anthology, Book design, Editing, Minutes, self-publishing, Writing

Writers Mill Minutes 202408

Leave a comment

Housekeeping

Writers’ Mill had 10 attendees in-person and 7 on Zoom for a total of 17 at our August meeting. Sheila started the meeting with the usual boring reminders: For online members:

  • Consider using speaker view (top right)
  • Use captions (bottom center, or find it under the three dots – “more” – at the bottom)
  • Headphones will increase the volume a lot
  • Chat (bottom center, or hidden behind those three dots) is a good way to leave comments that we will try to notice in the room
  • When the screen is shared, might want to change the “view” option to “side by side” so the images of people don’t hide the screen.
  • Remember to mute the microphone if your room gets noisy.

For inperson members:

  • Speak toward the mic so you can be heard clearly
  • Try not to talk among yourselves as you will still be heard by everyone, just not very clearly.

Website

Sheila showed how the various pages on the website work, for anyone not familiar with them. Find pages by clicking the links in the top (black and green) bar on a PC, or by clicking on the three lines (hamburger) on a phone:

August ezine

Judy announced which “scheming” entries proved most popular in this month’s contest

  • MOST VOTES:  Lyndsay Docherty for the poem Two Men And a River
  • SECOND: Gary Romans for Meatloaf, Not Meat Loaf
  • THIRD: Mary Baylor for Aunt Violet’s Funeral

Other entries were:

  • Karin Krafft – Eliminating the Competition
  • Peter Letts – Gold Digger
  • Judy Beaston – His Obituary AND the poem Puzzled No More
  • Jessie Collins – Keeping Things Quiet
  • Sheila Deeth Kitkit’s Clever Plan
  • Rachel Baker Mischief, Lord of the Void

Upcoming writing prompts

Deadlines are the end of the 1st Sunday of the month – usually 2 weeks after our meeting. WORDCOUNT LIMIT as short as you like, but no more than 1,200 words. Any genre – just don’t deliberately offend people!

SEPTEMBER – Deadline September 1st !  THEME Telling Your Self the Truth OR Telling Yourself the Truth – subtle shift but thinking of both might spark additional ideas! HOST Robin Layne. CHALLENGE (optional – we have an optional challenge once every 3 months) incorporate an abundance of dialog and/or sensory details

OCTOBER – Deadline October 6th. THEME It Came To Life! HOST: Lyndsay Docherty. “IT” could be an idea, a goal, an item, a situation, animate or inanimate.

NOVEMBER – Deadline November 3rd. THEME On the Other Side of the World. HOST: David Fryer. Where you live, where others live, where you travel, where events are happening—or NOT happening…

Find out more at: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-contests/

That Template File

Sheila updated us on this year’s anthology. The deadline for submissions has passed, and the hard work of turning submissions into a book has just begun.

Last year, someone recommended that Sheila create a template file that could be used for subsequent anthologies, so she did. It’s a Word Doc rather than a template, and she included (chapters of) instructions on how to use it, in hopes that perhaps someone will take over from her and “use” it next year! The template should also be helpful for anyone who hopes to self-publish their work in a 6×9 inch book.

Sheila has uploaded the template to our website. You can find it here: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PREFORMATTED-TEMPLATE-FOR-JOURNALS.docx

Going through the pages of the file, Sheila pointed out:

  • The copyright page is a “left-facing” page, immediately behind the title.
  • A second title page, facing the copyright page, is a good place to put a blurb.
  • The template includes a contents list, so you should be able to find things in it.
  • There’s a “chapter” on useful things that are preset in the template file:
    • Layout – Sheila showed how to change margins, position text in the middle of a page, assign space for headers and footers, etc.
    • Styles – Sheila reminded us that using styles (for example, making all your “text” be “normal” and your headings be “heading 2”) means you can change everything in the document at once. Change the font of the “normal” style, and everything in normal changes at once. So does everything based on normal – this template includes “leftpoem” and “centerpoem” styles for poems aligned with the left margin, and poems that are centered on the page.
    • Sections – clicking on the “backwards P” on the “home” tab shows you a lot of formatting information. You can add sections using breaks on the layout tab. You can use sections to separate the manuscript from the “front matter” (title and contents) so that page numbers start in the right place.
    • Headers and Footers – and page numbers, etc.
  • The next chapter tells you how to insert the submissions for the journal (found in emails). A lot of cutting and pasting is involved. If you are inserting your manuscript into this template, you will need to lots of cutting and pasting too.
  • Then comes ordering the entries, using the navigation pane. If you’re creating a book of poetry or short stories (or an anthology) this allows you to move the pieces around and reorder them without any cutting and pasting!
  • Pre-edits are where you
    • remove those stray tabs, double-spaces, blank lines between paragraphs etc.
    • fix em- and en-dashes, ellipses, straight quotes
    • deal with those accidental unbreakable spaces and manual line-ends
    • and so on. Sheila has been dealing with these as she added the submissions to the file.
  • Invisible edits
    • If you are ready to self-publish, this is the point where you STOP changing things. All your edits from this point on should be invisible – fixing typos, clarifying confusion, adding commas, etc
    • And if you are one of our anthology editors, your edits should assume the submissions were ready to be published, and your edits should be invisible.
  • Formatting: The file contains some useful hints for anyone trying to format their file for publication. Many thanks to Pati for teaching Sheila a lot of this.

Anthology Editors

We had five editors before the meeting, six afterward. Sheila will send the file to all the editors (with their editing assignments) by the end of Monday. Anyone else volunteering to edit needs to contact her (admin @ portlandwritersmill . org, or anthology @ … etc) before then.

Sheila will send a Word doc, with track changes locked on. Your edits will appear in bright colors in the text. Don’t worry. That’s how Sheila will find them and transfer them to the master doc. Anything that’s not an obvious typo should have a comment attached (“add comment” under the “review” tab) so Sheila can communicate with the author.

Deadlines

  1. Release date is November 17th during our November meeting. If you are interested in self-publishing, be sure to join us in November and watch how it’s done. It’s really not that hard!
  2. The authors need time to read the final doc and confirm it’s all okay. So, DEADLINE for format completion is end of 1st Sunday in November, Nov 4th Then Sheila will upload the file so we can all (and should all) check it.
  3. After some discussion, we agreed we need 2 weekends for formatting, which gives us a DEADLINE for final file creation at the end of Thursday, October 17th (just before October’s meeting). Sheila will share the file with Zita and any other formatters on Friday.
  4. Sheila will be on vacation, September 16 – October 8. This gives her just over a week to finalize the master file, completing all the (approved) edits, reordering the file, and inserting all the illustrations, so DEADLINE for all stuff to get to Sheila is Tuesday October 8th, (just after the first Sunday in October)
  5. Sheila needs to email any debatable edits to authors, and get their responses before her vacation, so DEADLINE for author responses is end of Sunday September 15 (September’s meeting).
  6. Authors agreed they could respond quickly, so DEADLINE for Sheila to send edits to authors is Monday September 9.
  7. Which means  DEADLINE for editors to complete their task is end of 2nd Sunday in September (Sept 8), giving Sheila one week to implement the edits in the master file. But sooner would be great!

Other volunteers and deadlines:

  • DEADLINE for illustrations is October 8. Norma is taking charge of them. If things fall through with the school, she will contact Matthew and Ria for assistance.
  • DEADLINE for title is October 8.
  • DEADLINE for ordering the entries is October 8.
  • DEADLINE for blurb is October 8.
  • DEADLINE for cover image is Oct 18 (needed for ebook formatting) We hope to ask Jean’s granddaughter for a cover image again this year.

So, if you want to join in with editing, titling, ordering etc. please contact us asap!

Willamette Writers

Ria shared a fascinating report on this year’s Willamette Writers’ Conference, a 4-day event held at the end of July/beginning of August every year. Closer to the event, an online calendar tells you who all the speakers will be, what agents and publishers will be there for you to pitch to, and what classes will be offered. People (non-members pay more) can then sign up for online or inperson attendance, for one or two particular days or for the whole event. This year, inperson attendees could even get photographs taken for publicity or the back of a book, etc.

Find out more about Willamette Writers at https://willamettewriters.org/. Anyone can attend their meetings. There are local meetings every month, some in person, some on zoom, some hybrid. Find out more by looking at their calendar of events at https://willamettewriters.org/events/

One of the workshops was given by Eric Witchey, who spoke with us in May. Find his schedule and links to sign up for his classes at https://ericwitchey.com/index.html

Embrace the Obstacles

Ria found Jess Walter’s talk particularly helpful. (Find him at https://www.jesswalter.com/ ) He spoke about how writers put up obstacles:

  • I’m too old / too young
  • I’m too busy
  • I’m a failure
  • I’ll never succeed the way s/he did…

He advised that we should embrace our obstacles as part of our writing journey. Failure is the way you get better. Nothing happens all at once. Write every day. Release your envy and jealousy and instead celebrate others’ successes. Emphasize the positive. Recognize the confluence of challenge and success – ride the wave! Never stop. And don’t over-revise as you strive for “perfection”. At 19, poor and with a child to care for, he wanted to write something beautiful – maybe like 100 years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. According to his daughter, he just might have done it.

Whatever is going on in our lives is part of our writing journey.

What’s going on in our (writing) lives

Sheila went around the room (real and virtual) asking everyone four questions:

  • Who are you?
  • What do you write?
  • What can Writers’ Mill do for you?
  • What can you do for Writers’ Mill?

The results were fascinating. We include in our number indie-published and self-published authors, writers who just want to write for themselves, and writers just beginning to dream. Former journalists, writers for computer magazines and scientific journals, and hobby writers bring different skill sets and dreams. Some have found and love critique groups. Others are looking for them (maybe use that contact us page on the website).

Some of us have been writing since childhood. Others claim to have failed at writing since childhood! Some started writing because they had a story to tell. Others wanted to try fiction after a life of facts. And others just like writing.

Members are writing poetry, fiction, YA fiction, memoir, short stories, humor (maybe even political humor), sci fi, diaries, historical fiction, school curricula, spy stories, and more. Some have been to other writing groups and bring new ideas (such as more writing prompts, and maybe postcards), and new concerns. Some have attended writing workshops – even courses on art – and some are just writing comfortably from home. We hope you all feel comfortable and encouraged in our group – no commitment required; come when you want; enter contests when you want; help or don’t help, whatever works for you.

Of note at the meeting were Jean, who arranges speakers for us, Ron who created our website, Judy who organizes the ezine/contests, Sheila who does “stuff”, Matthew who controls our camera… Jean’s novel will be republished soon, and Sheila’s next Bible-story book might be published soon as well… maybe. Life gets in the way, and Jess Walter would doubtless say we should embrace the obstacles.

Next Meeting

Nancy Linnon will lead a long-awaited workshop at our next meeting. Don’t miss it! We last saw her back in 2017 (https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/27/mining-your-life-story-notes-from-nancy-linnons-talk-march-2017/) telling us how to mine our life’s story (is that embracing the obstacles?) for stories, and we’re thrilled that she’s returning. Sunday September 15th, 1-3 pm, with the same zoom address as usual.

Please can someone take minutes then! Sheila needs the help!  Thanks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *