Next Noble Pen Meeting

Aug 8th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

England plans to honor Jane Austen by putting her picture and a quote on paper currency.  Some cheer and some nitpick that a good quote used came from a not-so-nice character.   It appears that they aren’t as limited in their choices as the US, where dead presidents are mostly pictured.

-//-

Poll: please email the newsletter editor (privately if you wish) as to what percentage of the “News” and “Education” sections are worth your time to read.  I get almost zero feedback about items being useful or worthless, and wonder if it is worth the time to collect them.

Victories

Ciuin’s submitted her academic article to the museum journal.

Dylan got 4th place in a short story contest.  He has made good progress in packaging Sand and Blood for publication.

Tyree needed a change of focus, so he pulled out an old short story and a poem, polished them up, and submitted them for publication.

Education

Some (but not all) writers advise that your first draft should be just be a way to capture ideas, “mining the clay and not making the sculpture,” as Kathy Leonard Czepiel puts it.  Jon Gingerich says the first draft is expected to be pretty bad.  You should then rework it before anyone else reads it.

This is also the philosophy pushed by NaNoWriMo, where you write a novel in a month (that’s coming up in a couple months, so think about participating).   Julie Danneberg also likes the “fast and furious” method.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. ~Terry Pratchett

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist. ~Jane Smiley

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity. ~Stephen King

You can’t revise it if you haven’t written it. ~Justin Cronin

(The minority opinion:) I don’t write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.  ~Dean Koontz

Upcoming Schedule

August 8th

Rachel
Tyree
Barbara

August 15th

Nick
Ciuin
Tyree ?

August 22nd

Rachel
Tyree
Ciuin

August 29th

Janice
Matt & Barbara
open slot

August 36th

Nick
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill