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November Meeting Minutes 2015

Hi Everyone,

Today we held our November meeting. Our next meeting will be held on Sunday December 20, 2015, at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN from 12:30to 3 PM.

PRESENT: Deb, Jan, Ryan, Mike, Carol, Jan, Wendy, Brett, Dawn, Jerry, Marlys, Scott, Angie, Mary, Niomi, Sharon.

TALKING STICK BOOKS: In December, we will be sending out the call for submission for TS25 for 2016.

We have been getting book orders and also donations. Thanks to you all! Give to the Max Day also brought in a nice amount of donations for us. Mary Casanova sent us a check for a percentage of her book sales at our book release party. We love you, Mary!

WRITING EVENTS: Marlys attended the Will Weaver workshop in Bemidji recently. She said he gave some great tips on revision and ways to tighten up your story. Use only strong nouns and verbs, cut your modifiers, get rid of words ending in “ly.”

Jerry spoke about the Brainerd Writers Alliance event. Niomi was the fiction judge. Jerry won second place. Pamela Joern put on a good workshop. She gave good tips that Jerry used in his current story. One was to change the sex of one of your main characters. Another is to mention what kind of shoes or boots your characters are wearing.

Jerry heard of a 3 or 4 day writing conference by Northland writers in Grand Marais. We will have to watch for that next year.

Jerry is involved with PRLAAC and working on an event called the Great American Story—oral story telling. This will be scheduled during Art Leap in September 2016. More on that as we learn about it.

Scott has been busy co-editing a book by Philip J Farmer and some comics. His next project will be involving a magazine called Red Canals which will be science fiction about Mars, a celebration in literature and/or comics.

Deb had 14 student writers this year in Pine River who were involved in her after school project. The students each write a book in a month and Deb gets them printed for them. What a wonderful project.

GOOD TIPS: Writing prompt: start off with this: Ten things I know to be true…

We had so many of us today that not everyone got to read, but most did. We had a great time critiquing and talking. It was one of those times where we just hated to quit talking and go home.