Category Archives: Writing

inspiration, Minutes, submission guidelines, Writing

Writers’ Mill Minutes April 21st 2024

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Writers’ Mill Minutes, April 21, 2024

Cedar Mill Library, Beaverton and online Zoom

Eight participants attended online, and six were present in the library meeting room, for a total of fourteen. Sheila Deeth led the meeting from her online Zoom perch in Tennessee. She announced at the opening of the meeting that today’s program would be recorded and asked if there were any objections. If so, Zoom attendees could hide their video and remove their surnames from their screens. In person attendees would be invisible anyway, as only today’s speaker, Carolyn Martin, would be on camera at the library.

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Guest Speakers, inspiration, setting, submission guidelines

Submissions and Settings with Carolyn Martin

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Carolyn Martin (https://carolynmartinpoet.com/) presented a wonderful hybrid workshop at our hybrid meeting on April 21 2024. The meeting was recorded and can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Iq4hT0DJA (submissions) followed by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGL4rVOHbR0 (settings)

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Guest Speakers, word, Writing

The Efficient Use of Word with Sheila Deeth

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With thanks to all the members who offered advice, questions, comments and more, most people present learned something during our “efficient use of Word” meeting, so now we just have to try not to forget it all. To that end, Sheila has added (she hopes) everyone’s suggestions to the file she was working from, and uploaded the file in DOCX and PDF format to our website.

Efficient Use of WORD, word doc: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/The-Efficient-Use-of-WORD.docx

Efficient Use of WORD, PDF: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/The-Efficient-Use-of-WORD.pdf

If you want to know what we did at the meeting, and if you want to use WORD more efficiently, please follow the links and download the files. Then you’ll be able to follow through all the actions and add to your own skillset.

Minutes, nanowrimo

Writers’ Mill Minutes, Oct 15, 2023

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Our librarian Christine set up the zoom and room, and we had 19 members in total at October’s meeting – 6 in person and 13 online. Sheila started the meeting by reminding in-person attendees to face the microphone when speaking and avoid talking among themselves. Online attendees were reminded to switch on captions and use speaker view, especially to watch our speaker, David Porter, during his talk. David asked if the talk was being recorded, but we can’t record without setting it up before the meeting, and letting everyone know. Maybe it’s something we should think about doing more often—what do you think?

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Guest Speakers, publishing, Research, Writing

Fulfilling That Writing Commitment: David Porter, Oct 15, 2023

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David Porter started writing bad poetry at age 12 and soon progressed to good. In 1968 he was at PSU and was already being published. In the ’70s and ’80s he wrote freelance articles, poems, and short stories, getting published in the Oregon magazine and NW magazine (inside the Oregonian). Meanwhile he wrote grant proposals, newsletters, presentations, etc for nonprofits for 40 years. He’s even written Beaver Board Historical Markers! Plus many book reviews.

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Editing, Writing

Write, Edit, and Stop: presentation by Sheila Deeth, August 2023

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WRITE

Different people, different ways to write:

  • Writing as a race: Go from start to finish without rereading, editing, critiquing, complaining, or stopping – e.g. NaNoWriMo in November
  • Writing as mountain-climbing: Plan your route. Write/climb your route. Set up waypoints. Then climb a better route in your next draft.
  • Writing as sewing: Write some, reread and edit what you wrote, then write some more… backstitching over your text to make a solid seam.
  • Do what works for you!
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graphic novels, Guest Speakers, publishing, story structure, Writing

You too can write a novel, graphic novel, comic, memoir, mini-book, … talk with Joshua Williamson

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Joshua Williamson is the author of 150 graphic novels! He works for DC Comics and Marvel, and is paid to write monthly short books (like magazines) which, when the story’s done, get compiled together into complete graphic novels. Mostly these are YA, but he’s written other non-DC books (e.g. Nailbiter) which might be aimed at a somewhat older audience.

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Critiquing, exercise, Guest Speakers, images, inspiration, Research, Writing

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

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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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