Category Archives: Writing

character, Guest Speakers, mystery, plot, story structure

Mystery Writing Workshop with Cindy Brown May 21st2021

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Cindy Brown is the author of some wonderfully titles mysteries, Macdeath, The Sound of Murder, Oliver Twisted, Ivy Get Your Gun, The Phantom of Oz, Killalot, … She’s been writing professionally for 20 years, starting with playwriting (hence her interest in the relationship between plot and dramatic structure), then screenwriting, and then… She fell in love with mysteries as a child – loved Nancy Drew, was introduced to John D MacDonald, and finally started reading Sue Grafton and decided she wanted to write like her, especially as her books are set on the West Coast! So… here’s how she led us in understanding more about genre, character and plot.

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character, Minutes, mystery, plot, Writing

Writers Mill Minutes 202103

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Members from around the world and from around Cedar Mill met together for Cindy Brown’s mystery writing workshop in March, and Sheila did her best to take good minutes for those who couldn’t make it. Apologies to those who had problems with the email link – in general, if a link doesn’t work, you need to cut the whole link – or, as one member put it, the whole set of gobbledygook letters and numbers – and paste it into your browser. Judy has kindly offered to field requests for help if anyone has problems with the link at future meetings, thus freeing Sheila to continue to take minutes, so please remember: If you can’t cut and paste the whole link, email Judy for assistance!

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bilingual, Book design, book reading, childrens, Guest Speakers, mailing lists, marketing, networking, picture book, plan to market, publishing, self-publishing, websites, Writing

The Story of a Bilingual Picture Book in a Time of Covid, from Jim Mockford’s talk, 02/21/21

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Sheila met Jim Mockford at a Willamette Writers’ virtual coffee morning, and was fascinated by all the ways he was planning to advertise his book, so she and Jean invited him to speak to us and were delighted when he accepted. We were even more delighted when he joined our group as a new member a few months back!

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bilingual, book reading, events, marketing, Minutes, networking, picture book, plan to market, publishing, self-publishing, websites

Writers’ Mill Minutes 202102

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Writers’ Mill Minutes Feb 21st 2021

We tried out a new Zoom meeting format this month, with a ten-minute snack-and-get-to-know-you break in the middle, to emulate those delicious snack breaks we used to have in real life. Matthew reminded us that this was the one-year anniversary of our last real-world meeting, so a good date for reinstituting snacks. Also we have lots of knew people who we’d love to get to know. In fact, we had so many members at the meeting, there were too many for a single Zoom screen for while! A great achievement, and we hope you all enjoyed the meeting.

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anthologies, poetry, publishing, query letters, submission guidelines, Where to send it

Writers’ Mill Minutes 202101

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With several new members, we started our meeting by reminding everyone of who we are: the Writers’ Mill, writers helping writers, meeting on the 3rd Sunday of every month. We all agree that our librarian is fantastic and Zoom is wonderful (if occasionally challenging). And maybe one day there’ll be mixed real-and-virtual meetings—it’s a dream, but please be thinking about how it might work. And on the subject of dreams… we run monthly contests online for which this month’s topic was dreams. Von announced the results, and you should have already received them from our contest coordinator, unless you’re a new member (in which case I’ve only just added you to the list):

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Book design, marketing, Minutes, publishers, publishing, query letters, Writing

Writers’ Mill Minutes October 2020

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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

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character, Minutes, plot, Writing

Writers’ Mill Minutes September 2020

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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.

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graphic novels, Guest Speakers, Minutes

Graphic Novels, Inspiration, Creation, Publication and Marketing with Erik Nebel, August 2020

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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.

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character, exercise, Guest Speakers, inspiration, mystery, plot, point of view, story structure, Writing

Mystery Workshop with Cindy Brown July 19th 2020

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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)

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