Twenty-one people attended the first ever online Writers’ Mill meeting this month, including Sheila’s Mum, from England, and Laura (our wonderful host) from the library. We owe a huge thank you to Laura for providing and monitoring the online Zoom room for us.

Our Zoom experience, prior to the meeting, ranged from absolute beginner to teachers and students with long-term expertise. And afterward? Well, we’re probably all a little better prepared for next month. Things we learned include:

• We will make more use of “chat” next time, so that those whose microphones aren’t working can mute them and still share information. (Someone will have to monitor the chat.)
• We will make more use of “mute” next time, so that Sheila’s typing, chairs shuffling, coffee-cups settling onto tables etc. won’t remove the video focus from the speaker. (This is important for anyone whose sound quality is poor, as the video allows us to read visual cues and understand what is being said.)
• We will explain how to use chat and mute!

Meanwhile our writing experience ranged from a word a day to novels nearing completion, editing jobs, and “writers helping writers” in virtual teaching groups.

Ria, who was social distancing from a far corner of the galaxy (using a Zoom background), demonstrated some wonderful contest awards for April’s Chasing the Rain contest. Peter took first place with his Rotating Ranidae, and will, in time, receive an amazing rotating plot point constructor. In second place Judy received a forever carrier to carry water of wine for Raven’s Quest. And in third place, Sheila’s Kitkit story was honored with a cat-adorned coffee cup cover.

In all the confusion, Sheila forgot to announce the upcoming contests, which have deadlines always at the end of the first Sunday of the month, and wordcount limits of 1200 words. The next contests are:

1. May A peek at the future, be it real, imaginary, or even a time in the past when you (or your character) got a peek at the future
2. June Seasons, of the year, of life, messed up by the virus, or whatever
3. July Coming Together, and who knows, we may be out of quarantine and coming together again by then
4. Peter, as today’s winner, will have the honor of setting the topic for August’s contest, and more information will be given later. Plus you can always find more info on the website at http://portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-2020-contests/ Entries go to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org

Jim’s presentation of ProWritingAid went very well, with major use of Zoom’s screensharing facility. It seemed we could all chip in with comments and suggestions, with everyone muting and unmuting microphones. Perhaps that speaks to the group’s willingness to listen to each other in general. In which case, kudos to all present!

Some members asked how ProWritingAid compares to other writing aids, so, for anyone interested:

• Comparing PWA and Grammarly – I went to https://thedigitalmerchant.com/content-marketing/copywriting/prowritingaid-vs-grammarly-comparison-two-top-grammar-checkers/ but the first paragraph is so awful I couldn’t read the post.
• Better, possibly over-detailed analysis can be found at https://grammargang.com/grammarly-review/prowritingaid-vs-grammarly/
• Then there’s Ginger and Hemmingway!!! This site was good for the comparison: https://kindlepreneur.com/best-proofreading-software/ plus it includes a coupon for 20% off ProWritingAid. I guess the kindle lords must like it.

Clearly Jim also likes it: It functions rather like a critique group, offering suggested improvements to the text in multiple areas. Jim demonstrated various reports and how to use them:

• The summary offers scores, from which the writer can see which things are letting the writing down.
• The menus look fairly easy to navigate, from a top of screen “reports” button, to lists of things to address in a contextual menu down the left hand side. Issues are underlined in different colors, highlighted depending on what you are looking for. In general, red means you really should look at this, while green means it’s fine.
• Style suggestions might complain, for example, about phrases such as “in order to,” “the idea of,” “greatly,” or “in truth.” Corrections, when made (including “omit” if you don’t like its suggestions) remove the text from the list of things to look at.
• If the program doesn’t like your word choice, it will offer various alternatives. You may not like them, and you’re free to choose. A big plus of ProWritingAid is that it encourages you to think about alternatives and look for clearer ways to express what you’re trying to say.
• …ly words are not popular.
• Repeated sentence starts will be highlighted, such as a string of sentences all starting “I…”
• Overused words can be highlighted, and there’s even a thesaurus to find alternatives, but make sure you don’t change quotations or change the meaning of what you were trying to say.
• Overlong sentences will be highlighted (and 35 words might be overlong) – there’s even a readability score.
• And it checks for plagiarism (if you’re using the real, rather than the free version)

What you end up with is a shorter (by about 10%), cleaner manuscript. Then an editor, should you hire one (which Jim says you probably should), can concentrate on major issues like story arc rather than on grammar. Looking at the cost of hiring an editor, compared to the cost of ProWritingAid, this makes it a really good deal.

How long does it take to fix your document, using ProWritingAid? If you take it seriously (and you should) you might spend 3 hours editing 2,000 words.

ProWritingAid integrates well with Word and uses the same shortcuts (Control F for find, etc), making it fairly natural to use.

A list of Jim’s “sticky” words—words to be avoided, or used less frequently—follows:

a, again, all, and, been, Being, by, even, first, for, get, going, take, that, the, this, time, to, took, wanted, was, we’re, what, with

But how do you find “a” in a manuscript? Look for “ a “ (and “^PA “ for paragraphs that start with the word A).

Jim says we should feel free to email questions to him. If you can’t remember your writers’ mill email address (and therefore also Jim’s) please email admin @ portlandwritersmill . org

After a break (we should all remember to have drinks and snacks available next time – Sheila forgot!) Jim led a very lively critique of Norm’s chapter, covering issues such as:

• Setting – time and place, use of description to create scenes, evoke moods, slow down action…
• Characters – voice, style of speech, types of human interaction. The difficulty of giving voices to people who aren’t speaking English, and the value of having characters whose styles of speech are all different.
• Dialog – creating dialog that’s appropriate to the time. Appropriate use of “flowery” dialog. Balance between conveying personality and use corny or generic terms.
• Depth of background, emotion and environment. How more depth of description can increase the emotional intensity by providing a break.
• Speed – how to slow down a romantic scene, adding more description – using description rather than adverbs
• Passage of time – even if the character becomes oblivious to time, maybe there should be a moment where they, like the reader, ponder the implications of its passing
• Show don’t tell – especially in omniscient point of view, while characters are oblivious, the world they are oblivious to can still be described.
• How mixed metaphors can create gentle touches of humor
• Power of a perfect ending.
• How do you choose which tense to write in?
• How do you choose which point of view to write in?

If you want to send your comments to Norm, please use his Portland Writers’ Mill address, or email admin @ portlandwritersmill . org and I’ll send them on.

Our next meeting is May 17^th. Mollie Hunt will be our speaker, talking about changing the world through fiction. Our librarian has offered to host us again, and Mollie is happy to Zoom in with us online. I love Mollie Hunt’s cat mysteries – also her cat fantasies, and the fact that she really does use fiction to “change” things. So join us then to find out how, and we’ll send out more information as time goes on.

If you have some writing ready to be critiqued next month, please email admin, or reply to this email. Norm will lead the critique. But we still need something to be critiqued.

Finally, Ria recommends three books for our reading sanity in these strange times. (If other have suggestions, send them to me and I’ll happily share them.)

• Lessons from Lucy:  The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog by Dave Barry.  Dave had a syndicated column which appeared in various newspapers –remember those — weekly.  I have always enjoyed his observational humor, where he either pokes fun at the human condition or pokes fun at himself and his own idiosyncrasies.  There are passages of this book in which I have laughed out loud.  Several passages. 
• Here For It:  Or How to Save your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas.  Thomas is branded as a humorist, coming from a place of “other” in that he went to a high school that was nearly all-white, wealthy and very suburban.  And of course, he wasn’t any of those things; thus he found himself on the outside looking in and his POV has remained that way.  This book is a collection of essays that has a thread of hope running through it, making it well worth the read.  Plus, it is also brilliant and funny and touching.
• Finally, this historical biography of Virginia Hall is beautifully written by Sonia Purnell who clearly did her homework and gets the story right.  It is entitled A Woman of No Importance:  The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II.

And some writing prompts from the Attic (again with thanks to Ria):

• Monday: Write about jealousy. Also use the word, “never,” four times.
• Tuesday: Write 250 words or more in a single sentence. Begin with the phrase, “It’s not your fault…”
• Wednesday: Write 500 words. Make the last sentence: “Whiskey was better on the other side.”
• Thursday: Select a favorite piece of art. Write about looking at this art piece with your back to it through a mirror on the opposite wall. Bonus: Use the expression, “You don’t have to love me.”
• Friday: Find a flower fallen on the sidewalk. Write about the flower and tell the history of something from your past that you regret.

Looking forward to seeing everyone by Zoom again in May. Meanwhile, many thanks to those who joined us and made this such a fun, successful meeting. And especially, thank you Laura for setting it up.