Noble Pen Meeting

September 23, 2010
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids (for now)

“Why are we drinking Zima? It’s beyond irony. It’s not funny or anything. It’s just gross. Why not just serve us jugs of Hitler’s piss instead?”
“Drinking Zima is something Douglas Coupland would make a character do.”
“To what end?”
“It’d be a device that would allow him to locate the characters in time and a specific sort of culture.”
–Douglas Coupland, jPod

Victories

Julia has signed up for a writing class at Kirkwood and came to check us out.

Tyree’s lesbian werewolf story has been accepted to an anthology, while my were-carp snuff story remains unsold, and I thought it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Tony sent a follow-up query to Flash Fiction Online, who are letting his story ripen like a batch of kimchi.

Ciuin has written her last story of City Revealed. I predict this will be their Waterloo, or at least their Cedar Falls.

News

This list of grammar tips helped me realize I was incorrectly using i.e. when I should have been using e.g.

Nathan Bransford gives advice on how to deal with contradictory query advice.

Housekeeping

Scheduling

Taking many of your suggestions on scheduling into consideration, I kludged together a tweak of our old system. Here’s how it works.

When we get within a month of having an empty slot, I ask who wants a slot and record the names of everyone who wants one along with date constraints (e.g. I can’t make it the 28th.) These names constitute a “round” of critiques. I try to fit them in in a sensible order. When we run within a month of empty slots again, I will start a new round.

New scheduled critiques (the first round) are indicated below by an asterisk(*). Hopefully, I got everything right, but if not, we can reshuffle.

* I managed to spell asterisk correctly–first try!

Upcoming Schedule

September 23rd
Dylan
Bob
Dave

September 30th
Ian
Dylan
Educational Programming — Shannon

October 7th
Tony
Ciuin
Bob

October 14th
Shannon
*Nick
*Mark

October 21
Tyree
*Tony
*Dylan

October 28
*Bob
*Shannon
Educational – Looking for Volunteer

November 4
*Tyree

Keep Writing, Penites.

Shannon