Twenty four people attended on January 17th to hear local author Marcia Coffey Turnquist tell us about writing, publishing, marketing, and everything in-between. Marcia’s first novel, the God of Sno Cone Blue is available at Barnes and Noble (store and online) or http://www.amazon.com/God-Sno-Cone-Blue/dp/0991637437/ on Amazon. Continue reading Minutes 201601
Category Archives: inspiration
A Writerly Quote
“Writing is…. being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.”
~ Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.
Born: November 11, 1954 (age 61), Lexington, KY
Awards: Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada, New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
Minutes 201508
Writers’ Mill Minutes, 16th August 2015
Twenty people attended August’s Writers’ Mill Meeting and enjoyed a wonderful presentation from former Oregon poet laureate, Paulann Petersen. Paulann, who has written many books and run many workshops, promised to coax, cajole and nudge us into writing, using a Springboard writing activity, as detailed below. She certainly kept that promise and we had a fantastic meeting.
In other events… after wonderful gluten free foods, drinks and home-grown tomatoes from Jean… Continue reading Minutes 201508
Protected: Flash Fiction, from a talk by Anne Harris, May 2015
Protected: Choose your topics for the next Writers’ Journal
Writing exercise – get out of your comfort zone
October’s meeting ended, appropriately, with a writing exercise.
- In an effort to get us out of our comfort zones, Sheila asked for fourteen random nouns. We came up with:
Spaceship, spade, owl, truck, flag, tree, shirt, car, custard, chocolate, witch, airplane, Starbucks, and woman.
- With the current contest in mind, we were then asked to imagine a character and hiding place, then list fourteen more nouns: two for each of our character’s senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, bodily feelings, and emotion.
- Finally, we were asked to pair up seven of these with seven from the first list of nouns, to create metaphors which we could use in a poem or description of a scene.
- Sample metaphors include: “The flapping flag of pride” “The chocolate voice of desire” “The warm air’s comfortable shirt against his skin” “the lumpy custard of the sagging mattress” etc.
If you weren’t there, or even if you were, why not give this a try to get your creative juices flowing.
Marketing isn’t just about selling books
taken from Sheila’s talk in May 2014
Why should we care about marketing?
Quite a few people wanted a talk on marketing, but I’m guessing the rest of you might think, I don’t want to sell stuff, I’m just writing for me. Why do I care about marketing? But marketing isn’t just getting your book into stores and selling lots of copies. It’s also what you’re doing when:
- You tell your grandkids, “You should care about this; it’s your family history”
- You tell your spouse, “No, I’m not wasting my time”
- You tell yourself, “I know what I’m doing and I’m going to get this thing written.”
A marketing exercise for everyone Continue reading Marketing isn’t just about selling books