All posts by Meeting admin
Writers’ Mill Minutes September 2020
September’s Writers’ Mill meeting was well-attended with around 24 members sharing space in the Zoom Room provided by Laura at Cedar Mill library. We enjoyed a particularly good speaker, Erick Mertz, announced contests, discussed the anthology, and generally had a very successful time. If you missed the meeting, do try to join next time.
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes September 2020The Joys of Title Research
So… our Challenges anthology is nearing completion, but still needs a title. You’ve seen the suggestions. You’ve sent in your votes. You’ve help me prune the tree of possible keywords. So now…
- Top votes went to the title, Journey Through Chaos.
- Top keyword choices went to Apart and Together, with Quirky and Challenges a close second.
- Any my personal favorites (’cause if I’m spending all this time, I might as well research my own choices too) were Waiting for Tomorrow and Waiting for Locusts.
Read on to learn what comes next…
Continue reading The Joys of Title ResearchChallenges Anthology Title
We have a fantastic cover image, and we want a fantastic cover to go with it. To which end, we need to be able to create the cover well before November’s meeting, so… we need a title.
The numbers in brackets indicate the number of people who have voted for each particular title. But what we’re voting on now is “sets of titles.” and the numbers in each header indicate how many votes each “set” has received – not the same as how many votes titles within the set have received. Once we’ve chosen a winning set (or a couple of sets), Sheila will research variations on the titles, starting with the one that received most votes in the set, to see which titles work – e.g. which titles might be found by people looking for literary anthologies, which are only going to be seen by people seeking self-help books, and which point are found by people planning camping trips, etc. So… please look at the sets of titles below, and email admin with your favorites.
Also, please note, I’ve added a new “set” as more suggestions have come in. If you want to change your vote, just let me know!
Suggested title-sets so far (with numbers of votes so far):
- Challenge 8
- Challenging Times (1)
- Change and Challenge (2)
- Writing through Challenging Times (1)
- Challenging Moments, Threads of Hope (4)
- Challenges Outside the Gate (1)
- Apart and Together 10
- Coming Together, Falling apart (2)
- Coming Together in a Time of Falling Apart (4)
- Falling Apart – Coming Together (3)
- Falling Apart Together (2)
- Coming Together While Falling Apart (1)
- Journeys and Ways 6
- Finding Our Way Through Chaos (1)
- Making Our Way Through Chaos (1)
- Finding Our Way (3)
- Journey Through Chaos (7)
- Journeys Through Chaos (3)
- Our Heroes’ Journeys (1)
- Journey into the Sun (2)
- Journeys Beyond Chaos (2)
- Tribulations 1
- Word Tribulations (1)
- Trials and Tribu-Words (1)
- Tribulations and Unity (1)
- Waiting 5
- Waiting for the Smoke to Clear (4)
- Waiting for Locusts (4)
- Waiting While the World Falls Apart (1)
- Waiting for Tomorrow (1)
- Waiting for 2021 (1)
- Waiting for the Vaccine (1)
- Quirky 8
- Weaving with Stones (2)
- Everything but the Locusts (3)
- We’re Zoomed! We’re All Zoomed! (4)
- Doom, Gloom and Zoom (1)
- The Moon is a Friend (1)
- Gravitating to Wholeness (2)
Comments made on these titles:
- Might be nice to end the title on a positive note
- Journeys plural represents all our journeys
- Journey echoes the writing idea of the hero’s journey, and we’re all heroes
- Waiting for Tomorrow fits with Beyond Yesterday from last year
Please add your comments and suggestions in the comments!
Challenges Anthology Update
New deadlines:
End of third Sunday in September (midnight tonight!):
- All submissions must be received at anthology @ portlandwritersmill.org
- If you want space for an image in your entry, a placeholder image (even if it’s not the final image) together with the name of the submission it goes with, must be received by anthology @ portlandwritersmill.org
- Sheila will upload a “first draft” to the website for authors and members to read at the beginning of the following week (watch this space!)
By the end of the first Sunday in October (next contest deadline)
- Title will have been chosen (watch this space!)
- Final images will have been received – send them to anthology @ porlandwritersmill.org
- First draft edits will be complete.
- Judy, Catherin, Jean and Sheila would love to welcome additional editors. Email admin @ portlandwritersmill.org to volunteer.
- Sheila will incorporate editors’ changes and upload the “author draft” to the website for authors and members at the beginning of the following week.
By the end of the third Sunday in October (next meeting day)
- Authors will have proofread their own and adjacent entries and sent all edits to Sheila
- Authors will have sent any requests to Sheila for small changes to their entries (small changes only!)
- Final images will have been received and included
- Sheila will incorporate all these changes and upload the “final draft” to the website at the beginning of the following week.
By the end of the first Sunday in November (next contest deadline)
- Members will have reported any typos in the final draft and Sheila will have fixed them
- Sheila will have calculated the final “author plus postage” price per copy
- Members will have decided how many print copies they will want and will start sending checks in payment.
- Email admin @ portlandwritersmill.org to find out where to send such checks and how to make them out
At November’s meeting
- Sheila will demo how to upload a book to Amazon, for kindle and print copies.
- Sheila will demo Amazon’s cover creator and also how to upload a real cover, created elsewhere.
- Sheila will make the order for copies as soon as Amazon approves the uploads.
At December’s meeting
- With any luck, everyone will have been able to pick up their entries
- We’ll celebrate a job well done and tell all our friends to buy our book!
Graphic Novels, Inspiration, Creation, Publication and Marketing with Erik Nebel, August 2020
Did you miss the talk? You missed a fantastic presentation from Erik Nebel, but now you can watch it again in the comfort of your living room. Just go to https://wccls.bibliocommons.com/list/share/1251989147_cedarmill_markr/1707540549_local_cartoonist_erik_nebel and find a links to the video, and to all Erik’s books, including the beautiful Well Come.
Writers’ Mill Minutes August 2020
This month’s speaker was Erik Nebel, whose first book of comics was published in 2014 by Yeti Press. Erik’s work has appeared in Best American Comics 2015 and Best American Comics 2019. Most recently, Erik finished work on a graphic novel adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel, WAR AND PEACE. Find Erik at OUR LIBRARY at https://wccls.bibliocommons.com/v2/search?query=erik+nebel&searchType=smart
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes August 2020Mystery Workshop with Cindy Brown July 19th 2020
Mystery Workshop with Cindy Brown
Writing Character-Based Mysteries
Cindy Brown
cindybrownwriter.com
info@cindybrownwriter.com
Books: Macdeath, The Sound of Murder, Oliver Twisted, Ivy Get Your Gun, The Phantom of Oz, Killalot, Murder Most Theatrical (Anthology – August 2020)
Continue reading Mystery Workshop with Cindy Brown July 19th 2020Writers’ Mill minutes July 19th 2020
25 people attended the Writers’ Mill Zoom meeting this month, and enjoyed a very informative, inspirational and encouraging talk from Cindy Brown, author of the Ivy Meadows mysteries. Cindy’s handout can be downloaded from https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Mysteries-handout-from-Cindy-Brown.docx and I’ll include the edited version with notes from our session at the end of this email.
Continue reading Writers’ Mill minutes July 19th 2020CHALLENGES – 2020 Anthology
Topic
Challenges
Open to
Member of the Writers’ Mill
Deadline
End of the first Sunday of September
What we’re looking for
Please collect your challenges stories, from Writers’ Mill contests, from your computer, from your dreams and nightmares, or from anywhere else you can find them. Send entries to anthology at portlandwritersmill dot org.
Submission requirements
- No more than 5 separate entries per person (not counting pictures)
- No more than 5,000 words in total – for example, you might send one 5,000 word novella, or five 1,000 word essays…
- Pictures will be included as appropriate. Feel free to send pictures with your entries, or separately from your entries, but remember all images must be royalty-free for us to use them in a published work.