks especially to our favorite librarian, Laura!