January 7th Meeting Report

We had our first meeting at Albertsons grocery store last night. For the rest of 2013 we will be alternating our meeting locations between the

Lutheran Church on Tropicana and

the Albertsons store at the corner of College and Horizon in Henderson.

To locate our meeting room in the Albertsons, turn left after you enter the store and continue to the wall. Don't let the "RESTRICTED AREA" sign deter you. You have arrived at the right place and are welcome to come in!


ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Our Conference is coming up! Would you like to donate something for the raffle? It's terribly fun to win stuff and it's an important source of dollars for our scholarship fund.

If you plan to attend the conference, sign up by next week because the cost will increase after January 15th. If you would like to volunteer at the conference, email Jay.

BRAGS:
We had some great publishing brags last night!

Congratulations to Alba Arango on the publication of her first book JJ Bennett: Junior Spy in the Rise of the K-CIA.

Congratulations to Henry Schmidt on two beautiful twin great-grandaughters and the celebration of his 52nd wedding anniversary. He had a good writing year as well and his books are at the local libraries.

Congratulations to Audrey Balzart on finishing the story arc of her second book.

Congratulations to Nancy Sansone on the release of her new book, Calling Her Name.

Congratulations to Donald Riggio on the release of Beyond Vinyl, the sequel to his first book Seven Inch Vinyl. A friend of his wrote a song based on a title in his book and it will be out this  month.


UPCOMING MEETINGS: Our next weekly meeting is at the Lutheran Church on Tropicana Avenue at 6:30 p.m. To view a lack of further information regarding our weekly meetings, see the calendar. (Someone needs to update that mostly-empty calendar.)

QUOTE OF THE NIGHT:

Moving on... Now, moving on.

WRITING TIP:

If you must change the direction of your paragraph use a transition. Changing direction without a word or line to make the shift confuses the reader. Too many of these shifts make the reader stop reading. In the same paragraph don’t start in your character’s room and jump to the halls of their office unless they have fallen asleep and they dream or they think of past events. One sentence can make any shift a smooth transition without causing confusion.




WRITING OPPORTUNITY:
We received this email from an online webzine called Running Out of Ink that would welcome submissions:

I saw your writing group on the internet and was hoping you could let your writers know about Running out of Ink.  We are a new webzine that just launched its third issue on the 1st January at www.runningoutofink.com. We accept short stories of all genres as variety is going to be a focus of our webzine - no story too short, no plot too off the wall as we counter balance it with other stories within the issue. The only rules are that the story is previously unpublished and under 2500 words.

We don't yet pay our writers unfortunately, but feel this is a fantastic opportunity for new writers to gain a voice and experienced writers to add to their CV. One thing that does pull us apart from other markets and may make your followers keen is that we are interested in having recurring writers throughout our issues, so if we really like you we will request you back. This can really help in building a following for writers as readers from the site will go on to see Joe Bloggs' latest story and knowing that they consistently enjoy them, they may look elsewhere to see what he's done. Submissions are emailed to submit@runningoutofink.com.


ARTICLE from Michelle von Quilich:

Glimmerings

Reflections of the time when we lost all mirrors into ourselves, when we sat solely in our midst looking upon paper…

I saw you, but it wasn’t you, I really saw YOU, a fragment of glory hidden within the cracks of tapered ink creased on white blocking false identity. A viscous medium are we, never able to be separated from the cord that is laid before us giving us the link to ourselves, through another, in a glimpse.

Like a rock being skipped across the pond, I gazed into this reflective surface, all balled up and glorified at the same time. Ink-stained clouds turning into literature gave me new pleasure but to see your eyes smiling from words, yes. Words you saw giving you a peace of some sort and a terrifying happiness. We gazed upon these words in the form of a book, effervescent rectangular escape. You sat with your hand over your eyes belting out a good cry, in recognition of me, your other self.

Yes, how we glorified and magnified this invention, the machinery of being, the moment deftly progressing as though we had the answers. I had hoped for more yet my heart sings and I come here to take upon me a small truth, in its most crude form, to navigate the highways of everlasting thought. It was all unseen and unheard and I sat there unmoved and unstretched as it were in a moment of perforated perfection till the end of the day, the effect that it had on me.

Thinking of was’s and whose’s simmering inside, approaching the arc of time, of cricket whoops and hollers and the coyotes. Seeing my boots down below, rough with mud of thought and the grime of yesterdays, oh how they shined in my mind, to remind me of the fragility and the aching within, the trails of darkness we all found ourselves on at times. I lay upon my conscience, once and for all, explaining away the day, the day gone by and the day yet to come, pure solitude. It came in waves and there I was in heaviness yet flowing above the mess and mire. It all seemed so easy, suggesting to you another angle in the matter, for in that moment began its apex, a crust of authenticity.

For how we came to be I do not know but the intangible declare that it is time to begin and to write in the most glorious and unabashed way.