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June 20th 2003

Today was our June meeting at Beagle Books. The next meeting will be held July 20 at Beagle Books in Park Rapids from 1:30 till 4 PM. Present today were: Russ, Rosa, Craig, Florence, Sharon, Tarah and Janet Pratt.

TALKING STICK 12

Work is progressing on TS12. A week ago we had 40 submissions. Today we have 76 and still growing. Looks like we should have a great assortment. Our Editorial Board will be: Beth, Sharon, Tarah;, Rosa and Marion. We have Russ as an alternate just in case someone can’t make it. Deadline is June 15. Sharon plans to have everything copied for each editorial board member by June 21 and waiting at Beagle Books to be picked up. Everyone needs to get the submissions read as soon as possible. It may be July 12 or July 13 before we meet. We would like to do it sooner, but that looks like the first date we can all get together. If we get late entries, we will probably still try to include them.
Florence mentioned that in some volume of the Talking Stick, it would be interesting if we had room to show how a poem emerged, from the first writing, through the edits and to the final version. Or, writing one idea as a poem, a prose poem, and a story.

OLDER TALKING STICKS

Driftwood Book Store in Detroit Lakes has asked for 10 of our TS11 books. We will get them to them as soon as possible. Sharon has taken sets of the books around to doctors’ waiting rooms in the area. She is going to take some to the Museum in Park Rapids. They have a gift shop and asked us to bring some in. We can sell the older ones for $2.00 each like on the web site. We would like to get $4.00 for TS11 but they could retail for $8.00.
Janet mentioned that Historic Homes Theater would display some of our books. Another possibility would be Dwelling in the Woods, a retreat near Mille Lacs Lake. Janet will send us the information on them.

READING

The poetry reading at Steamin’ Bean in Detroit Lakes is still on schedule for 2 PM on Saturday, June 14. We have at least 8 readers: Sharon, Tarah, Rosa, Beth, Marion, Janet Pratt, Judy Merritt and Craig. Beth will be talking to the owner again this week about any final details. Perhaps Beth can say a few words about our writers’ group. Then we can go up one at a time, say a little bit about ourselves, and read a poem or two. We would like to fill at least an hour so we can each read more if necessary.
We will take some of our Talking Stick books to sell and probably Sharon will bring some of her own poetry books. We can take TS1 to give away since we have 6 boxes of them. Florence mentioned that we should sell a three pack of books.
If this reading goes well, we may ask other places about poetry readings. Possibilities are Black Moose Cafe, Emily’s Harvest, Em’s in Akeley, etc. Someone also mentioned the Woodtick Theater and the Hackensack Art Fair. Does anyone have the date for that?

WRITING WORKSHOPS

Florence asked the status of the workshops we had mentioned. They are being worked on. We need to start choosing dates later in July or August. We will probably have three of them, on two or three different days. We could promote them all together.
Cindie has been to a writer’s retreat at Lake Superior. She has been working on her novel.
Russ has taken a poetry class at Moorhead State in the evening. We would like to get more information on the classes they have. Bemidji State should also have some good writing classes.

WRITING TIPS

Someone mentioned that in a story, your ending should seem inevitable. You also need to be able to write about how circumstances affect the character in the story, not just always totally tell the story. We also mentioned knowing your ending before your start. One writer mentioned having an index card describing each character so you don’t forget hair color, eye color, etc. If you decide to totally change something about a character, use Find and Replace in your word processing program. Someone mentioned never having more than 3 characters in a scene since it is too hard to follow.
Great meeting. If anyone else is interested in the poetry reading in Detroit Lakes on June 14, please e-mail Sharon at sharrick@wcta.net. Everyone please get in your submissions for TS12. If you need the guidelines again, they are on the website or you can e-mail Sharon.