The Noble Pen for Oct 6, 2016

Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 6th, 2016 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Time travel aficionados may be interested in a new book that considers the literary history and the physics.

–//–

The Marion Public Library will host a Celebrate Writing event on Saturday October 15th. It’s free, with an optional $5 lunch with the presenting authors. Two morning sessions and one afternoon session each offer a choice of topics on writing and publishing. Registration is encouraged for the morning, and required for the lunch and afternoon session.

Victories

Dylan submitted a story to a publisher for consideration.

Stacy rewrote her reviewed chapters.

Cassie wrote a scene for a possible future story.  Whe is working to get an audio book made for Home for the Holiday.

Education

Participial phrases can be tricky to apply correctly.  The participle is a verb form (action word) which most often, but not always, ends in -ing.   Participial phrases are attached to a complete sentence to modify or supply additional information about the subject or object noun (person or thing) of the sentence.  Here a discussion of participial phrases.

For example, “Rowing the heavy boat, John soon tired.”  The participial phrase “Rowing the heavy boat” is not a sentence because there is no subject person to do the rowing.  “John soon tired” is a sentence, but needs the added phrase to explain why John, the subject of the sentence, became tired.

The phrase should be set off with commas from the sentence as above, or in “Pulling into the driveway, the noisy car alerted the occupants of the house.” The noun should always be the nearest one to the phrase that modifies it.  It would be incorrect to write “Pulling into the driveway, the occupants of the house heard the noisy car” because the phrase appears to modify the nearest noun, occupants, not the intended noun, car.

The present participle implies simultaneous actions.  “Walking into the building, John opened the heavy door” obviously violates the order of events, since he can’t walk in until after he has opened the door.  “Chugging her beer, she laughed in his face” can’t happen all at once; pick an order and rewrite accordingly.

Upcoming Schedule

Oct 6
Nick
Laura
Andrea

Oct 13
Riley
Cassie
Stacy H.

Oct 20
Aime W.
Greg
Open slot

Oct 27
Open slots

Nov 3
Open slots

Keep Writing,

Bill