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October Writers’ Meeting

Hi Everyone,

Today we held our October meeting of the Jackpine Writers’ Bloc. The next meeting will be held on Sunday, November 18, 2012, from 12:30 to 3PM at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN.

PRESENT: Marlys, Deb, Sharon, Elisa, Jerry, Julia, Betty, LuAnne.

TALKING STICK 21
We are still selling Talking Sticks since the Book Release Party, both on the website, by email, and at Beagle Books. We had a good day at our Book Party, though we had a few less people than usual. We are not sure if that is because of the different location or because we also had a workshop–not sure of the reason. But we still had a good turnout and a pleasant day.

OTHER PAST WRITING EVENTS Lake Region, Saturday Oct. 6. Jerry, Elisa and Marlys attended. They had an excellent poetry class with Paul Carney, a class on personality traits by Jessica and Scott Stewart, a talk by Will Weaver, and other classes. Everyone who attended enjoyed it. Lake Region always puts on a good day of classes.
Sinclair Lewis event in Sauk Centre. Jerry and Julia attended. Good speakers there also.
League of MN Poets, attended by Marlys. Joyce Sutphen was one of the speakers. Many of us know and love Joyce Sutphen’s poetry.

COMING EVENTS NA-NO-WRI-MO–National Novel Writing Month (November). Deb will again be putting on a class for this, on Mondays in November (Nov. 4-25) in Pine River at Pine River High School, Room 58. You can attend the class or participate via email or both. The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. This is approximately 1700 words per day. Deb will have a special private blog where you can post sections of your work if you wish or mention your plot, etc. Cost is $10. For more information, contact Deb at cordria@hotmail.com.
For those who are interested in other challenges like this, there is also a Script Frenzy in April, a 50,000 Writing Competition in July (JUL-NO-WRI-MO), and a Poetry challenge also in April (NA-PO-WRI-MO). Email Deb above for more information.

BRAINERD WRITERS ALLIANCE 2012 Fall Writers Festival is coming up Saturday, October 27 from 9AM to 3:30PM at Central Lakes College at 501 W College Drive, Brainerd MN 56401. For more information, go to their website www.brainerdwriters.com. Speaker Bill Meissner. Several writers we know did well in their competition: Sonja Kosler, Niomi Phillips, Kevin Zepper. Our own Jerry Mevissen judged the fiction.

MISCELLANEOUS The Editorial Freelancers Association is a national, nonprofit organization of self-employed professionals in publishing and communications. www.the-efa.org.

Good book–From Where You Dream:The Process of writing fiction. This book is a transcription and condensation of Robert Olen Butler’s Masters class on writing.
This is one writer’s process for writing: thinking the whole book through first, using note cards, then beginning the writing.
Such a good meeting today. Many read things that they are working on. Jerry surprised us all with a one act play. Others read poetry or creative nonfiction. Elisa entertained us all with her story about voting in New York Mills compared to how it was in New York City. We also had a song parody by Julia–something new to us. Good work, everyone. We had conversations about working on books in progress and publishing methods.

Good to see all of you!