Noble Pen Meeting

August 26th, 2010
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

Artists are people who say I can’t fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight and a half by eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

Victories

Nick got back the professional critique of his cowboy novel. His condition is listed as stable.

Dave got paid for writing, not just the promise of, but actual money.

Ciuin sent Petty Theft to an agent, who seems very interested. I am immediately adding more Nazis to all my stories.

Tony thanks everyone for the fine comments on his last chapter, which he has already acted upon–in a good way, no stomping or cursing or anything.

Rachel has returned to school and is, by now, studying commercial music, which I think involves using all four chords.

Housekeeping

Now that we have grown to around a dozen regular and semi-regular members, maybe we need to readdress how we do scheduling. I want to keep it relatively simple, but make it a little less random. I’m just throwing this out as an idea, to see what people think.

I’m thinking of a 2 round lottery type system, where on the first meeting of every month we assign slots for the next month.

In the first round, we would hand out numbers to people who do not have a piece scheduled for the current month, and have about 50% attendance.

If any slots are left, we will open up a second round to anyone else who wants a slot.

News

From The New York Times, via George, an interesting article about the world of music recording which makes an interesting point on the dangers of too much copyright.

As someone who has sent hundreds of emails to agents, I know they make mistakes, because frankly, I rule. I’m also very humble.

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