Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 16th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature was recently awarded to  French writer Patrick Modiano for work focused on the Nazi WW II occupation of his country and the Holocaust.  One judge made news by criticizing US literature.

Victories

Cassie rewrote nine chapters of Dreams in Red, adding 300 to 600 words per chapter and one of them entirely new.

Tyree did personal research on collapsing from dehydration and exhaustion.  He recovered and will use the experience in a story.

Ciuin got a B+ on a class essay and 100% on another.

Education

Present participles are words like walking, sitting, or looking that end in -ing.  They are a useful, but sometimes overused, part of speech. This particularly sensitive blogger often finds them annoying when used frequently to combine actions into one sentence.

They can be misused.  When a participle phrase is added to a sentence to link two actions, they imply simultaneity that the writer sometimes did not intend.  “Walking up the stairs, he opened the door” is contradictory because he could not do both at once.

Upcoming Schedule

Oct 16
Tyree
Dylan
Aimee

Oct 23
Cassie
Eugenia
Tyree

Oct 30
Tyree (?)
Dylan(?)
Ciuin

Nov 6
Open slots

Nov 13
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill