Meeting Minutes November 28, 2010

Twas the night before Monday and all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring except for that louse.
That was tapping away on her laptop and humming,
So she didn't have to hear the Grey Cup announcers mumbling...

Big football fan, right?

Okay now that's out of my system, I thought I'd better get the meeting minutes posted seeing as how we have another meeting NEXT Sunday then a big party the Sunday after that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We started off today's meeting by carefully arranging about 50 books on tables and couches at the back of the room then saved the actual buying for the time reserved for prompts. No idea how much money we actually contributed to the can, but I personally came home with some interesting reads. Two of which my son already had. The good news is, we found them a good home already.

Gloria passed around a sample of the bookjacket for A Walk in Fields of Gold. It looks great!
We introduced ourselves because we had a new member (actually, poor Mike joined us last week, but we had other things on the agenda and just did a quick introduction). Mike told us he is a former school principal, but we let him stay anyway. Clare and Richard switched names for the introduction. Not so careful about hiding their name cards.

A few people did readings this week. Clare had worked on a story started from one of Richard's Halloween prompts about a creaking floor upstairs in a house. Sorry, Clare, my favourite lines were Alice asking Ralph if he smelled anything odd. He replied, "Don't worry, Alice. It's just my socks drying out."  Clare did leave us all with an agonizing cliffhanger when he pause to turn the page.

Ashley entered NaNoWriMo this year. She has written about 44,000 words of her novel. Writers all over the world work on novels from Nov 1-30 without editing. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a single month. Way to go, Ashley!!!  She read to us from her novel-in-progress "Reborn."

David read a poem written as an apology to his wife's choir. He'll be missing her performance, but not Handel's Messiah.

Richard read part of Chapter 2 from Book 2 of The Ostiary. Nancy suggested that he should write screenplays since he uses so much dialogue. He told her that he has attempted to do so, but dislikes writing in that genre. He prefers novels which have more opportunities for both dialogue and description.

Nancy referred us to Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules for Writing which I will have to find and post one day.

Ron said that Harry contacted him about a reading at a Nottawasaga school by Hugh Brewster who writes a series for Scholastic called I Am Canada. Hugh has written a book called Prisoner of Dieppe and Ron not only attended the presentation, but became part of it!
He also told us that he is friends with Ann-Marie MacDonald and has asked her to come and talk to us one day. Ann-Marie is a Canadian playwright, novelist, actor and broadcast journalist. She wrote Fall On Your Knees (an Oprah Book Club pick) and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. More to come on that in the New Year.

Nancy read a revised version of her short story Shadows of Guilt and Sorrow. Before reading, she advised that "if it bores you, you can leave." No one left. When she was done, Jayne asked if she intends to leave it as a short story or turn it into a novel. Nancy says it is a short story. For now. We discussed astral travel and other phenomena. Richard informed us that "Astral travel is what happens to you when you go to Mexico."

David had tickets for a Show and Sale at The Arts and Letters Club in Toronto for Dec 5, 2010. He is a part of the group and it is the only open house they have all year. All three of David's novels will be available at the show. You can check The Arts and Letters Club website for more details.

An advertisement appeared in the latest copy of In The Hills for our anthology! We discussed the need for keeping a separate account book for profits which will go to the Headwaters Health Care Centre for books for the children's library. All sales from Amazon will go to our acct. Those who haven't already placed orders for copies are asked to contact Gloria Nye directly.

Nancy told us that she cannot email anyone who is on Sympatico. Diane told her that Sympatico users paid extra for that.

Richard had brought up e-publishing and e-books at the Halloween meeting, but no one had time to do any research yet. This is something we will look into for 2011 since several members of the group are looking to be published.

Christmas Luncheon is December 12 at 1pm!!!!
Diane has offered to host this at her house (that's me!) Not that I have the largest house, but I don't want to see this annual even cancelled because King's Buffet (aka Fong's Buffet) has shut down. Several members vetoed having a Potluck so we decided on ordering in PIZZA. If anyone has an aversion to pizza (or food issues) please feel free to bring whatever it is you can eat.
DESSERT is always welcome!!! I will provide coffee and tea and will email everyone my address and ask for RSVPs.

Richard took the opportunity to put his hand up and tell us that "Somebody stole my prompt page."

Gloria handed out a notice for her "Book Covering Workshop" which will take place at Eramosa Eden on Saturday Dec 11 from 10am - 4pm. For more info go to her website at spiralpress.ca. The photographs on the flyer are amazing.

Our regular prompt writing time was pre-empted by the book sale and Kelli drooling over Red Velvet Cheesecake (which forced me to come home and find a recipe! Not for the cheesecake, just for the cake. Yum!) Might have to try that one!

We read our prompts after adding an extra ten minutes of writing time (again due to the book sale) then Richard was volunteered by Nancy to start us off. Gloria wrote 3 Haikus and Kelli told us she wrote a Low-ku. (probably about cheesecake). Ron used the prompt list and added a few words here and there to make a short story.  Ashley took advantage of one of the prompts to add to her novel. David tackled his Inner Procrastinator. Nancy read about her father. Clare closed off the meeting by reading about what a mess his room was. We all packed up at 3:30pm.

The Prompts courtesy of Nancy:
1) Silence is a great healer.
2) Today I will . . .
3) It was the strangest question that I'd ever heard.
4) Bill tried to remember who had given him the key.
5) My old room was . . .
6) I'm already gone.
7) All my friends and family have died.

The next meeting is on Dec 5, 2010. Clare will be leading.

Meeting Minutes March 21, 2010

First of all, thank you to everyone for their well wishes this past week on the loss of our uncle. It was hard coming to the meeting and concentrating enough to take notes, but it was even harder staying home. I was glad to be with you all and share some laughs as well as meet two new members to the group: Sandy and Ruth. For those of you who missed it, Ruth is also a writer with a piece in the Stories of Prayer and Faith book that Nancy and I are included in and received some copies of after the meeting. (Edited and compiled by our own Gloria Nye!)

Clare led the meeting and had some interesting prompts which I'll post at the bottom. No rushing off ahead to peek, you might miss something along the way!

Jayne warned us about parking in the Organist's spot in the lot. Apparently, she is very "predatory" about her spot. Harry agreed that we definately did not want to "strike the wrong chord with her."

We all introduced ourselves, including Laura who got a "daypass" from her family to attend. She announced that she would write more if Diane would quit writing so much. She is a fabulous editor though and I can never thank her enough. Especially when my books finally get published!

Richard brought up the fact that people don't take the time to comment on blog entries. He has been added to our list of contributors now. We are all glad his writer's block and other issues have been resolved.

Jayne showed us the back cover of the Presbyterian Record (www.prebyterianrecord.ca). Her novel Caught Dead: A Dean Constable Mystery is going to be published on their website beginning April 5. There will be a new chapter every week so make sure to mark it under your favourites and enjoy it!

We also discussed the Anthology that we would like to do. Gloria presented us with a publishing proposal that we will talk about at the next meeting. She had two plan options but Richard suggested a third - that we seek a sponsor to subsidize the book. He will look into that and get back to us next meeting. We decided against a theme for the book since that will limit our creativity. We would just call it something like The Headwaters Writers' Guild Collection. You are welcome to bring any other ideas to the April 11 meeting.

Since the last Brian Henry workshop had very low response, we cancelled it an moved it to Oct 2. The two options we had for topics were How to Make Yourself Write and How to Write for Children. Since a lot of us have no problems with actually doing the writing, we selected the writing for children option. Even if you don't want to write for children, it will teach you how to streamline your writing and simplify.

About half of the group had items to read this time. Gloria gave us food for thought with her short story The Author's Dinner. We had to all rush home to look up words like gelid and sapid. June read more from Death Spiral. Richard read to us from the second book of The Ostiary: Silent Semper (hope I got that right). Caitlyn, who was brave enough to rejoin us after the last meeting, read a wonderfully descriptive piece about a woman visiting a psychic. We can't wait to see what she does with it! Harry read The Garden Tale a great one for the kiddies.

Nancy read a piece about the "R" word and how words have the power to affect people. This led to a discussion of how the meanings of words have changed through history for example: faggot, special, retarded, the list goes on.

The prompts Clare brought were interesting. Laura had a piece about a man humming and cleaning a bloodstain off the floor. Richard had to know what he was humming. Guesses ranged from Hi, ho, hi, ho, It's off to work we go to Zippity-Do-Dah. Nancy read a piece that included the words "blank you". Richard HAD to check to make sure that was what she wrote and not her infamous "f" word. It was!

I found out after the meeting that Laura is going to be published in In the Hills for Kids. Her article is called Bundle of Joy? Way to go Laura! You can find a preview of the story on www.kidsinthehills.ca/blogs/in-the-hills/bundle-of-joy.

Okay, you've waited long enough. For anyone who couldn't make the meeting, here are the prompts courtesy of Clare:
1) A chunk of bologna and gob of mustard fell from his sandwich.
2) Coffee perked cheerily on the back of the kitchen woodstove.
3) The red traffic light sparkled off the icy intersection.
4) Peering into the darkness, she stood with her arms crossed.
5) He was the only customer in the coffee shop at 3 in the morning.
6) "Bonjourno," he clucked, stroking his crop of silver hair. (buon giorno Laura corrected the spelling)
7) I burst out laughing when -------------
8) "HI! I usta be a Wal-Mart greeter."
9) As I looked at --------- all that I could think was ---------.
10) He was nothing more than a smelly old man.

Okay, my work here is done for a day or two. Hope you all enjoy the wonderful rain and keep on writing.