December Meeting Minutes 2017

HI Everyone, Today we held our December 2017 meeting.

PRESENT: Mike, Ryan, Sharon, Tenlee, Lina, Jan, Marlys, Mary.

TALKING STICK 27: We will be sending out the Call for Submissions for Talking Stick 27 soon.

READINGS AND BOOK EVENTS: Mike did a reading at Books& Beer, a brewery. He has done several of these and they are a lot of fun. He did a craft fair in November where he sold 85 books at one event!

Lina mentioned that the Second Annual Invitational Poetry Submissions would be held the third weekend in April. More info on that later.

Elisa is doing well selling her book.

Erin did a poetry reading in Bemidji recently. It was well attended. Her workshops are popular.

Lina has a poetry book out. She recently got first place in the Brainerd Writers Alliance for poetry. Check out the McGrath series of Poets Across Minnesota in February 2018 as she will be a part of that.

REGION 2: Sharon was hoping to get an email back from Region 2. We were told that they might have funds for putting on a workshop in Park Rapids. Sharon never got an email back. She will try contacting someone else there.

MISCELLANEOUS: Tarah and Sharon have finished Doug’s book Wanderlust. Now they are working on Louise’s book Down the Hill One More Time.

The Book World stores have closed. The whole chain is closing. The Park Rapids store kept great track of books on consignment. They closed very early in December. The Bemidji store is staying open longer—till into January. We were told that the Baxter/Brainerd store will stay open longer yet.

Ryan mentioned that he believes that technology (screens) harms your attention span. He is writing in long hand and finds he has better focus. Ryan also mentioned that when you use the word “as,” it makes you try to think about two parts of the sentence simultaneously. But we read sequentially so often it is better to change “as” to “and.”

Ryan told us of a game called Gloom that involves story telling.

Several writers read things they have been working on and the rest of us critiqued. We had some great writings today! Hope to see you all next time.