Next Noble Pen Meeting

August 7th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Welcome to Anthony who found the group, and Manuel who came back after several years.

Victories

Dylan submitted Sand and Blood to a super-critical reviewer, who reports how many minutes it took him to find three major things wrong with a story.   At Dylan’s work a high manager mentioned his book to a meeting of company VIPs.

Tyree has Bombay Sapphire 2 about 10% done, with 3,000 words added this week, in addition to his work on Wolf.

Barbara and Matt further developed a character in their novel.

Education

Word repetition is a too-common, although not major, flaw in most people’s first drafts.  A little attention and substitutions can quickly make improvements.  This article offers some examples of rephrasing, as does this one.  

A search will find many tools to point out repetition, sucy as this one.

Do not fall into the trap of simply choosing the next word in a thesaurus, because synonyms all have nuances and you want the right shade of meaning.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing. ~William Safire

Upcoming Schedule

August 7
Ciuin
Tyree
Laura

August 14
Ciuin (could take double)
Tyree (would cede)
Open slots

August 21
Aimee
Ciuin
Open slots

August 28
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill