Category Archives: publishing

Writers’ Mill Minutes October 2020

Writers’ Mill Minutes October 18 2020

Our speaker this month was Joe Biel, a self-made autistic publisher and filmmaker, the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing https://microcosmpublishing.com/, and the co-founder of the Portland Zine Symposium. He has been featured in Time Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Art of Autism, Utne Reader, Oregonian, Broken Pencil, Punk Planet, Bulletproof Radio, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll. He is the author of many books, director of five feature films and hundreds of short films, and he lives in Portland, Ore and his work can be found at joebiel.net

Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes October 2020

CHALLENGES – 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.

Research, a talk by Maryka Biaggio

Historical research

Maryka writes historical fiction based on real characters, so her talk began with the world of historical research. First, how do you prepare to write your historical novel? You’ll need to delve into the past, perhaps using:

Continue reading Research, a talk by Maryka Biaggio

Writers’ Mill Minutes 202002

Writers’ Mill Minutes, Feb 16th 2020

18 members attended our “3 checkmark” meeting, allowing the organizers to learn a bit more about whether emails are  getting through, and whether we’re fulfilling our goal of being “writers helping writers.” But far more important than checkmarks on clipboard was  the talk from Maryka Biaggio, author of Parlor Games, published by a serious, BIG 5 publisher, and a seriously helpful speaker. You’ll find notes from her talk at the end of these minutes. Meanwhile, thank you Maryka!

Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 202002

Writers Mill Minutes Nov 2020

Writers’ Mill minutes November 15th 2020

It was a Journey through Chaos, well-fitting for 2020, and well-moderated and recorded by Laura, as we brought our “Journey through Chaos” anthology to Amazon print and kindle. (Look, it’s already there! But no “look inside” feature yet. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NHWDJ6F/ ) And here’s a link to the recording so you can catch up on what you missed if you weren’t there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjTluD345A4

First, of course, was the announcement of results from the “words I never want to hear again” contest from Karin.

  1. First place – Von with Useless Old Man
  2. Second place – Joanne with Not Me and Ria with Very Stable Genius
  3. Third place – David Fryer with Eat Your Liver.

Other entries were:

  • “A Few Words About 2020” by Zita
  • “Absolutely No!” (poem) by Joe
  • “Age is Just a Number” (poem) by Sheila
  • “Are You Okay?” by Joanne
  • “Erase This Word” (poem) by Judy
  • “Fall Fell Hard Today!” (Haiku) by Robert
  • “Kitkit’s Word” by Sheila
  • “May 2020 Be Forgot” (poem) by Zita
  • “The Dream of a Pharaoh” by Matthew
  • “Too Many Words” (poem?) by Peter
  • “Use of Words” by Jessie
  • Comments only poem by Catherin – “I’m Dying”

Totaling an amazing 16 entries! Congratulations all.

Our next contests, with deadlines on the first Sunday of each month, word limits 1200 words, any genre, are:

  1. December: Judy’s prompt for “Endings and Beginnings” https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/dec-2020-contest-page/ password BeginDec20
  2. January: Von’s prompt for “Dreams” https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-2020-contests/
  3. February: Zita’s romantic prompt “Let me count the ways…”

Entries should be emailed to contest@portlandwritersmill.org, by the end of the first Sunday of the month. (And don’t forget, for anyone who’s only receiving this newsletter second hand, you can find us at portlandwritersmill.org, and either the librarian or admin@portlandwritersmill.org will happily add you to the email list, so you’ll get reminders when that first Sunday approaches.)

One way we give back to the library, in thanks for their many many years of support, is by bringing out an annual anthology, with all the royalties going to the library. Luckily, Sheila’s computer and internet (and voice) held up today, so we all joined in with the upload to Amazon over Zoom. Sheila will order books (she needs to be payed before she sends in the order, which will probably be Monday or Tuesday) and will email people with options for picking them up when they arrive. Laura thought we might be able to arrange pickups from the library.

The library recording will give you details of how we uploaded our book, but highlights from the presentation are below. Meanwhile, don’t forget to write your endings and beginnings contest entries for December, and don’t forget our next meeting, with a review of the old year and plans for the new. See you all on December 20th, and if you’ll have something ready for critique then, let Sheila know!

We made a book, and you can too!

Our “Let’s make another book” presentation covered and/or touched the following book-creation topics, with notes and additional information below:

  • How to Title your book
  • How to Format your book
  • How to Edit your book
  • How to Prepare your book for Printing
  • How to Prepare your book for Kindle
  • How to Upload your ebook
  • How to use Amazon’s Cover Creator
  • How to Upload your print book (and use Cover Creator again!)
  • How to get your book onto your Author Page (yes, I know, I didn’t have time to cover this, but some of you asked…)

Continue reading We made a book, and you can too!

Writers’ Mill Minutes 10191117

November’s meeting brought 13 of us to watch and assist in the uploading of The Writers’ Mill Journal Volume 7 to Amazon. Those of you who missed it missed some fantastic healthy snacks from Ria and an ongoing scene of great stress, excitement and triumph. The minutes below are LONG because I’ve tried to cover everything we did and all the questions I was asked about what we might not have done. So here goes… Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 10191117