Write On writers group meeting Nov. 29, 2011
Present: Sue Shaw, Heather Wattie, Don Davies, Mike Whitney, Mike Redfern.
Apologies for absence: Susan Dancer
1. Cabin Fever Daze 2012
It was agreed to book the theatre at Centre 64 for March 3rd 2011, if it is available on that date, for a performance of Cabin Fever Daze. Don, Heather, Sue, and both Mikes are prepared to perform and will ask some musicians and other performers to take part.
We’ll go into planning mode for this in January. (Post-meeting: The theatre is booked for March 3rd but is in use for Off Centre Players rehearsals and set building on the previous Tuesday and Thursday evenings and for a slide show on the cyclorama, which must be white, on the previous Monday. So we will need to be very efficient about back-drop painting, set decorating, and rehearsal.)
2. Write On Journal issue #2
Mike R. is receiving items for inclusion in the second issue of the Write On Journal, which we need to publish in January, leaving time for a third issue in April. The $850 grant from the CKCA for this project must be used before May. Poems, short prose, jokes, artwork, photographs, etc., should be emailed to Mike at redruth@shaw.ca. He will compile, edit, and lay them out for final selection at a meeting in January.
3. Meeting format
It was agreed that, starting in the New Year, we will try to take 20 to 30 minutes each meeting to do writing exercises from a recognized course book in order to improve specific skills, techniques, etc. We can then develop writing assignments to be read at the following meetings to include the use of those skills, techniques, etc. that we have learned and practiced. This will, in effect, be very much like what we do now at each meeting except that we will be using a more structured basis for the writing we do, hopefully leading us to become more effective writers. (Members may explore course material that they have access to and present to the next meeting.)
4. The Blog
Heather thinks that the Write On writers’ group blog needs to be kept up-to-date. No one expressed interest in doing it, as no one is sure just how to operate a blog successfully. Heather will try her best and consult with Nicole who set it up originally.
5. The Writing Exercise
Mike R. was facilitating this meeting and set a 10 minute writing assignment to write a poem or short piece of prose on the topic ‘After the Rain’.
• Don wrote about a perilous crossing of a high pass on icy roads in snowy conditions, narrowly avoiding a serious accident, something he had experienced just a few weeks ago in Utah.
• Sue wrote a grisly tale about a body skewered with a pool cue and with an 8-ball in its mouth.
Mike W. wrote about chickens and ducks greeting the fresh green day following the rain.
Heather wrote 2 poems, one in rhyming couplets which included someone choking on his tie and an onomatopoeia poem about the sound of dripping water.
Mike R. wrote a paragraph about driving on reflective wet roads and a poem about a dog shaking itself.
6. The Writing Assignment
Mike had set a writing assignment at the previous meeting that he had culled from Writers’ Digest. It was to create a cliché-free protagonist – you; choose a career you once contemplated; change your age, gender, race; investigate something that intrigues you; invent a situation that boosts your heart rate; send your character to a place you’d like to visit; and write.
• Mike R. rewrote a chapter from his unfinished mystery novel in which the protagonist was a young, black female detective inspector in London, England, sent out to investigate a possible crime scene where she discovers a dead body.
• Heather wrote a piece in which the protagonist was a gay Flamenco instructor and immigrant who met his soulmate in Walmart. There was a thread of loss/angst woven through as he was asked to release his lover who was suffering with Aids.
• Mike W. did not attempt this assignment.
• Sue wrote an imaginative piece set in a polluted and dangerous future with futuristic technologies ( a carpet mower) and society.
• Don’s protagonist was an idealistic 19 year old female high school grad who applied for a position as a patrol officer whose job it was to collect taxes for the Australian government from the primitive tribesmen in the dangerous and isolated back-country of Papua New Guinea during the days of head-hunters. Other patrol officers had died or been killed doing this job. The story was prompted by Don’s own application for such a job before he trained as a teacher.
7. Next meeting
We’ll meet again on Tuesday, December 13th, at 7 p.m. The writing assignment, which was set by Heather, will be to share your assignment about a Christmas Gone Wrong.
8. Contact person
Don agreed to take over from Heather as the contact person for anyone wishing to join the Write On writers’ group or to find out more about us. Don can be reached at davies41@telus.net.
