With two people at the library and fourteen online, there were sixteen people at August’s Writers’ Mill meeting, where we bemoaned the trials and tribulations of technology, considered the starts and stops of writing and editing, and made plans for this year’s anthology. We’re very grateful to Christine for getting a working setup at the library, despite their technical difficulties, and also to Ron who is continuing to work on fixing the website and newsletter issues. And we hope those attending for the first time will return, despite the technological complications with most of us online. We were delighted to meet you!

Don’t forget, you can always catch up on news by looking on the website! (But we won’t include passwords or zoom links on the website, for obvious reasons.)

Ezines/Contests

MOST VOTES FOR AUGUST

Lyndsay announced results of her “If These Walls Could Talk” contest, which inspired some fascinating writing (including some autobiographical pieces) despite this being the season of outdoor distractions:

• FIRST – Elizabeth Maggio for “The Talisman”
• SECOND – Judy Beaston for the poem “Do You Know Mother’s Stories?”
• THIRD – Gary Romans for “The Ghost Light”

These were the entries that received the most votes in total. Everyone gets the opportunity to vote for their three favorite entries, and, of course, to leave comments, which are much appreciated.

OTHER ENTRIES

• Lyndsay Docherty for “Talking Walls”
• Mary E Joyce for “Chester High”
• Peter Letts for “Echoes From the Past”
• Jessie Collins for “Eventful Years”
• Sheila Deeth for “Kitkit and the Talking Wall”
• Karin Krafft for “The Walls Have Ears”
• Robin Layne for “Turning the Threat Around”

UPCOMING CONTESTS

Word-limit 1,200. Send entries to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces). Up to two entries per member.

September – deadline is midnight, Sunday, September 3 (day before Labor Day holiday)

• THEME—Fall, Falling, Fallen
• Host—Jean Harkin
• SUGGESTIONS—what do the words trigger in your creative mind, visually and action-wise?
• OPTIONAL QUARTERLY OPTIONAL challenge month. Jean’s challenge to us is a new one for many (most?) of us—to try to write as much as possible without verbs! Think that can’t be done?
  • Ernest Hemmingway (maybe) wrote: For sale, baby shoes, never worn.
  • Charles Dickens wrote: London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.
  • Dialog frequently doesn’t include verbs.
  • And the Greeks gave us a name for it: scesis onomaton

October – deadline is midnight, Sunday, October 1^st

• THEME—“Why me…”
• Host—Michael Fryer
• SUGGESTIONS—Consider what might prompt a sentence starting with the theme words.

November—deadline is midnight, Sunday, November 5^th, check UPCOMING CONTESTS—https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-contests/ —in a week or so for more details:

Write, Edit, and Stop

We’re a writers’ group, so it’s safe to assume we all write. But how many of us know when to stop writing? Many of us confessed we’ve been trying to write, planning to write, working off and on, and never quite finishing a beloved project. So what can we do?

Recommendation: There’s something called NaNoWriteMo in November – national novel writing month— https://nanowrimo.org/ . If you’re serious about wanting to finish something, you might challenge yourself to do it this November, this year, or whatever period fits your schedule. You have to commit to a certain number of words or hours per day, for a limited time, which is so much easier than “committing” to write a certain number of words each day till you finish the book. The goal is to write, write, write till you reach the end: No stopping, no looking around, no looking things up, no deviation. It will give you a really bad first draft, but then you can actually STOP and say the first draft is DONE!

Of course, many of us also confessed to having created something which we keep editing and polishing and polishing and editing so that it’s never quite finished.

Recommendation: Remember, as an editor, you’re not trying to create the best piece of work that YOU can produce. You’re trying to polish the best piece of work that someone else produced, even if that someone else is a younger version of yourself. YOU ARE NOT THE AUTHOR. So you polish it and you STOP.

Then there are the ones who stopped writing at some point and are struggling to get restarted.

Recommendation: Keep coming to meetings, keep meeting other writers, and maybe just start small—write a poem or two, a one-page description of something… pretty soon you’ll find yourself writing more.

You can find notes from Sheila’s presentation at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/21/write-edit-and-stop-presentation-by-sheila-deeth-august-2023/

And you can download the presentation from https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Write-Edit-and-Stop-Presentation.pptx

The presentation was especially relevant at the moment as we’re looking for volunteers, including volunteer editors, for the anthology. It was good to see more volunteers joining us when they saw how “invisible” editing works. If you want to join them, email anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces) before September 3^rd.

Sheila’s presentation covered using Styles in Word, and Zita mentioned two books that came out many moons ago:  The Mac is not a Typewriter (https://www.amazon.com/Mac-Not-Typewriter-2nd/dp/0201782634/ ) and The PC is not a Typewriter (https://www.amazon.com/PC-Not-Typewriter-Creating-Professional-Level/dp/0938151495/ ). Main takeaway on this topic – no double spaces at the ends of sentences, no blank lines after paragraphs, and no manual indentation (tabs or spaces) at the start of paragraphs. Word does all this for you, and it can be changed for the whole document with a single click, instead of sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, etc.

Marty asked how indenting paragraphs works when you’re not using Word. It is certainly simpler if you don’t indent them by hand, then the formatter doesn’t need to unindent them later. In Word, the moment you hit “return” you create a new paragraph, but new lines can be created where needed (without paragraph indentation) by hitting “shift return”.

Robin pointed out that when she uploads formatted text to an online program, https://fictionary.co/ , and uses the online editor, the text that she downloads has lost the formatting. This will happen with most online systems. Zita suggests downloading in rtf format (rich text) if possible, then opening the file with Word. Word allows you to import the stylesheet from another Word doc, and this would allow you to recover the Styles that got lost in translation. This means you reinsert the formatting very simply. Alternatively you can cut and paste the downloaded text into a new “clean” Word doc (and import the formatting so you can reformat it).

Anthology

After a short break, we issued a (detailed) call for anthology volunteers:

• Author: You’re all authors. Send entries to anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces) before the end of Sunday Sept 3^rd
• Pre–editor: This is where we “fit” the entries into the “boundaries,” remove tabs and excess spaces, normalize ellipses and emdashes, use Word styles, etc. Sheila usually does this. A “substitute Sheila” could help!
• Editors: We need lots of editors. The more we have, the fewer pieces each will need to edit.
• Artists: We’ll ask you to find/create images for some subset of entries. If you find stuff online, make sure it’s free to use. We need pictures, and every pic needs an attribution!
• Titlers: See https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/help-2/how-to-research-your-title/
• Cover creators: They’ll work closely with (or be the same people as) titlers.
• Playlist builders: Put entries into a smooth reading order.
• Formatter: Zita will do the first pass. Pati, Sheila, and (please) other volunteers will assist
• Uploader: Upload the files to Amazon at November’s meeting!

We discussed the scheduling issues that might arise if Sheila is out of town, bearing in mind her dog- and cat-sitting commitments, travel plans, and health issues. We need an assistant Sheila, so please volunteer if you want to learn how all this is done! Dates to keep in mind:

• Sunday September 3^rd: All entries must have been received at anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces) by the end of the first Sunday in September – same deadline as for September’s contest.
• Sunday September 10^th: Sheila (or an assistant) needs to have the complete file pre-formatted before she leaves for dog-sitting on September 8^th. She asked if the editors would permit her to send them the whole document, with a list of which pieces she would like them to edit, rather than splitting the file into separate pieces. Everyone seemed agreeable. Sheila will see how the time and pre-editing go and do her best.
• Sunday September 24^th: Sheila may be out of town in early October too. This means editors will get two weeks to complete their edits. If you’re an editor, please make sure you will be able to work in the period Sunday September 10^th to Sunday September 24^th.
• Sunday October 15^th: Authors—Sheila (or an assistant) will have one week to send you your edits, before October 1^st. You will have two weeks (to October’s meeting on October 15^th) to agree, disagree, offer alternatives, etc. Artists, playlist creators, titlers etc will need to send in all their artwork, playlists, title etc by October 15^th also.
• Sunday November 5^th: Sheila (or an assistant) will have one week to create a master file (with author-approved edits and images) during the week of October 15^th – 22^nd. Then Sheila and Zita will have two weeks (up to November 5^th) to create the print and ebook files. Zita does a fantastic job of presenting, placing, and formatting images within the file. If this is something you want to learn about, you would need access to Word and a willingness to learn.
• Sunday November 19^th: That will leave two weeks for final checks before we upload the files and put the book for sale on Amazon at our November meeting (November 19^th).

It’s a tight schedule. The more volunteers we have, the better.

Our biggest need at the moment is for an assistant (or clone of) Sheila and more artists, please! If you have artistic grandchildren, friends, etc., we would love to highlight their artwork! Please email anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org (remove spaces) to volunteer!

Writing Exercise

With time available at the end of the meeting, we enjoyed a short writing exercise. Since our next contest/ezine prompt is “Fall, Falling, Fallen,” we tried to combine the ideas of falling with the results of three rolls of the dice, using StoryCubes: https://www.amazon.com/Zygomatic-Rorys-Eco-Blister-Colours-ASMRSC301/dp/B08T5NLF5S/

The dice gave us three sets of prompts. If you need something to inspire you to write quickly (perhaps if you’ve not been writing for a while and want to get restarted), you could try these:

•  A lightning flash, and L plate, and an eye
• An arrow, a fountain, and a hand
• A snowflake, a bridge, and an apartment building

Quick writing during the meeting produced tales of a sorcerer’s fall (from Robin, previewing a later scene in her novel), cyclops, snow, and more, with description, action, and poetry.

And then it was time to close. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you for patience with our many technological issues. A huge welcome to our new members (and please join us again next month – we promise not to always be so disorganized). Finally, please keep checking your emails and the website for Writers’ Mill information.

Dates to Remember

• September 3^rd, deadline for contest/ezine entries: Fall, Falling, Fallen: send to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org
• September 3^rd, deadline for anthology submissions (Yes, you can send the same piece to both!): send to anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org
• September 3^rd, deadline for anthology volunteers. Please volunteer. Send to anthology @ portlandwritersmill . org
• September 15^th, next meeting, when Zita will show us how to create a free website! Don’t miss this. Even if you’re new to writing and nervous of letting your words out into the wild, a website gives you a quiet, safe, comfortable way to practice looking like a writer!

News: Susan Apurado’s poetry book has been released on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changes-Collection-Inspirations-Challenges/dp/B0CCHSJXWQ/ It looks beautiful!

Happy Writing!