Writing Prompts for Sunday, November 25th.

1) "The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress." - Philip Roth

2) "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." - Ernest Hemingway

3) "Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper." - Ray Bradbury, WD

4) Granny never had a family member she didn't want to kill.

5) "If anyone deserves to be wrapped in seaweed and buried in mud, it's you." - Homer Simpson

6) I've been a witness to everything you've done in your life.

And a final greeting which could be considered a prompt:

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good write!

Christmas Luncheon on Sunday, December 9th at Kelsey's at 12:00 noon. 18 people have confirmed and are booked.

Next meeting is Sunday, January 13, 2013. Judy will be leading.

Sunday, November 25th Meeting

Keeping minutes seems like a thing of the past. It is more important to get other members to post instead of just those who take minutes at the meetings. One thing that was discussed today was the importance of supporting one another's published works. A great many of us turned out to support our published authors this past week at BookLore's Author Appreciation Days. We also purchased their books. Now it's up to us to read those books and review them. Yes, we want you to post book reviews for your fellow Headwaters Writers' Guild members' books.

I have already read and posted a review of Jayne E. Self's Death of a Highland Heavyweight. You can read that review here:  http://bookstove.com/book-talk/book-review-death-of-a-highland-heavyweight/

I would also like to share some reviews of books I find worthy of sharing. I read and reviewed these books this summer.

What I feel was the best book this summer: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend - http://bookstove.com/book-talk/book-review-memoirs-of-an-imaginary-friend-3/

The book The Discovery is about a writer who finds the manuscript his father wrote years before but never published. http://mary-patricia-bird.quazen.com/shopping/book-review-the-discovery/

And another awesome book by Lisa Genova: Love Anthony. Her first book Just Alice has received rave reviews. http://healthmad.com/mental-health/book-review-love-anthony/

And finally, Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio. http://bookstove.com/romance/book-review-blackberry-winter/

I read and reviewed other books but these are the most noteable. Please check them out. When I get around to reading the books of my fellow authors I will write reviews of their books too. But I mustn't be the only one. The Headwaters Writers' Guild is about supporting, encouraging, assisting and motivating one another.

Remember, SUPPORT A WRITER, read their books and write reviews. That's the best thing you can do for them. Post your reviews here. This page gets seen by more than just HWG members. So support all authors and spread the news of their books.

WEBSITES re PUBLISHING and MARKETING

Hey everybody!

Occasionally at meetings I bring up some websites and things I find on the net that are either of interest to or useful for authors. I am so sorry it has taken me so long to remember to send out an email with these links but I finally remembered after Pat and Nancy mentioned it at the meeting today. So here goes:

Sites to publish your works for free, connect with other writers and gain free exposure for your work to a global audience:

1. www.wattpad.com - publish your work to the net for anyone to read. Membership is free and you can post links to your blog or website from your profile page. There are also forums here where you can connect and chat with the wattpad online writing community. There are some damn good writers on wattpad too. If you like sci fi I would check out "The Orangutan" (Gavin Wilson) for example. :)

2. www.fictionpress.com - an older site for publishing your work online for anyone to read. Membership is free.

3. www.goodreads.com - massive community of writers and readers here! You can join the forums for your genre of interest, create an author profile, list your books that you've written (and read) on your "bookshelves" and list your books for free giveaways. When I listed mine for a free giveaway I had 693 people sign up for it. That's 693 people who knew nothing about me or my writing who now know about the existence of my book.... useful!

Sites for marketing (that I'm sure everybody knows about anyway):

1. www.facebook.com

2. www.twitter.com

3. www.youtube.com

Sites to self publish books/ebooks to sell (technical expertise is required):

1. www.lulu.com - publish and sell on lulu.com for free, global distribution for your work = $75, does provide services for editing, cover design, formatting etc but you have to pay for those. You can publish print books through lulu and ebooks for pcs/e-readers. You can choose to have lulu upload your ebook to the ibookstore and the barnes and noble nook bookstore for free as well as having it for sale on lulu.com.

2. www.createspace.com - Amazon's version of lulu.com - published print books.

3. www.kdp.amazon.com - publish an e-book for kindle only. Beware kdp select!

There are others that I've heard of but don't use, like "Smashwords" for example.

Other useful sites:

1. www.audacity.sourceforge.net - download a free, open source program for recording your own audiobooks on your home computer. Read them yourself or pay a pro to do it.

2. Sites you can upload audio files to for selling your audiobooks: www.CDBaby.com and www.tunecor.com (can get your audiobook on amazon, itunes and spotify)

3. Libriovox is another site you can publish an audiobook for distribution, though you can't sell it here.

 

Programs I've found to be invaluable for marketing/book creation:

1. Paint program (I use Corel Painter 12 but many people have Photoshop)

2. Windows Movie Maker - make your own book trailers! :)

3. Windows Sound recorder (before I downloaded Audacity anyway)

4. MS Word (of course!!!!)

I hope this was useful for everyone and if anyone wants to, I'd be happy to give them a "tour "of the internet sites /programs I use and show them some of these things sometime. If we can somehow get internet access at the church (ie: if Jayne has a wireless modem at home that we can use), I could even do it at a meeting if you like. Cheers!

 

Email received from S. J. Faerlind.

Thank you so much for the information.

Author Appreciation Day Part 2

Marilyn Kleiber and Gloria Nye will be at BookLore in Orangeville to promote their latest published works. This is a continuation of our recent Author Appreciation Day on Saturday, November 17, 2012. We had such a large crowd we had to roll the event over to a second day, or in this case evening. BookLore in Orangeville at 7pm on Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - be there!

Ray Wiseman Workshop Oct. 28-12 Photos

I finally downloaded my photos. Yeah! My job is done.

More photos from the Ray Wiseman workshop on October 28, 2012. Kelly is dressed for Halloween.

Sammy our mascot joined us.

Enjoy!

 

HWG Author Day November 17, 2012 - Jayne Self

 

 

 

Congratulations to Jayne on her new book Death of a Highland Heavy Weight.

 

 



A big thank you to Nancy Frater of Booklore for hosting and organizing the event, Jayne Self for helping to organize it, and Diane for posting the other photos of the HWG Author Day November 17, 2012.

HWG Author Day November 17, 2012

Diane Bator reading from Murder on Manitou and trying to ignore the Banner photographer.



Joe Gilbey with his novels.



David Chesterton with Twelfth Night in Royal Blue

June Hustler with Kindred and her new play.

Diane Bator watching Harry do his reading.

Harry Posner



June and David await their turn on the staircase.

Ruth Cunningham and Nancy Frater



Matthew absorbed in a good read.
 

Kelli Curtis reading from Amber and the Fallen Bridge

Author Day writers and their books!

Thank you to everyone who made HWG Author Day a great success! All our authors had ample time to do their readings, answer questions and mingle with the crowd. Special thank you to Jayne Self and Nancy Frater for organizing!

Ray Wiseman Editing Workshops

Finally, I have an almost free day, before the merry season begins. My husband's family is celebrating Christmas on December 1. The older relativees (that includes me) rent a hall and we're expecting approximately 50 people. And if I don't make a post today, it isn't going to happen.

I swear (and you all know I do) I've tried a couple of times to blog, but it took a long time to upload the photos, and I gave up. Time is precious but especially if you're squeezing in time to write.

Ray Wiseman workshops happened on October 14 and 28, 2012.

He certainly is a good speaker and story teller and the workshop was not only informative but fun.

How exactly do you set up your manuscript? Do you write in Canadian or American? How do you begin to edit? All these questions and more Ray answered.

But I thought the most important thing he said is that all writers need an editor. How profound. I would have loved for somebody to tell me this when I first started writing. It took me years to recover from people critiquing my writing. Much later, I realized that it's just part of the writing process.

I agree with him that you want to develop a good relationship with your editor. I want somebody who doesn't make me feel stupid, or doesn't try to change my voice. But the most important thing for me, is that I am comfortable with my editor. Thanks Laura.

At the two workshops, we had writers of all ages, the youngest writer being thirteen.

Check out Ray Wiseman's website. www.raywiseman.ca



Most of the writers at the workshop purchased this excellent book.


Ray provided excellent handouts and Jayne brought drinks and baked goods for everyone.

A special thank you for Ray and for Jayne who arranged the workshops.

For some reason, the photos refuse to be uploaded the way I want them. One more time . . .or two or three . . . I give up. The program won't do what I want it to do.

Maybe, I need a lesson in how to upload photos. This is too complicated for me. I think I'll stop taking photos. And what about the blank space at the bottom. Now to spend another hour trying to figure this out. And why doesn't the final post look like my page. And is there a help section for this wretched program? You would think that I'd be able to make corrections much like Word. It's difficult to move the photos around. No wonder I don't spend time posting to the blog. I could have written another story, some poetry or something.  The big white space is driving me out of my perfectionist mind.

Interview questions from this weeks Guild meeting.

1. Who are you? How would you describe yourself?
2. Why do you write?
3. What do you write about?
4. We are all one-of-a-kind and there is no one else who can write what we write. What is the uniqueness you bring to your writing?
5. How has writing affected you/changed you?
6. What has writing taught you about yourself, life?
7. Is there a particularly meaningful writing-inspired experience you'd like to tell us about?

These are the questions I typically ask writers for my blog christianswhowrite.ca

I invite everyone to visit my blogs and enter two book draws: 

One at http://www.christianswhowrite.ca/mark-buchanan-interview/

The second at http://www.jayneself.com/death-of-a-highland-heavyweight-2

Subscribe to these blogs and you'll be notified of other give-aways.

November 17th, beginning 11 a.m. BookLore is hosting Headwaters Writers Guild Author Appreciation Day.

Nancy Frater requests 2 copies of each book for her store window display.

Be sure to invite your friends, family and neighbours. Most people come to events like this because they have a personal connection with an author. The more folks who join us the more successful the event.

It would be great if as many of group members as possible could be their to support each other.

For those who are participating, please arrive be at BookLore before 11 am.

Here's the plan:

Nancy Frater will introduce each participating author. 

Each author will have 15-20 minutes of their own to read, answer questions, pose for photos.

Each author will have a special spot for them to sign books.

The schedule is as follows:

Jayne Self 11 am

Harry Posner 1120

Ruth Cunningham 1140

Kelli Curtis  1200

Diane Bator 1220

Joseph Gilbey1240

David Chesterton 1 pm

BookLore is providing hot apple cider and cookies for everyone who comes.

Hope to see you there!