July 15th Meeting Report

About 20 of us met at the Coffee Shop this Monday to hear and critique six readers. There were a few exciting announcements about upcoming events, as well as a good discussion about editing.


ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Pay your dues before August 11th, and you can be entered into a drawing to participate in a workshop critique! The four winners will be our readers for the Monday meeting on August 25th, each receiving 20 minutes for feedback rather than the usual 5 minutes.

The Coloring for Chemo fundraiser last week was a success. More than 400 coloring books and crayons were donated. Thank you to all who participated.

Vital will be speaking at our next meeting, Monday July 22nd at 6:30 p.m. at the Lutheran Church on Tropicana. His motivational talk will address overcoming the challenges that prevent us from reaching our goals.

The Las Vegas Film Festival is this Thursday (tomorrow) and Audrey's films will be showing at 1:00 p.m. Several members of the group are featured in the films.


BRAGS:

Congratulations to Donald Riggio on another radio interview!


QUOTE OF THE NIGHT:

"...at a rest stop a few miles outside a-city-to-be-determined, California."

WRITING TIP from Jo Wilkins:

Stream of consciousness is internal dialogue. Yes, thoughts are dialogue. This dialogue is written in first person because the character speaks to him/her self. To sound realistic, the content should sound incoherent and jump subjects because we don’t think in complete thoughts. This type of inner monologue can raise tension and anxiety in the character and the scene. William Noble has an excellent example in his book Action, Conflict & Suspense (p. 75) that shows this type of dialogue. See the following example. 

Example: "...what do I know about boats. I’m a musician, there are some better, a lot worse, but boats are scary, and I hide in this closet they call a head, waiting for something to show while jazz riffs flow through my mind, and I know I don’t belong here because boats can sink."

DID YOU KNOW?

For most of us, writing no longer takes place on a desk with pen an paper. And even if it does, sharing your work involves the internet and requires a basic knowledge of the terms and programs associated with our electronic world.

Here is a handy glossary of internet terms compiled by HWG president Gregory Kompes. Take a look and learn something new, or come to a new understanding of a term you've heard often, but never been able to define.

Glossary of Internet Terms

AIFF (see Wav)

Article Directory
Collection and distribution Website for articles.

Autoresponder
Computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it.

Blog (Web log)
Website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

eBook
Digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices

eCommerce
The buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.

ePromotionPromotion/advertising conducted electronically, usually over the internet.

ePublishingElectronic publishing of materials, such as eBooks, in a digital format, usually over the internet.

File Directory
A directory, catalog, folder or drawer is an entity in a file system which contains a group of files and/or other directories. A typical file system may contain thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of directories. Files are kept organized by storing related files in the same directory. A directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory of that directory. Together, the directories form a hierarchy, or tree structure.

Forum
Web application for holding discussions and posting user-generated content. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as Web forums, newsgroups, message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, or bulletin boards.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network, such as the Internet.

Host
Computer connected to the Internet, or sometimes other computer networks. A host computer can host information as well as client and/or server software.

IFF (see "Wav")

Internet
Worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP).

ISP
Internet Service Provider

Keyword
Word or a phrase used to find useful results in internet searches

Pay Per ClickAdvertising model where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's Website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser's ad may be shown.

PayLoadz
Automated service that delivers your products to your customers instantly after payment.

PayPal
The service allows anyone to pay in any way they prefer, including through credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit or account balances, without sharing financial information.

PDF (Portable Document Format)
Fixed-layout format used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.

Podcasting
Series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting.

RIFF (see "Wav")

RSS (Real Simple Syndication)
Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "Web feed," or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated Web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with Web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.

Self-PublishingPublishing of books and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a Web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.

Shopping Cart
Software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online

Teleconference
Teleconference is the live exchange and mass articulation of information among persons and machines remote from one another but linked by a telecommunications system, usually over the phone line.

Traditional PublishingDistribution of printed works such as books (the "book trade") and newspapers. Publishing includes: the stages of the development, acquisition, copyediting, graphic design, production – printing (and its electronic equivalents), and marketing and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, literary works, musical works, software and other works dealing with information, including the electronic media.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Website address (i.e., http://www.kompes.com)

VodcastingOnline delivery of video on demand video clip content. The term is an evolution specialized for video, coming from the generally audio-based podcast and referring to the distribution of video where the RSS feed is used as a non-linear TV channel to which consumers can subscribe using a PC, TV, set-top box, media center or mobile multimedia device.

WavWaveform audio format is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in “chunks” and thus also close to the IFF and the AIFF format used on Amiga and Macintosh computers, respectively. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio.

WebinarsWeb conferencing is used to conduct live meetings or presentations over the Internet. In a Web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendees computers or a Web-based application where the attendees will simply enter a URL (Website address) to enter the conference.

Web Log
(see "blog")

Website
Collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or more Web servers, usually accessible via the Internet

Website Hosting (see hosting)

Zine
Electronic newsletter.
CALENDAR:

July 2013 Sun       Mon      Tues      Wed           Thur           Fri                 Sat
	1 THE COFFEE HOUSE  in Henderson  6:30-8:30	2	3	4	5	6
7	8 Lutheran Community Church 6:30-8:30	9	10 Writer's Pen and Grill	11	12	13
14	15 THE COFFEE HOUSE  in Henderson  6:30-8:30	16	17	18	19	20
21	22 Lutheran Community Church Vital Speaking 6:30-8:30	23	24 West Side Meeting at Skinny Dugans 6:30	25	26	27
28	29  THE COFFEE HOUSE  in Henderson  6:30-8:30	30	31	August 1	2	3
4	5 The Coffee House in Henderson 6:30-8:30	6	7	8	9	10

Have a good week.
-Jenny Ballif, newsletter editor.