Noble Pen Meeting, July 30, 2009

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Noble Pen Meeting

July 30, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

I happen to remember  that over 20 years ago, when I first started telling people — when I was a teenager — that I wanted to be a writer,  I was met with this same kind of, sort of fear-based reaction.  And people would say, “Aren’t you afraid you’re never going to have any success? Aren’t you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing’s ever going to come of it and you’re going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams  with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure?” Like that, you know…

Like my dad, for example, was a chemical engineer and I don’t recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer, you know? It didn’t — that chemical engineering block John, how’s it going? It just didn’t come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven’t really earned a reputation over the centuries  for being alcoholic manic-depressives.

–Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love


Victories

Ciuin wrote more pages. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine they are about something like this (ok, it’s old, but I still like it.)

Ian went home today and found his house beeping. It transformed into a Decepticon and shot his neighbor’s house. Then it did a little dance.

George has been working all week from home on a disaster recovery test. Thankfully, he put on pants to come to the meeting.

News

Remember how Amazon pulled all those books off it’s Kindle e-reader. This week, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO apologized for removing them.

PBS’s Newshour also had a piece on electronic books.

Agent Jessica Faust tells you when she stops reading your query.

I found this great little blog written by an intern at a publishing house. And always remember this piece of advice I have heard from multiple sources: if you are talking to the intern of an agent or publisher be polite and treat them with respect. They might be the person who decides if a senior partner reads your work, or they might be the next up-and-comer in the business.

Upcoming Critiques


Thursday, July 30th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Petty Theft revisions from Ciuin Due to computer problems Ciuin will have to re-schedule.

Call of the Beast, Chapter One revised. I will have a copy on my website sometime this week. Remember that’s shannonryan.net/user with a username of noblepen and a password of nblpn

Thursday, Aug 6th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 8, Nick passed out new copies.

Revelations Section 9, can be found at: http://saclark.com/SAC-6-NP.html

Thursday, Aug 13th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

I assume Ciuin and Ian are going to want to continue, if they don’t, we’ll open one up and make the other a writing contest.


Keep Writing

Shannon