September 22, 2016

Writers’ Roundtable

Welcome

News and Jabber

http://www.dailydot.com/via/chadburn-ask-freelancer-best-literary-websites/

At this site I found a link that led to a link that led to this:

A Love Story

September 21st, 2016

Before an author can find her readers, she must first find her story. She finds her story by asking herself, “What is the best story I can tell? What is so interesting to me that I cannot take my attention from it? What killer must I see brought to justice, or what woman must find love with what man?” The writer asks and answers these questions, and asks and answers these questions, until the story is told.

Now the author the needs an audience. She wrote this story to satisfy her own curiosity and then share what she found with others. The story is really not complete until someone else has read it, has filled in the blank spaces between the author’s brush strokes with their own imagination. So the author tweets about her story, blogs her story, Instagrams about her story, and travels from bookstore to bookstore talking about her story. By and by she discovers she has a readership.

And perhaps she does a little market research and asks those readers, “How did you find my story?” Some report stumbling over her book in a bookstore, others heard about it from a friend, still others from Facebook or Twitter or The New York Times. Yet all these answers are misleading. These answers say little more about how the reader really found a story than a wedding says about a marriage.

The way the reader really found the story was by asking, “What do I most want to read? What kind of story would be so interesting to me that I couldn’t put it down?” As she asks and answers this question, the reader by and by finds the story, and finishes in her own imagination what the author began in hers. The author-audience connection is in this way a love relationship, two strangers guided together by the single organizing principal of the universe.

Write Within Yourself: An Author’s Companion.

“A book to keep nearby whenever your writer’s spirit needs feeding.” Deb Caletti.

You can find William at: williamkenower.com

Tags: Love, Readership, Spirituality, William Kenower, Writing

Posted in Choice, Love, Marketing, Publishing, Stories, Writing | No Comments »

I found it interesting in light of the current assignment to write a one-page piece on what your work is about. This is something I had never done until last spring when I was in the Satureday phase of starting this group. The above is a blog entry from yesterday and it appears that the writer blogs quite regularly and may be worth a scan.

The Current Assignment

How did it go? What questions did it spawn? Problems? Results?

The Next Assignment

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on September 13, 2016. Same time, same place (maybe)

Other Jabber

August 8, 2016

1. Writers’ Roundtable

1. Welcome

1. Thanks to those who joined us today. It was a good start and should get even better. I will expand publicity and I ask you to bring a friend too.
2. Sign the email list
1. I need also to know who is not on the email list
2. I will want to see if there is a way to contact you, share MSs, etc.
3. What kind of group will this be?
1. Any and all forms of writing are welcome here although I would  prefer to keep poetry to the Poets’ Roundtable that meets on the first and third Thursdays of each month at this same time.
2. Any and all levels from beginner to published expert
3. Our policy is to critique writings, not writers. The table will be safe for all, the attitude supportive. In the words of Don Sheehan, former director of the Robert Frost Center for the Performing Arts in Franconia, NH, “When the choice is between intelligence and compassion, choose compassion. The result will be a higher intelligence.”

2. General considerations

1. What are you writing?
2. What do you want to write?
3. Why are you writing?
4. What are your goals
1. Production (pages, volume, etc.)
2. Date, deadline
1. If deadline, then why the deadline?
5. What stage is your project at?
1. Done, half done, just an idea, notes
6. What is your audience like?
1. Family
2. Public
3. Personal only

3. Sharing MSs?

1. Depending upon the size of the group and project attributes we may be able to make good use of online communications. In the prior incarnation of the roundtable we had just a few participants and their projects were well-along. We exchange excerpts via email so that all had read them in advance of the meeting and prepared notes, questions, ideas.
2. There are any number of ways to do this and email may not be the best.
3. NB: The key here is to fully participate. Everybody signs up, posts and comments.
1. This may be a subset of the larger group.

4. Things we will cover

1. How we write
1. Frequency and duration
2. Word processors
3. Backups
4. Online resources
1. Software
2. Websites
3. Publishing

5. Link to “How to Revise a Novel”

1. I covered during the meeting some of the  points in this article particularly apt for the writing process in general. Here is the link:
2. https://hollylisle.com/how-to-revise-a-novel/