January Meeting Minutes

East Beach Writers’ Guild

January 17, 2014

Meeting Minutes

In attendance:  Mike Owens, Jenny Sparks, Pat Clark, Mary-Jac O’Danial, Sally Parrott

Announcement:  Sally Parrott (writing as Jayne Ormerod) thanked EVERYONE who came out to the book signing at the sandwich company last Saturday.  The turnout was beyond her wildest expectations!

Kudos:  To Gina Buzby who used her December starter sentence to respond to a story call from the Virginian-Pilot about Christmas gifts that didn’t turn out quite how they planned.  She made the front page of the 12/21/13 Daily Break section, complete with illustrations.  Congratulations, Gina!

Status updates and New Year’s Writing Resolutions:

- Mike is in a holding pattern waiting for the national release of The End of Free Will.  He is revising 2 other manuscripts.  His goal for 2014 is to get 3 more books published.

- Jenny’s goal for 2014 is to WRITE MORE!

- Pat has been writing and is up to the 5^th chapter (out of a proposed 80 chapters) and his goal is to have the as yet untitled manuscript completely done by the end of 2014.

- Mary-Jac continues to edit Untitled

- Sally’s goals are to self-publish Blond Faith and finish writing Welcome Aboard  her military spouse mystery

New Business: 

- Jenny shared a Reading Bingo challenge for 2014 to get everyone to read outside their comfort zone (and all writers should read outside their comfort zone!)  Good luck to all who accept the challenge!

- Sally shared the January 2014 issue of “Writer’s Digest” which was chock-full of advice for writing. 

Old Business:  Library Organization—Kay Abiuness is already working on.  EBWG will offer support t if she needs it.

Upcoming meetings:

- February 21, We’ll have a guest speaker Maria Hudgins, a multi-published mystery writer who was one of the ones at the signing.  She’ll talk about the writing life.

- March 21—We’ll have another guest speaker, working on Sheila Buff (Randi’s friend)

- April 18 will be critiques again. 

Starter Sentence:  This month’s starter sentence was, “The forecast called for snow…”  You can read the submissions by clicking here.

                  Reminder:  Whether you read your musings or not, please send your story to Randi so she can upload them to the blog.  Remember, one of the first things about being a writer is SHARING your works!

February Starter Sentence: ”Flight 142 for Cleveland is now boarding…” 

Meeting Adjourned and turned over to critique.  All agreed it was a great session.