Writers’ Mill Minutes June 19 2022
Around 20 members joined us for June’s Fathers’ Day meeting, and enjoyed a fun, interactive session on the history and evolution of the English Language, led by Lyndsay. Sheila opened the meeting with the contest results, and forgot to point out that the variation in voting—in the past we’ve asked for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, but his time we just asked for your three favorites. We’re delighted to announce the outcome was identical between total votes cast per entry AND weighing them as if cast for 1st/2nd/3rd… So perhaps that’s a good way to go, with places used as tie-breaks if needed. And thank you to the 15 people who supported these writers by voting:
Contests
Sheila announced the results of the Dreams and Aspirations contest
- FIRST — most votes received — Von Pelot for
“Appalachian Aspirations” - SECOND — next most votes received — David
Fryer for “Perfect Attendance Award” - THIRD — next most votes received — Judy
Beaston for “Fan of the Written Word”
Other entries (you can still read and leave comments online – check your emails for the password) were:
- “The new pet” by Sheila Deeth
- “Dear Husband” (poem) by Robin Skinner
- “Fulfilling a Dream” (poem) by Jessie
Collins - “In the Town: Reverse Aspirations” by
Robin Layne - “Lurpoined Petters (sic)” by Gary
Romans - “Perchance to Dream” by Lyndsay
Docherty - “Picture This” by Judy Beaston
- “Selection” by Peter Letts
- “Staircases to Nowhere” by Zita Podany
- “The Shortcut” by Joanne DeHaan
One contest entrant commented, “Thanks for the theme. I was excited to have been inspired. My aim is to keep fanning the spark that brought those inspirations into life form.” So be inspired, fan your writing sparks, and enter our upcoming contests (1,200 word limit but a three-line poem or half a chapter of your current work in process are also perfectly good entries if the fit the theme; send entries to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org):
- July, only time will tell – https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/july-2022-contest-page/
- August, a gardeners tale or “Too many
zucchinis!” (For our UK members, think courgettes) – https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-contests/ - September, POV choices – a fascinating one that
asks us to think of something non-human (animal, vegetable, mineral, alien,
supernatural etc) and ponder “the worst thing about being… is…”)
Von will choose our topic for October.
Speaker
At this point Lyndsay, an excellent artist, musician, writer and teacher, led us in a tour of our shared US/UK language.
As the theme of this discussion was mostly historical & decidedly Shakespearian later on, our gentlemen were elevated to the NOBLE LORDS team and the Ladies (surely already “fair” in every way) became the FAIR LADIES team! At stake was the prestigious ‘PORTLAND CUP’ which Sheila awarded to one team at the end of our session!
The gentlemen (a rather smaller team than the ladies) looked set to win from the start, as Matthew proved fast on the buzzer and superbly well-informed on the history. But Jessie slipped in a few clear answers (including 1066) and spurred the ladies forward, closely followed by Robin proving ready and willing to speak up, and Pati delivering an excellent rendition of a short Shakespeare piece. Pronunciation of English and Scottish place names tripped many of us up, with the Fair Ladies proving persistent and brave, while Peter, for the Noble Lords, revealed a certain small advantage. In the end, the men looked like clear winners except for one final challenge, which was worth a whole 5 points. Robin won with her word “zombulated,” made up in the manner of Shakespeare and getting the clearest approval rating from the assembled faces on zoom. Other words were
- Tanniner for red wine with more tannin
- Overzoomed for that feeling after too many zoom
meetings - Kafter for looking after someone
- Birdishly for that manner that reminds one of a
bird - And others that Sheila failed to write down
(email them in and she will add them to the minutes on the website.
Final scores were 43 to the Noble Lords and 44 to the Fair Ladies! And an enjoyable time was had by all – see notes below for details.
Anthology
Then we looked at one particular use we have for our writing talents, our annual anthology, for which we need plans and volunteers. Two deadlines we need to note:
- End of first Sunday in September (coincides with
deadline for September’s contest) deadline for written entries. - Third Sunday in November, the great unveiling
and release on Amazon kdp takes place during the meeting.
Of course, lots of stuff has to happen both before and in between those dates.
- writers – we’re all writers, but what do you want to get published this year? Start sending submissions to anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org and…
- include your name, your email, and a few key-words with the heading to your entry.
- E.g. For a “Kitkit looks at the moon” story, I might include key-words “Cat,” “Moon,” “tree at night,” etc.
- stylists – can you use Word style to turn entries written in different formats all agree with each other? We will need someone to compile all the entries into one (really big) file and set formats that are consistent throughout. For useful information on how this is done, see:
- editors – can you apply some basic rules and interface with authors to fix typos, confusing paragraphs, etc? Edits will interact with the authors (using those email addresses, above) to get approval for changes. We can easily send the big file to several people, with instructions to edit certain entries, so the more the merrier.
- illustrators – do you have a great library of photos that we can use to illustrate our book (including the cover illustration)?
- Zita has a google drive that we can upload files to. She is willing to show how that is done for anyone who’s unsure. She suggests adding information about the image to a shared google doc (again, she can show us all how) where the attribution can be given, together with key-words (see above) that will help us match images to written entries.
- titlers – do you know how to tell what book title is more likely to attract readers? Are you willing to learn, and practice what you’ve learned?
- Cover creators – if you have the software and the knowhow, it would be great to have a sophisticated cover. But we can always use Amazon’s cover creator during the November meeting if we need to.
- play-list creators – This one’s almost as important as Zita’s job. How would you put all the entries into a well-coordinated list? Do your talents lie there? It’s easy in Word – just use those links above to see how. You would be given the unedited file to work with as you plan how you want it to look, then you would move the entries around to match in the edited file.
- Formatter – this one is Zita. She did a fantastic job last year, just using word. This year, using more sophisticated software… well, this could be our best anthology ever!
- uploader – We’ll upload the anthology to Amazon KDP at November’s meeting. Do you want to be the person pushing the magic buttons? If you’re thinking of self-publishing anytime soon, this is the perfect way to try it out.
We discussed whether we should split the anthology into sections, requiring entries to be sent to particular sections. But we’ve decided to leave the topics open – no sections; just send us your best writing, and the play-list creator will make it all fit together.
We didn’t discuss how many people we need for each job. Please just think about what you would like to do, follow those links to find out how to do those things, and volunteer!
Our next meeting is our Mystery Month meeting, with David Porter speaking about the art of writing a real-life mystery. There may even be a mystery-writing exercise! It will be on Zoom again, so watch your email (and your spam folders) for the link. July 17th – hope to see you there.
Meanwhile
Happy Writing!