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November 2011
We had a very nice meeting last week of the Wannabes on November 18th. We welcomed a new member from Martha Moody's fiction writing class from the Fall LLI program. Our membership and reputation continues to grow. It is probably the surroundings at the River Campus at UD.
Members present:
Shulamit H. A
Tom D
Don H
Linda
Don P
Jude
Don Q
Linda F
Anthology Update:
Don H provided an update on the status of the Anthology of Christmas Memories, the first self published book to be produced by the Wannabe's. Don showed the attendees a mock up of the book and its cleverly designed cover. I personally have seen a proof of the interior and it looks great. The first copies will be here for the holiday. This experience in self publishing has been a rewarding "lab" for Don H and we all should thank him for his organizational skills and determination in this great project. We talked about using the education we derived to publish another anthology of short stories and poems next year.
Updates:
Tom D:
Discussed a new book that he is presently reading entitled: " Kindle Formatting" by Joshua Tallent. The paperback book provides a: "The Complete Guide To Formatting Books For The Amazon Kindle".
Tom also sent me a email after the meeting with a link to a video shows the features and functionality of a software program that I listed in a previous Journal posting.
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/
This is a great software tool for organizing your text. pictures and scans into a format that can be edited and proofed. There is even a version of the Mac. And the price is right....its free
Shulamit:
She is a very busy woman. She is participating in a programs that allows her to display her photographs at public venues in downtown Dayton. Her display is at the Montgomery County Commissioners Office near Sinclair. The display will be in place for six months. They encompass many of the landmarks which can be found in Montgomery County.
She has also finished teaching a class in the Fall session of the LLI on how to use Picasso and other photo editing tools like Photo shop. The class was entitled: " Creative Studio and Photo Processing Class".
She also discussed a very talented artist who she meet at one of the literary classes that are conducted at the Dayton Library. Matt Kish, a talented artists who created a colorful drawing for every page of the classic book "Moby Dick".
Here is a link to an article which describes his works in more detail: http://www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2011/10/06/artist-profile-matt-kish-moby-dick-in-pictures.html
Would love to hear him speak to our group.
Don Q:
Discussed a class the he and Linda F will be teaching in the Spring LLI program. Life in 2050 will try to project what life will be like forty years from now. The class will look at history, readings from philosopher's and authors, and historians to help the audience project their personal view of what life will be like in 2050. The five week class will investigate population trends, cultures, education, health, technology and business trends.
Don also discussed a recent Web presentation: "Seven Secrets of Successful Self Published Authors". Here is a link for the Window's version of the presentation.
http://click.writers-community.com/?qs=d7c0ad69fc1c862d81e675d5d42f522b8e1e85e4131666e1ca198e0da3fc2361
The presentation was highlighted by this question: What goes does it do to die with a manuscript in your drawer. How many people would be impacted with your writing before you would say it is worth the investment.
The Seven Secrets.
1. Know your audience.
2. Set a deadline
3. Create a time-line
4. Evaluate your alternatives: Traditional, Do-it-yourself and Supported.
5. Design your cover
6. Social Media--use audience as the key
7. Marketing plan and promotion-celebrate your accomplishment.
Writers Digest, CreateSpace and Digital Book World all offer web seminars all the time on topics that center around your writing passion. Stay tuned for the latest.
Linda F:
Has been busy with her duties with the LLI programs for 2012. After returning from a short trip to Florida she has renewed her efforts to complete her novel on "Life in a Coal Mining Town". The title has not be determined yet.
Jude:
Participating in the Community Voices program at WYSO in Yellow Springs was a real blast. The course is being taught by Sarah Buckingham, WYSO Community Voices coordinator and Neenah Ellis, WYSO general manager. She recommended that we listen to the program "Writing for Radio" which is sponsored by the station.
Her efforts of working on her memoir is coming along. She also still maintains contact with her writing friends that she met while participating in the Writing class in Paris earlier this year.
Don P:
Despite his recent structural problems with his home, he continues to be a creative writer with wonderful stories that he generously shares with us. He recommended Writers Digest for many of the competitions that they conduct for flash fiction and other genre's. We also discussed Smashwords as a good site for those who want to create ebooks for the various platform(Ipod, Kindle, and PC).
Linda M:
Our newest member who joined our group as a result of taking Martha Moody's class this fall in fictional writing. She has been published in the past in the Journal for Adventurous Thought and is recently submitted a new article to The Sun for their consideration. This literary journal has been reommended before by other members of our group.
"The Power of You and The Bond with All" by Lynne McTaggart is another author that Linda recommended. She is also interested in teaching a class in the LLI program entitled: "Cosmic Connections".
Readings:
Don P read the following short story.
Checkers Anyone
John had really looked forward to his visit with his younger brother Harry. This would be John’s first time in the town where his brother now lived. He had planned for a while to visit him and had finally managed to work things out for a week’s stay. They had not seen each other for five years. During the week that he was there his brother was giving him the grand tour. They had visited the courthouse, the new library, the downtown square, the new sewage plant, and two of the three parks in town. As they left the second of the two parks Harry asked him if he wanted to see the giant checkerboard that the city had built and where people took the place of the checkers.
“Yes, I really would enjoy seeing that,” said John.
“It is in this next park, the third one we had planned to visit,” Harry answered. “It’s right on the shore of the lake.
He explained that the squares were two and a half feet on the sides and the people actually stood on them and then moved positions as the two players told them where to step. It was fun and extremely popular on a nice weekend day.
He further explained that the only problem they’d had with the game was the number of terns that like to rest on the board after feeding in the lake. The lake attracted them to the area because it was well stocked with small fish. The townspeople had spent a lot of time in the park with the birds and actually found that they could train them to stay on the black squares. They did this by leaving them alone when they landed on a black square, but when they were on a red square one of the townspeople would pop him with a very low power BB gun that would just scare them without hurting them. The terns quickly learned, it turned out, to just stay on the black squares. This way the people didn’t have to clean the bird droppings off of the squares as often since they only used the red squares for their checker games.
After a short drive John and Harry arrived at the park and walked over to the giant checker board. John quickly noted that all the terns were staying only on the black squares. He asked Harry how, really, had they accomplished this. Harry replied that they had just enforced the one basic rule: No tern on red.
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We hope you enjoyed catching up with our groups activities. Please plan to attend the December meeting. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
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