Next Noble Pen Meeting

Mar 1st, 2012 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

No news is good news.

Victories

Lynda is writing a freelance piece that is to appear in the CR Gazette.

Ciuin was asked to do a 900 word essay for the Higher Education and Learning website on student cramming. She doesn’t have a firm deadline, so she can’t cram for this one. She submitted a question for discussion on a forum and generated a huge response, with her posts being overwhelmingly the highest rated on the forum.

Aimee found time to write another chapter.

Dylan has a story that is accepted for publication in an anthology of 24 stories, subject to his cutting it down by 1,000 words. He also found out that he only came in second in the last contest he wrote for. Maybe the first place author was more famous.

Education

It’s been a while since anyone mentioned Query Tracker. Check it out to see if you could benefit either from registering for its services or just from browsing its forum for information on agents, publishers, writing techniques, success stories, etc. You could spend days on the site.

A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1. [ …] Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It’s the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It’s that important, so don’t mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write. ~Nicholas Sparks

Upcoming Schedule

March 1st

Nick
Ciuin
Tyree

March 8th

Shannon
Aimee
Dylan

March 15th

Shannon
Open slots

March 22nd

Open slots

Keep Writing,

Bill