We’re meeting!
It’s been a year and a half, but we’re finally meeting again. Most of the time will be devoted to reading and critiquing each-other’s work in small groups, but we’ll kick it off with two 5-minute lightning talks:
- How to intensify the effect of actions during dialog — Cory Skerry
- How to identify and replace cliché elements from your stories — Peter Rust
It’s good to have a variety of talks and presenters, so please let me know if you would be willing to present something (at this meeting or one in the future).
Time to pick up that draft or that cool story idea you’ve been thinking about and get it ready to share!
We have just two and a half weeks to let people know about the meeting. You are encouraged to bring a friend who is interested in writing and also to post our flyer (Flyer-Jan-30-2012.pdf) in your favorite library, coffee shop, market, school/college, etc. I’ll post flyers at the Bellingham Public Library, the Barkley Starbucks and the Barkley Library. You can also let people know about the group by saying that you are “Attending” on the Facebook event.
We will be meeting at Bellingham Public Library on Monday night, 6:30-8:30. Since it will be after-hours, you’ll need to come to the downstairs entrance (in the back, by the fountain and the Children’s section). If no one is at the door, please knock so we know to let you in.
Bellingham Writers Group 
Hi Peter,
I’m curious…is the group ongoing or is this an event? Do you always meet on the last Monday of the month? (the Village Books open mic evening ). Are you a novelist or…? What do you write?
Thanks,
Susan
Hi Susan!
> is the group ongoing or is this an event?
The group is ongoing — or at least we intend it to be. There is more history available at our old site, bham_writers.livejournal.com. “maxerg” started the bham_writers group back in 2005 — they met at The Black Drop for a while in 2005 until things fizzled out when Max’s real life got complicated. Then I think Elizabeth Coleman (aka “criada”) kick-started the critique group again in 2006 — they met weekly at The Black Drop for a few years. When I started trying to find a writers group in Bellingham (somewhere between 2008-2010), the group had just stopped meeting — a smaller (I think 4-person) private critique group had spun off from it.
So Max handed me the reigns for bham_writers and I started the public group up again, meeting Monthly in the Bellingham Library for 3 months in 2010 (April, May, June), with the help of Cory Skerry, who was a member of the original group and also the smaller private critique group. Then things got more complicated in my real life (moved & had our 2nd baby), so things trailed off for a while. I attempted to re-start in November of 2011 but decided to postpone until after the holidays to give us more time to let people know about the group.
> Do you always meet on the last Monday of the month?
Actually, we had talked about the 3rd Monday of the month, but the January one was pushed back by a couple of weeks. I didn’t realize it was the Village Books open mic evening — we can easily avoid the last Monday of the month in the future to accommodate that. I’ve been meaning to go to Village Books to make sure that we’re not overlapping with pre-existing groups and to see if I could find anyone interested in helping with this one.
> Are you a novelist or…? What do you write?
I’ve been working on and off on a sci-fi novel since 2008. I’ve spent a lot of time pre-writing, brainstorming and outlining and have thrown everything out and completely restarted it a couple of times. My goal recently has been 1,000 words a day (still a lot of outlining and brainstorming, but I do hope to have an actual scene written for the writer’s group in two weeks). Cory Skerry has been at this longer than I have, has been published and is probably a better writer than I am (he had a story published in Fantasy Magazine). Though our focus tends to be more speculative/genre fiction, the core elements of writing (POV, description, setting, dialog, plot, etc) are the same with other kinds of fiction and we would love to have more variety in the group.
Will you be able to make it on Jan 30th? Are you interested in giving a short 5-minute talk or helping promote the group? Let me know if you have other questions!
Peter Rust
is there anyone in the group who has completed and polished a book? I find critique much more useful when those involved have finished something…if a committee is to critique, shouldn’t they have experience in the business of writing? And wouldn’t that best be gained by finishing something, finding an agent, or a publisher, or both, and dealing with the rejections from the industry? Perhaps a good topic for conversation…Just wondered…I like the idea of your group…thanks for taking your time to organize it…yours, glenn
Excellent point, Glenn.
Cory Skerry has had a short story published in Fantasy Magazine and has experience dealing with rejections from the industry, etc — certainly more than I have. I agree that it would be good to have more published authors in the group — they are much harder to find (and probably busier) than aspiring authors, but one place to look is http://whatcomwritersandpublishers.org/members-websites/. I certainly want to avoid a pooling of collective ignorance 🙂
One thing that I’ve found to be valuable is finding and reading the top recommended books on the craft of writing and sharing things from them. Even if many in the group aren’t published authors — or perhaps even the best writers — many are good readers and will know when something isn’t quite right. I’ve also found that it is valuable just to see my work through someone else’s eyes (things that I thought I were written clearly were confusing to others).
Let me know if you have ideas for finding/attracting published authors or elevating the quality of the critiquing to a higher level…
thanks for that Peter, I appreciate the quick response…I quite agree that people reading one’s work is essential…I can remember many times when I got so frustrated w/an agent of editor that I found “man on the street” readers for clarity.
One way of upping the ante a bit is to encourage people to finish a draft of what they’re doing. You’ve no doubt read Steve King’s “On Writing”—I threw everything else away after that book, it’s the bottom line…write the draft all the way through, discuss it with no one, then go back…if it’s viable, King says (and I’ve found to be true) it will flow…characters who are viable will say what they need to say based upon who they are…the must be 3 dimensional enough, etc., etc…oh, and get the goddamned adverbs out of the expository:-) I have been in an e-mail exchange with him for years, he’s incredibly generous…and it was fun to get his advice on the writing (well, the business of writing) and then to see what he told me come out in his book later.
He emphatically will not directly help a writer get published, by that I mean by using his influence, but he’s very helpful.
I do know an author or two who might join us for an evening…I used to live 2 doors down from Anne Rice in New Orleans, but she’s there, and we’re here, and she’s bat-shit crazy anyway:-) Jean Auel, in Oregon, if we happen to catch her in the area might also…I was honored to escort Ruth to the parties, including Jean’s New Year’s eve parties a few years in a row…I know how ‘name dropping’ this all sounds…but it is a quirk of my writing career that I have known some of the greats, and have had their confidence in some cases, but not their blessing on my work:-) It’s all very strange, but it’s what I got:-) It goes on and on, as I say, weird…My mother and May Sarton were very close friends, for example…I unfortunately never knew May well, damnit, and she was one of the best at narrative prose ever.
I’m experienced, and have hundreds of rejections, a few things published in obscure vehicles, and I wrote for corporations and lawyers for years, and served as Chairman of a County Democratic Party where I did a lot of writing over the years, but so far an unsuccessful novelist…I did sell film rights to one I wrote some years back. I don’t set myself forward as expert, just experienced. I’ve been fortunate and privileged to know some fine writers, my mentor was Ruth Beebe Hill, author of “Hanta Yo”—her book still holds the record for weeks on the NY times best sellers list…she & Ayn Rand owned the home in Los Angeles together.
My experience is that the transition most writers never truly make is from the craft of writing, to the business of writing (no putting lipstick on the pig, it’s brutal), and the two are of course unrelated. I made the transition about 12 years ago (Thanks to Ruth)…as I say, I’ve had some fortunate instances…my mother was an HIstorian, well known within her specialty, and a gifted writer…History is of course a writing profession…my mother used to say if you see someone going for an English degree, they’re probably not a writer…”The writing happens over in the History Dept.,” she used to say.
Anyway, a writer’s group sounds great…I wanted to start one some years back and became absorbed in my own stuff…finished a 250,000 family saga based upon my mother’s family’s founding of Savannah with Oglethorpe…I’ve been re-writing and editing on it for about a year…but it took 90 days to write the first draft—ever since Steve told me that, I got into gear, and have completed and polished 7 books…the first 3 were before I knew what he was trying to tell me. Agonizing over a piece is a sign it’s likely not viable…you know the ones…a chapter a year, etc., etc.
I keep watch….yours, glenn
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