Category Archives: Newsletters

This is the weekly newsletters for the Noble Pen Writer’s Group.

Noble Pen Meeting, July 16, 2009

Newsletters

Noble Pen Meeting

July 16, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

A southern writer named John Kennedy Toole wrote a comic novel about life in New Orleans called A Confederacy of Dunces. It was so relentlessly rejected by publishers that he killed himself. That was in 1969. His mother refused to give up on the book. She sent it out and got it back, rejected, over and over again. At last she won the patronage of Walker Percy, who got it accepted by the Louisiana State University Press, and in 1980 it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
–Rotten Reviews

Victories

Becky is reasonably sure she has a place to live.

Ciuin shared some excellent experiences from the city of brotherly love and enjoyed the city’s rich culture. She also got some great information at the Holocaust Museum.

Bill has been replaced by his clone. Don’t let on that we know.

News

Next week is the RWA (Romance Writers of America) 29th Annual National Conference. For all the people who can not attend, Lynn Viehl has a list of online events which will coincide with the conference. In addition to these events, she will also be doing her Left Behind and Loving It online conference.

Nathan Bransford has a post by Victoria Mixon telling us everything we need to know in 1000 words.

In the obvious news today, a new poll shows women are titillated by romance novels but not so much by reference books.

Upcoming Critiques

Thursday, July 16. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 7, by Nick. I have two extra copies I will bring next week.

Revelation, Chapters 47-, by Scott Clark. Visit his website at saclark.com, navigate to the “Publishers” tab, and click on the “NP” button to download copies of this section. If you cannot access his website, email him

Thursday, July 23th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Petty Theft, revisions from Ciuin

A Convenient Truth (I got the name right that time,) new chapters from Ian.

Thursday, July 30th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 8, I’m guessing

Call of the Beast, Chapter One revised.


Keep Writing

Shannon

Noble Pen Meeting, July 9, 2009

Newsletters

Noble Pen Meeting

July 9, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

…there’s a hormone secreted into the bloodstream of most writers that makes them hate their own work while they are doing it, or immediately after. This, coupled with the chorus of critical reaction from those privileged to take a first look, is almost enough to discourage further work entirely.
–Frances Ford Coppola

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
–Mark Twain

Victories

Nick got an HP netbook. He will now explore the final frontier of e-mailing attachments.

Bill and I both have ideas for new sci-fi pieces. His will involve transmission correction algorithms. Mine will have drinking, gambling, and nudity.

After several warnings, Facebook has decided not to cancel Ian’s account despite his penchant for complete sentences. Of course, grammar isn’t the only thing Facebook has destroyed.

I have a new keyboard too. Mine is made of aluminum. ALUMINUM!

Editorial Note: I was going to do links in the above victories, but for some reason they were all highly offensive. They will be available upon request.

News

The New York Times blog has a wonderful piece using illustration and informal prose to tell a bit about Thomas Jefferson.

The editor of the Absent Willow Review asked me to inform you they are looking for submissions. They offer a $50 prize to the best story in an issue.

B&N.com has discounted minimum shipping for the holiday weekend; you can get free expedited (three biz days or less on in stock items) shipping for online orders of $10 (versus the usual $25.)

You know how every once in awhile I say that I got something off the site of that Canadian Sci-Fi author whose name I can never remember? His name is Robert J. Sawyer, and he is a Hugo and Nebula winner. Here is his information on writing. Some of it is a little outdated, but it’s good stuff.

Upcoming Critiques

Thursday, July 9th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique
Revised chapters from Ciuin?

A Convenient Truth—new chapters from Ian.

Ian and Ciuin, please note
Tell me by Saturday if you cannot make it for any reason, and I’ll give Scott an extra slot, as he’s going to be on the injured list towards the end of the month.

Thursday, July 16. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 7, by Nick. I have two extra copies I will bring next week.

Revelation, Chapters 47-, by Scott Clark. Visit his website at saclark.com, navigate to the “Publishers” tab, and click on the “NP” button to download copies of this section. If you cannot access his website, email him

Thursday, July 25th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique
Right now, we don’t have anyone requesting these slots. If we don’t get anything by Monday, I will be calling a flash fiction contest using prompts given to me by Bill. Also, I have some revisions of Call of the Beast I’d like to throw into the ring at some point.

Keep Writing

Shannon

Noble Pen Meeting, July 2, 2009

Newsletters

Noble Pen Meeting

July 2, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
–Mark Twain

Victories

Ian wrote another Convenient Truth chapter, and created a Facebook page. His first awkward friend request is already on its way.

After twelve attempts, Shannon has the next version of Call of the Beast Chapter One. If COTB falls through, he has vowed to quit writing and go back to his other live goal of winning the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.

News

Now is your chance to name Dick Cheney’s memoir. It is a pity “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” is already taken.

JA Konrath has written an article asking “Should You Self-Publish.”

Nathan Bransford did an online poll on whether listening to audio books count as reading. Not to ruin the suspense, but it was too close to call.

Upcoming Critiques

Thursday, July 2. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 6, by Nick. All the folders he brought to Happy Chef were passed out.

Revelation, Chapters 43-46, by Scott Clark. Visit his website at saclark.com, navigate to the “Publishers” tab, and click on the “NP” button to download copies of this section. If you cannot access his website, email him

Thursday, July 9th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Revised chapters from Ciuin?

An Inconvenient Truth—new chapters from Ian.

Thursday, July 16th. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

I’m thinking Scott and Nick again if they’re willing

Keep Writing

Shannon

News Flash: Facebook Group

Extra, Newsletters, Special Announcements, , ,

News Flash!

Noble Pen Now on Facebook!

I’ve created a Noble Pen group on Facebook.  At this time I’ve invited about ten people that were in my profile to join the group, however I may have missed others.  If I missed you, I’m apologize, but would like to invite you to join the group.  If you know any others that might be interested in our little group, please invite them as well.
The plan for the Noble Pen group on Facebook is to provide another syndication point for picking up our newsletters and news items from the website.  I would also encourage our Facebook participants to share the newsletters and announcements via their profiles.

Noble Pen Meeting, June 25, 2009

Newsletters

Noble Pen Meeting

June 25, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
– Sylvia Plath

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
– Douglas Adams

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
– Henry David Thoreau

Victories

Nick wrote something.

George got a new keyboard. I don’t want to know why he needed one.

Scott attended a writer’s workshop class, which was struck by an iceberg. He survived by boogie boarding on a frozen Leonardo Dicaprio.

Becky registered for classes and got a new netbook.

Ian helped his daughter rewire her house, absorbing enough voltage to drive his hybrid home without engaging the gasoline engine.

I won the slogan contest with “Dedicated to Developing Community Writers.”

News

Lynn Viehl reminds you not to make a sequel for a book which is still copyrighted.

JK Rowling is being sued by the estate of a guy that once wrote a book about magic.

Engadget is lukewarm on the Kindle DX.

Upcoming Critiques


Thursday, June 25. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Something by Wendy, I think it’s another revision of her chapter one. I might be wrong. An email to her will get you clarification and a copy.

A Convenient Truth by Ian. Available from Ian

Because Wendy can not make this Thursday, I went ahead and put Solomon’s Heist back online. This week, we can look at Thirteen and Fourteen specifically, but I will put the whole piece up in case anyone wants to review 1-12, or is so captivated they can’t stop reading until the end–I wish.

http://shannnonryan.net/user
user:noblepen
pass:nblpn

Thursday, (Possibly) July 2. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 6, by Nick. All the folders he brought to Happy Chef were passed out.

Revelation, Chapters 43-?, by Scott Clark. Visit his website at saclark.com, navigate to the “Publishers” tab, and click on the “NP” button to download copies of this section. If you cannot access his website, email him

Straw Poll

The meeting after next is July 2nd, and the 3rd will be a holiday for a lot of people. If I have a meeting, who will show?

Keep Writing

Shannon

June 18, 2009: Noble Pen Meeting

Newsletters

Noble Pen Meeting

June 18, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.
–Samuel Johnson

Don Murray, a former editor at Time, a Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of 10 books on writing says that at age 73, he is still a young writer trying to learn his craft.
–Ken O’Quinn, Communication World, Oct 1998

Victories

Ian washed a new story and turned in his car for critique.

Becky has fixed her desktop, but claims she can’t tell us how she did it. I have it on good authority that she is now wanted by authorities in Nova Scotia.

Give George huge props. He has built us a wonderful new website, http://www.noblepencr.org, and footed the bill. I helped with the graphics, but is still not as cool as this site.

Bill won last week’s writing contest and took home a copy of “No Plot? No Problem!” by Chris Baty.  I think the organizers fixed the whole thing.

News

Lynn Viehl hates your antagonist. (Mine too.)

The BBC has a piece on songs influenced by JG Ballard, the piece is wasted on me as none of the songs are by Koda Kumi.

Finally, someone explains why all media comes out on Tuesday–including new windows viruses.

Upcoming Critiques

Thursday, June 18. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 5, by Nick. All the folders he brought to Happy Chef were passed out.

Revelation, Chapters 32-?, by Scott Clark. Visit his website at saclark.com, navigate to the “Publishers” tab, and click on the “NP” button to download copies of this section. If you cannot access his website, email him

Thursday, June 25. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Something by Wendy

A Convenient Truth by Ian

Contest

George has given us a contest for this week. Come up with a ten word or less slogan for the Noble Pen web site (http://www.noblepencr.org). Mine is going to be “More fun than Monkey Steals the Peach.”

You keep writing, I’m going to go watch that Koda Kumi video again.

Shannon

Noble Pen Extra, Flash and Scott

Extra

Noble Pen Extra

Don’t be frightened of cliches.
— Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies

Flash Fiction Entries

We had three entries for the flash fiction contest. The entries can be found at http://shannonryan.net/user/ with the usual username/password (noblepen/nblpn). Thank you to everyone who participated. Remember, the best way to make yourself a better writer is to write more often.

A Thank You Note from Scott

Dear Fellow Noble Penners – as the oldest (as in ancient) yet newest member of the group, I have only been writing fiction in earnest for the past three years – prior to that you know I was a syndicated columnist and non-fiction author for almost two decades, and I now see how difficult the hurdle is to overcome when an author attempts to transition from the world of non-fiction into the world of fiction.

I particularly wanted to share with my fellow Noble Penners some eye-opening experiences I have had with the group in the reviews of my first 31 chapters.

Aside from learning to banish the cop-out verb “was” from my vocabulary, there are two other significant changes I am making in both my manuscript and my writing style.

First, I am learning that in many cases ‘less is better,’ particularly when it comes to explaining physical situations, environments, how things operate, etc. (a good example would be my three page explanation of the GADS-I program and its subsequent transition to GADS-II, which did nothing to move the story line along). My engineering/non-fiction backgrounds have always pointed me in the direction of detailed explanations. In the fiction world, I now appreciate the beauty of leaving the process of discovery to the reader.

Second, I am learning that in many cases ‘more is better,’ particularly when it comes to emotional responses of my characters. While I use ‘character prompt sheets’ developed in detail for each major character to thoroughly understand their emotional responses to specific situations, my readers are not privy to this knowledge; hence they lack sufficient detail to understand why my characters act (and react) as they do (a good example would be why in the hell Brooke kisses her professional partner Lance). Again, my engineering/non-fiction backgrounds have thought me for several decades that good science and good non-fiction is fairly devoid of emotion (this world devoid of emotion was further enhanced by my lifetime of experiences as a twenty-something combat helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War).

Therefore, my time these days is being spent in fairly major edits to my earlier chapters in Revelation to ensure my physical detail is abridged sufficiently to engage the reader thoroughly, while my emotional detail is enhanced sufficiently to allow the reader to fully realize how and why my characters react as they do.

As I submit new chapters to the group (you are currently almost half-way through the manuscript), I will try to include some of the additional edits I have made to the earlier chapters to better facilitate you understanding of my characters.

And for Bill and anyone worried about how my quantity of characters that keeps growing, they have pretty much reached the limit, except for a few characters about to be introduced and immediately killed off.

My sincere thanks for your feedback to date, which I believe has made me a better author already. See you June 18 after the Writers Workshop on Sci-Fi.

Scott Clark

June 11, 2009: Noble Pen Meeting

Newsletters

Noble Pen Meeting

June 11, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.
–Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Verse 63

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.
—Stephen King, On Writing

Victories

George claimed he was alive–again.

Sherry’s granddaughter won an award for reading 99 books during the school year–and writing a report on each one. I once got an incomplete in a college course because I couldn’t watch 12 movies in a month and write reports about them.

Sherry has also been turning out a good deal of posts on the WordPress blog.

News

Lifehacker suggests stopping midsentence to ward off writer’s block. They have another half-dozen or so hints if you search their site.

A blog entry lists Mark Twain’s 10 tips for writing–wait, Mark Twain? Can that really be classified a “News?” I’m pretty sure he died in the eighties… or was that Liberace?

Here’s a nice piece of advice: Sometimes your character has to be a jerk.

Upcoming Critiques

Thursday, June 11. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Call of the Beast, Chapter 1–refresher with alternate beginning paragraphs, by Shannon Ryan. One more time, we’re going back to the start to think about the piece as a whole. A set up sheet with the new hooks will be available by the 4th on my site, shannonryan.net –log into “Writing in Progress” (noblepen/nblpn) or email me a for this section.

Writing Exercise — It’s not too late, the deadline has been extended to Saturday at noon. We will rate an critique the writing excercise. Winner will get a choice of a book or pie. I will have the pieces on my site by tomorrow night (being as how I was so kind to extend the deadline.)

Thursday, June 18. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Exodus Chapter 5, by Nick.

Revelation, Chapters 32?, by Scott Clark. Visit his website at saclark.com, navigate to the “Publishers” tab, and click on the “NP” button to download copies of this section. If you cannot access his website, email him

Thursday, June 25. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

I’m asuming Nick is out. Scott, can you go? This will leave at least one free slot is anyone is interested. Otherwise I will offer to restart Solomon’s Heist so everyone can get to the end.

Keep Writing

Shannon