Around 20 members joined us, online and in person, to watch the release of our 2022 anthology and learn a little more about self-publishing. We think we’re getting the hang of this “hybrid meeting” thing, but please send your suggestions and comments—what worked, what was better, what still doesn’t work—and we’ll do our best to continue to improve.
WEBSITE
Our website is not free, and for many years one member has been providing support and paying over $100 a year to keep it going, which, obviously, is not sustainable. We’re discussing options with the librarians, but we’re also asking you to think about what other options there may be. The site allows us to run monthly contests, with a memorable email address for submissions. It gives us a place to post lots of “how-to” documents, including the notes from today’s meeting. It lets us password protect our writing, so it doesn’t count as having been published. It gives us (those who want it anyway) professional-looking email addresses… what else? We love our website, and we are really really grateful to have been given this for all these years. So thank you, and our thanks to those who are offering to chip in. And… watch this space as we investigate questions of finance and expertise.
CONTESTS
Matthew was the host of our November contest, with a theme of Gratitude, and he announced the results:
- -FIRST Finalist: Gary Romans for “Thank You Mr. Shovelnose!”
- -SECOND Finalist: Clayton M. Davis for “Six Days”
- -THIRD Finalist: Sheila Deeth for “Kitkit Liked Birds”
OTHER ENTRIES:
- A Thankful Heart BY Jessie Collins
- Flow Forward (poem) BY Judy Beaston
- For Four Kind People With Good Vision in the Dark (poem) BY Ruth Leibowitz
- Grateful (poem) BY Lyndsay Docherty
- Not Another Gratitude Reminder, Please. BY Karin Krafft
- Song of Gratitude (poem) BY Judy Beaston
- The Pot-Luck Supper Club BY Peter Letts
UPCOMING CONTESTS:
- December – deadline Sunday, December 4th
- THEME: A Hundred Years From Now
- January – deadline Sunday, January 1st
- THEME: Change – with the optional challenge, if you’re looking to stretch your writing skills, of trying to use mostly dialog (with minimal “he said/she said” tags). You don’t have to undertake the challenge to enter, or to win.
- February – deadline Sunday, February 5th
- THEME: Winter Days
Deadlines are always the end of the first Sunday of the month (hence January’s deadline being January 1st). Rules are up to two entries per person, 1,200 word limit, any genre (just don’t offend)
Information at UPCOMING CONTESTS https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-contests/ on our website.
SELF-PUBLISHING
Many of our members have been published in our anthologies over the years. A goodly number have been published elsewhere, in poetry or fiction magazines, in journals, and more. And a few of us have ventured along the self-publishing path. Sheila confessed that when she first joined the Writers’ Mill she had no interest in self-publishing. So if you’re feeling that way, you’re in good company. Self-publishing does take time—time you might prefer to spend writing. But it’s not as difficult as it looks, and Sheila’s presentation on “How to Grow Your Book” should give us all some idea of how to go about it. Go to https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/GROW-YOUR-OWN-BOOK.pptx to download the Powerpoint presentation, or click on https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/21/how-to-grow-your-book-presentation-by-sheila-deeth-20221120/ to view notes from the talk on our website.
MILLWORKS – FRAMING LIFE
During the course of her talk, Sheila self-published our 2022 anthology, entitled Millworks Framing Life, to Amazon. The ebook is already available for purchase at https://www.amazon.com/Millworks-Framing-Life-Writers-Journal-ebook/dp/B0BMZLM577/ and we hope the print book will soon follow.
Sheila explained that she couldn’t list all the authors in the book definition on Amazon, but she did list them in the book description, and she gave instructions for how to claim the book for your Amazon author page. See notes from her talk to see details.
Members were able to discuss and vote about whether to have a matte or glossy cover. With votes running neck and neck, Sheila cast a deciding ballot for matte, so she’s the one to blame.
Members were asked to help with the final stage of proofing the book. One member confirmed the ISBN was correct inside the book. Others checked the page numbers from the contents list. Others looked for stray white-space (checking in case any blank lines had crept in through the formatting). And others looked at headers and footers, headings, etc. It was a chance for everyone to see the amazing job Zita has done for us, adding lots of fantastic pictures, and formatting them beautifully. Thank you Zita.
Then we all got to see what happens when the computer crashes in the middle of the process (Sheila’s computer ran out of power), and how to fix a complaint from Amazon that a picture was too close to the edge of the page.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Sheila has paid to have a table at the Oak Hills Holiday Bazaar, December 2nd and 3rd (at the Oak Hills rec center, near the corner of 153rd and Cornell). If any of you have been published—your own books and zines, or your entries in anthologies, journals, etc—and would like to sell your books, feel free to bring them along and join her for whatever time works for you. Sheila can’t offer to price and store your books, and (according to the rules of the bazaar) we can’t sell books that don’t include you as one of the authors.
Our next writing deadline is December 4th, for your “A Hundred Years from Now” contest entries. Send them to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces).
NEXT MEETING
Our next meeting will be hybrid again. Sheila will send out a zoom link in the week before the meeting. If you don’t see it, check your SPAM folders. And if you still can’t find it, contact the library. (They need 24hours to respond to your emails, so contact them BEFORE the meeting date—December 18th.)
December’s meeting is when we celebrate the year’s achievements and set goals for the upcoming year. Go to https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/schedule/ to see what topics were covered this year (and what topics were suggested—as you’ll see, with only twelve months to a year, we can’t cover everything!). We will set personal and group goals for 2023 during this meeting, and we plan to have a group critique as well.
For anyone hoping to be critiqued within a group meeting, please email critique @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces). And for anyone who would prefer to join a small critique group—these usually require a fairly regular commitment to join with others in sharing and critiquing each other’s work—please email groups @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces).