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.
Continue reading Writers’ Mill minutes July 19th 2020Category Archives: Writing
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.
Book List from Zita
Zita suggested this list of books that “read” differently, to inspire us to maybe “write” differently too.
Continue reading Book List from ZitaWriting Methods (June 2020 Sheila Deeth)
Sheila had promised to talk about writing methods, aphorisms, rules, etc. But she started by pointing out that, while some rules (like don’t touch live wires) are not meant to be broken, others (like show don’t tell) represent simply one way of looking at things. So we looked at proverbs and their opposites. Such as:
Continue reading Writing Methods (June 2020 Sheila Deeth)Writers’ Mill Minutes June 2020
Writers’ Mill Minutes Fathers’ Day, June 21st 2020Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes June 2020
We had close to 20 attendees at our Fathers’ Day meeting, including two new members and one returning member. It seemed to be the perfect number to inspire lively Zoom discussion, so those of you who missed the meeting missed lots of fun.
Writers’ Mill Minutes 202005 May 2020
Around 20 people attended May’s Writers’ Mill meeting, hosted again by Laura on Zoom. Our thanks to Laura and to everyone else at Cedar Mill Library who are helping us stay together during this time.
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 202005 May 2020Changing the World through Fiction, with Mollie Hunt
“Today’s society calls for more from a fiction writer than a fluff-piece,” says Mollie Hunt. “It’s our obligation to bring light to the causes and conflicts of our world.” In her presentation, Changing the World Through Fiction, Mollie offered methods that even the coziest of writers can implement to gently present their values within the story. So here, with thanks to Mollie, are her notes from her talk.
Continue reading Changing the World through Fiction, with Mollie HuntWriters’ Mill Minutes 202004 April 2020
Twenty-one people attended the first ever online Writers’ Mill meeting this month, including Sheila’s Mum, from England, and Laura (our wonderful host) from the library. We owe a huge thank you to Laura for providing and monitoring the online Zoom room for us.
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 202004 April 2020Research, 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 BiaggioWriters’ 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…
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 202001 January 2020