Next Noble Pen Meeting
October 25th, 2012 at 7 pm
Scott’s Family Restaurant
1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids
Victories
Dylan received three form rejections. He didn’t let that discourage him; he submitted Flight to the Harper Voyager opening.
Shannon got a five-star review on Amazon for Minion.
Ciuin wrote a class paper today that she thinks is good, and for the first time in quite a while she didn’t let a former teacher’s discouraging words hold her back.
Education
Backups are vital. You will need one when you are least prepared. Some people consider it necessary to have at least three copies of any important work, for instance on the working computer, on a flash drive, and on a cloud storage service.
One such cloud service is Dropbox, which offers 2 Gbytes for free, keeps a couple old versions of things that are replaced, allows you to share selected folders with people by giving them a password, and also provides synchronization if you set it up on multiple computers. There are other similar services.
Setting it up on your computer with this referral link will get both you and me some extra storage space compared to just going to the site and signing up (or ask one of your friends for a referral and help them).
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Don’t quit your day job. This article shows that even optimistic estimates of writing success, like making the NY Times Best Seller list, aren’t enough to live on.
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Do you have to have inspiration from real people to create characters? Robert J. Sawyer argues that you shouldn’t have to, but the idea of totally making them up goes against something deep inside us.
Another essayist does not like to read fiction in which real people are recognizable, even aside from the legal problems an author may encounter.
Here are ten famous characters modeled on real people. And this article gives some examples, but lists several reasons why you usually shouldn’t.
I never tell who it is I base my character quirks on in case they get offended, but I do base them on real people. As an actor I see myself a bit like a sponge where I absorb peoples different characteristics. It makes my characters on screen more realistic. ~Emily Blunt
In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness. ~Tom Stoppard
I’m very drawn to characters who are very flawed. I’m less interested in characters who are just good or bad, because to me then they’re not real people. ~Rachel Weisz
Upcoming Schedule
Oct 25th
Tyree
Dylan
Ciuin
Nov 1st
Nick
Tyree
Dylan
Nov 8th
Tyree
Open slots
Nov 15th
Nick
Open slots
Keep Writing,
Bill