Twelve people attended December’s Writers’ Mill meeting—perhaps the number was low due to Holiday commitments. But those who missed it missed a fun time.
The meeting began with the usual reminders: Online members can use headphones, captions, speaker view, and chat to better hear what’s going on, and should mute their microphones when it’s noisy. In person members should face the microphone, avoid chatting, and remember the microphone is always listening!
December’s Ezine
Lyndsay gave the prompt for December’s amazing ezine (https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/dec-2024-ezine-contest-page/dec-2024-entries-voting-page/), which produced a kaleidoscope of high-quality pieces of writing. Most popular were:
- First: Mary, with Diamondback Blues (a piece worthy of comparison with the greats)
- Second: Von with Spaces between Us
- Third: Gary with Zozo’s Zircle, and Karin with Existing in the In Between
Other submissions were:
- Robin wrote “A Legacy of John Lennon, Julian Lennon…and Me”
- Judy wrote the poem: “Follow the Butterflies”
– AND the story: “Spaces: Yours, Mine, Theirs” - Sheila wrote the poem: “The Space Between”
— AND the story: “Kitten in a Suitcase” - Matthew wrote “Max and Patty’s Space Adventure: Episode IV: Part 2”
- Barbara B wrote “My New Superpower”
- Peter wrote “The Scale of Things”
- Jessie wrote “Thinking Deeply of Those Spaces in Between”
- AND, of course, the essay from Lyndsay: “The Spaces Inbetween, A Personal View”
Upcoming ezine writing prompts
deadline end of first Sunday in the moth, 6-1,200 words (we do have to have a max), any genre, send entries to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org:
- Jan – Gary –Deadline, Sunday, January 5th, what if the other person won (and no, it doesn’t have to be political)
- Feb – Ric – Deadline Sunday, February 2nd, they were the perfect couple but…
- Mar – Karin – Deadline, Sunday, March 2nd, embrace the unknown
Applauding Achievements
One Writers’ Mill achievement of the last year, worth mentioning, is the morphing of our monthly contests into monthly ezines. Sheila confessed to finding it much easier to select her favorite entries in an ezine, rather than trying to judge which pieces of writing were best. We hope everyone else is enjoying the (free) ezines and maybe feels equally freed to “cast their votes”.
Then came a list of our personal achievements: Sheila showed us the “magic box” which was made by the mother of the founder of Writers’ Mill. The box has stood the test of time, and is filled each year with our goals for the year, all written on attractive cat-themed pieces of paper. While very few of us can remember what goals we set, it’s always fun to find that every one of us has met at least one of somebody’s goals, meaning we’ve all achieved something worth celebrating. This year’s goals (and number of members who met them) were:
- Self publish something 2
- Continue writing a novel 5
- Get an illustrator 2 (Ric confessed he knows illustrators!)
- Enter more contests 1
- Finish a novel 2
- Find an agent ½ (making plans to find an agent counts!)
- Work in more than one genre 9
- Enter all monthly contests 3
- Republish a novel 1
- Place 1st, 2nd or 3rd in a contest 8
- Bring memoir up to date 2
- Improve their writing 7
- Work on show don’t tell 6
- Get my characters out of hiding 1
- Connect stories into a plot 2
- Work with an editor 3
- Work on POV 2 ½
- Work on freebies to advertise a book 1 (this might include bookmarks, business cards etc)
- Finish more books or stories in a series 2
- Work on a fantasy 2
- Work on a YA dystopian novel 1
- Working on research for a historical novel 2
- Write poetry 6
- Write a children’s book 4
In person members wrote their goals for 2025 on more cat-themed pieces of paper which were folded and placed in the box. Online members were invited to put them in the chat, and ALL OF YOU are invited to email your goals, in response to these minutes, so Sheila can add them to the box for the end of the year.
Book Exchange
While goals being noted, Sheila began the annual Holiday Book Exchange. In an effort to include online members, who, of course, weren’t able to “bring a book, take a book”, Sheila read book blurbs and asked what sort of book each one might be, and who might be interested in reading it. Hopefully we were all able to get some idea of how back cover blurbs succeed or fail in attracting the right reader for a book.
Greatest Achievement / Greatest Regret
We went around the tables (real and virtual) sharing our greatest writing achievements and writing regrets of the year, causes and effects. Quite a number of us confessed to regretting how little writing we had done, though Ric is an inspiration to us all, having successfully written “something” 5 days a week! Causes for not writing included surgery, grandchildren, and life intervening. Achievements included books released and rereleased, foreign language study, the joy of writing things of which we can be particularly proud (even more so when children Lyndsay taught—now grown up—come and tell her how much they enjoyed and were influenced by things she wrote). And we all related to the general ups and down of life and writing. Hopefully 2025 will be a year of many “ups”.
Best Writers’ Mill Memory
Our favorite Writers’ Mill speakers of the year was Eric Witchey, who even encouraged Ria to take his class at Willamette Writers, closely followed by Alan and Hilary with their team-talk on agents and publishing. We agreed that we have had many really great speakers and we look forward to more in 2025, with especial thanks to Jean who organizes these.
Writers’ Mill Goals for 2025
We used “show of hands” to determine the genres we most to learn more about?
- Scifi 9
- Children’s fic 8
- Historical 7
- Mystery 5
- Humor 5
- Series 5
- YA 4
- Real people in fiction 3
Moving on to writing skills we would like to work on
- Short-form fiction 9
- Self-editing 7
- Word choice 5
- Character 4
- Grammar 3
- Plot 3
- Narrative voice / POV 3
- How to work with an illustrator
Topics in getting published:
- How and where to publish short stories 7
- Agents and publishers and how to find them, including submission tools 4
Ria took an intriguing class on finding inspiration, humor and plot in a newspaper article, and will share that in a workshop class at a future date.
We mostly use Word for writing, and we discussed how including some of the formatting options in Word can improve our use of “white space”. However, other programs might provide better formatting, and there’s an interest in learning more about a fairly new (free) one, Draft2Digital. Jean will see if she can ask someone to speak on this. There would also be some interest in learning more about editing programs (Word’s Editor, Grammarly etc) and we discussed how they are AI tools, but don’t create material and therefore don’t break the Amazon rules.
Writing and Critiques
There is still some interest in having a half-hour group critique of a particular piece of work (e.g. the long-awaited next chapter of Matthew’s Alice novel). Sheila can arrange this when she knows that the speaker will only want the first half of the meeting. Anyone wanting a group critique of this type should email critiques @ portlandwritersmill . org(or just email admin).
As an alternative to formal critiques, several members expressed interest in bringing along something they’re working on: a “let’s talk about your story” kind of session (again, around half an hour, but shared between whoever brings anything). Those interested would bring a story they’re working on ask about ideas for a scene, dialog, etc. or maybe read a very short portion and ask if it’s clear, fits the audience, etc. This could be scheduled, or you could just bring something along to meetings on the offchance of their being time at the end.
Sheila has generally come up with a “writing prompt” to fill in extra time at the ends of meetings. This option could alternate with “let’s talk about your story” sessions.
Writing Prompt
Since we had time at the end of the meeting and nothing requiring critique, Sheila reminded us of January’s prompt (What if the other one won) and rolled the story dice:
- A fish (shark?), lightbulb and tortoise (turtle) could inspire a shark and the turtle story to parallel the hare and the tortoise. We discussed the possibility of an electri8c fish, and alien fishers fishing at depth.
- A sad face (this character didn’t win), a pyramid and a magnet could inspire a story of metal detection at the last pyramid
- A flashlight, a walking cane, and a bridge over (troubled?) water could provide a good location and time for a story (darkness, riverbank…)
Challenged to use any or all of these, our members created a great selection of tales. Matthew and Sheila tried to use all the images. Archeology, magnetic personalities, and more abounded, and there should be some great submissions for January’s ezine.
Dates to Remember
- Sunday Jan 5th – safely past all the celebrations, but please don’t forget to write. This is the deadline for January’s ezine, with the topic “What if the other person won”
- Sunday Jan 19th – Erika Giles will be the speaker at our next meeting. An occasional member of Writers’ Mill, she’s the author of Becoming Hungarian: A Memoir described on Amazon as “a fascinating story of resilience and discovery, will inspire anyone who has struggled with their identity and tried to come to terms with the past.” Erika worked with a publishing consultant and book designer to self-publish her book on Amazon in early 2024, and will share her experiences with us all. Nora has kindly volunteered to lead the meeting as Sheila will be in England.