Category Archives: Critiquing

The World Abounds in Prompts: Using Prompts to Stimulate and Deepen Your Writing by Ruth Leibowitz

Ruth loves writing prompts. She facilitates and attends several writing groups that use them, and she is a member of our group. As she pointed out, we use monthly writing prompts for our ezines. For herself, Ruth writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

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Writers’ 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.

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Writers’ Mill Minutes 202001 January 2020

18 members attended January’s meeting, where we enjoyed much discussion about requested topics, completed our “clipboard” checkup of member interests and needs, took part in a lively critique, and even managed a thinking/writing exercise. It was great to welcome several new members and one former member too – we hope to see you all again next month for Maryka Biaggio’s talk of research for writing, research for publishing, and more…

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Writers’ Mill Minutes 201704

Writers’ Mill Minutes April 23rd 2017

Guest speaker Zita Podany was unable to attend due to illness, but has been rescheduled for August 20th – mark your calendars. With the off-schedule timing for the meeting (due to Easter) causing a lower attendance this month, let’s hope for more people to be here when Zita joins us in August. Meanwhile around twelve of us enjoyed a BYOS meeting (Bring your own snacks, and bring your own speaker), with an impromptu writing exercise taken from the Creative Writer’s Notebook ($8.98 from Barnes and Noble) inspired by our next contest. We also enjoyed receiving contest awards filled with wonder for the Wonder contest, pondering contest entries for the next few months, and critiquing the third enticing chapter of Matthew’s novel. Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201704

Writers’ Mill Minutes 201611

Writers’ Mill Minutes November 20th

18 members attended November’s meeting, where Ron and Sheila gave a joint talk on the art of giving and taking in critique (see below), copies of the journal were handed out (email Sheila if you’ve not received yours), orders were taken for Zeus and Bo and Fred and Joe and Co (email Sheila if you still want to order it), and Jean led a fascinating discussion (also below) as we critiqued Patty’s prolog. Plus we had one new member, another Ron! Welcome! Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201611

Writers’ Mill Minutes 201608

Writers’ Mill Minutes August 21st

You may remember Jim Stewart, poet, short story writer, novelist, musician and more from our May meeting. He returned for a much-anticipated second visit in August, where he  invited and answered questions on editing poetry and how to make words count. Around 16 members of the Writers’ Mill braved the heat to attend. Notes on the questions and answers will follow these minutes. Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 201608