Two people are walking down a path. They have a relationship. What is it? How do you know? What are the physical signs? What clues are in their dialog?
The prompt this week was to set up a scene showing us the characters and the relationship between them.
Do not tell us. Show us.
Be brave, the roads should be fairly clear by Monday. Due to the Martin Luther King Holiday on Monday, the Forest Grove Senior and Community Center in Forest Grove, Oregon, will be closed. We’ll be meeting again at the home of Parks and Paula Adams in downtown Forest Grove. Please contact us if you need directions.
The streets through Forest Grove are clear and there is plenty of parking on the roads in and around their home, especially near the post office or bank offices. Take care when walking on the sidewalks as the snow has not been cleared thoroughly through the neighborhood.
If you would like to bring a potluck item for sharing and munching after, it would be appreciated.
See you there! And stay warm.
PS: Don’t forget that next Saturday is Wintersong, our annual winter reading event. Help spread the news and invite everyone to join us for this free event.
Due to extreme weather conditions and your personal safety, the Monday Writers in the Grove meeting for January 9, 2017, is cancelled at the Forest Grove Community and Senior Center in Forest Grove, Oregon.
We will return to our normally scheduled meeting next Monday.
Be safe and warm. And stay off the roads unless you absolutely have to be out.
On February 13, 2017, author Kendra Elliot will speak at our Monday Writers in the Grove meeting at 9AM at the Forest Grove Community and Senior Center in Forest Grove, Oregon.
Elliot is a prolific author of suspense, thriller, and murder mysteries. After reading a newspaper article about NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, she decided she could sit down and write 50,000 words in 30 days, and did. She says on her website:
I sat down and wrote a contemporary romance but kept tripping over dead bodies in each chapter. I got the hint and my stories evolved into romantic suspense.
This Pacific Northwest native continues to live in the area and says she is obsessed with forensics, even studying with the FBI, and is involved in many writers associations and groups dedicated to her genre, weaving everything she learns into her fascinating stories.
Elliot has published numerous books including the popular series The Bone Secrets, Callahan and McLane, The Mercy Kilpatrick, and The Rogue River Novella series.
She will be talking about how she writes her books so fast and furious, publishing several a year, and about the publishing industry, dealing with agents and publishers.
Please join us for this fascinating presentation. There is no charge. We thank Kendra Elliot for her generosity in sharing her experiences with us.
This year, we have two Mondays, the days of our regular meetings, falling on holiday dates when the Forest Grove Community and Senior Center is closed. We’re offering two alternatives for the two Mondays.
Monday, December 26, 2016, will be at the home of Paula and Parks Adams in Forest Grove at the regular time of 9AM.
Monday, January 2, 2017, will be at the home of Diana and Elliot Lubarsky in Hillsboro, Oregon, at the regular time.
Bring pen and paper and be ready for some fun prompts!
The January prompt-a-month for our Writers in the Grove members is:
Space Time
The deadline for submissions is 2/1/2017. Submissions will be published within the next 30 days.
Writers in the Grove members may hand in their submissions during the workshops or use our members only submission form. Check out the guidelines and instructions for submissions in the announcement.
The January prompt-a-month for our Writers in the Grove members is a small but powerful word:
Yes
The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2017.
Check out the guidelines and instructions for submissions in the announcement. We’re looking forward to what you will do with this one.
The following is by Writers in the Grove member, Patti Bond.
I enjoyed the time going to door to door saying “trick or treat” as a child. Sometimes my family would go out to eat then Dave and I would have to hurry home and get dressed in our costumes. I really liked dressing up. The only thing I didn’t like was going trick-or-treating in the rain, but that’s what living in Oregon is all about.
I loved the year I was Little Red riding Hood. I was a pretty one that year. I’d be so anxious I would be waiting for trick or treat time, dressed in a cape with a scarf on my head.
That Halloween, after going around several blocks, Dave and I came home and emptied our bags on the living room floor to see what all the neighbors gave us. I remember putting the candy in our piles and thinking “Wow!” My favorites were Smarties, Tootsie Rolls, and bubble gum.
After Dave and I saw our treats, our mother would say, ” Okay, you can have two but you have to put the rest in a bowl and put it in the kitchen.”
We weren’t allowed to have the bowl in our room. Did she think we would eat all the candy at once? If we did, we would get sick, then that would spoil all the fun for next year, as I’d learned in the past. We’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, right?
Due to weather, and some other holiday excuses, Writers in the Grove has extended the deadline for submissions to our annual Wintersong Reading Event 2017 until December 19, 2016.
Get your submissions in as soon as possible to be considered for reading your 4-minute max piece(s) on January 21, 2017.
The following article is by Writers in the Grove member, Carolyn Bradley.
What have I learned about writing from participating in my first NaNoWriMo?
It is more fun to have written than it is to write. Writing is hard. Writing takes discipline.
I have learned that I don’t have any.
And so I am grateful to Writers in the Grove and NaNoWriMo for shoving me off the stump I’ve been roosting on for years and getting my butt moving in the right direction. It helps to be held accountable – someone is expecting some words to be written.
I have learned that I am a planner not a pantser. I probably already knew this but my husband confirmed it. So I know it will be hard to write until the dishwasher is loaded and the bed is made and I’ve learned that an outline is a huge help to me.
I have learned that I am not a very good writer. This surprised me. I am in awe of the wordsmiths in this writers group who write with such amazing clarity – sometimes in fifteen minutes or less. That is not me. But some of them have been writing for a long time, thousands of words, and I am just a beginner. So I have learned that I will have to write many more words in order to improve my craft.
I have learned that I can turn off my editor for long periods of time. This is probably the most important takeaway from this experience for me, since this is what has kept me from writing for so long. For that, I am the most grateful.
I have learned that I have a lot to learn. And more importantly, I know now what I do not know and how to learn it.
And one final thing – please excuse the absence of contractions. It’s a NaNoWriMo thing. If you’ve done NaNoWriMo, I’m sure you’ll understand.
Writers in the Grove 