Nov 15th Meeting

Although participation was sparse at this meeting, Carol La Valley and Marsha Ward had a lot of fun talking about writing techniques, and then going to eat.

Our next meeting will take place on December 6. Please check the Meeting Schedule page above for future meeting dates, as rumor has it that our facilitator is contemplating discontinuing further email notifications.

Nov 1 Meeting

Rim Country Writers, our meeting is this Thursday, so do join us at 1 p.m. in the private dining room at Majestic Rim Senior Apartment Homes, 310 E. Tyler Parkway.

We always have a good time when we meet together. I've no reason to think this meeting will be any different.
See you there!

Meetings cancelled, calendar these:

Due to too many other conflicts, our October meetings did not take place. We look forward, however, to seeing each other again in November, on the 1st and 15th. Please put those dates on your calendars.

October 18, 2012

Our next meeting will take place this coming Thursday. Please bring the material you have been working on for critique or sharing.

We welcome visitors. Bring about 6 copies of your work, printed double spaced. We'll have time to critique three or four pages for each person.

If you have discovered any resources for writers, please bring them to share, along with your Good News.

We'll see you on Thursday.

July 5 Meeting

Today's meeting will include critiques and a writing assignment. Come with your writing tools and sense of adventure!

More Changes

Not only have we moved the days of the month and the location for getting together, at the last meeting we voted to move the hour to 1 p.m., and extend the meeting from 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours long.

That means we now meet on the first and third Thursdays of each month, at Good Samaritan Society's Majestic Rim Senior Apartments in the private dining room accessed to the left off the main dining area, at 1 p.m., and we'll be there until 3 p.m.

Our memoir writer will talk about his adventures upon coming into the world of writers from a non-writer's perspective. This should be very enlightening. See you on June 21st at 1 p.m.

June 7 Meeting

On June 7 we will meet in the private dining room at Majestic Rim Senior Apartment Homes, 310 E. Tyler Parkway. Our time is from 12:30 p.m. until 2 p.m.

Be sure to bring several copies of work you want to be evaluated.

Also, bring ideas of what you want to learn about in the next few months. Remember, we teach each other, so if you have something interesting you have learned about a writing topic, we're glad to put you on the list to give a lesson in a meeting.

See you on Thursday!

May 24th Meeting

Yesterday's meeting turned into a business session at the end, but we had much to talk about after our critiques.

Marie joined us, and is eager to return. Welcome! Jaimie's book, Support Your RV Lifestyle, has been racking up both national and state awards and recognition. She also reported on a poetry workshop she attended. Marsha secured a book cover designer for her forthcoming novel, Spinster's Folly, and is excited about an image the designer found. Jaimie also shared a couple of articles about punctuation that she found in a blog she follows.

T read a chapter from his memoir, about the experience of writing his first poem ... in sixth grade. His flair for words is so delightful that he could publish it for a larger audience than he foresees doing. Marsha read a scene from chapter thirteen. The members received it well, so she needs to finish the novel soon.

Instead of taking time to free write, we discussed options for meeting places. Each member got an assignment to check out locations and report back so we can decide which option would best serve our meeting place needs. The proposed locations vary from a park ramada to the town meeting hall, so watch for an announcement of where our next meeting will be held.

Meeting changes

by Marsha Ward

For a while now we've met on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month. In email discussions before our meeting yesterday, I told the members that if we could shift the meetings in June back a week, I could attend them. They agreed that would be good. At the meeting, we determined that there was no reason why we could not make the shift permanent, since we all could make it work.

Therefore, beginning in June, our meetings will be on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month. We have not held a second meeting in November and December since the time when we began meeting twice a month, because of the holidays. We'll determine later if this week shift makes any difference in that schedule in those months.

We are also looking into different meeting location options. We're meeting in an environment with hard floor and wall surfaces that seem to increase the ambient noise levels. This is problematical, as most of us have soft speaking voices. We brainstormed, and came up with several possible meeting places, which I assigned various members to check into. Chaya offered her home, as well (Thank you!). We each have until June 1 to investigate and report back to me. If we don't find a good place in Payson before our next meeting on June 7, we will go to Chaya's home in Star Valley (which I like as a meeting place, BTW).

Stay tuned for our next update on location.

May Meetings

We had a lovely meeting on May 10, with a few members present who haven't been able to attend for a while. We missed others who couldn't come, but a good time was had by all.

T. read another of his pithy memoir segments, and Marsha shared a short scene from her Work-in-Progress, Spinster's Folly. Then Carol B. gave a very useful lesson on Interviewing. We all interview people in life: car salesmen, politicians, prospective dates. Why not learn techniques to help us gain the information we need to find out what makes our characters tick, or our sampling soar? Thank you, Carol, for the tips.

Our next meeting is at 12:30 p.m. on May 24 at the same location. Ce Ce will tell us why reading is so valuable to us, not only as members of the human family, but as writers. If you have a manuscript to be critiqued, bring several copies of up to three pages of double-spaced work.

See you there!

A look at the e-book price-fixing brouhaha

We briefly talked in our last meeting about the pending suit of the U.S. Justice Department against the Big 6 publishers and Apple.

Here's an excellent take on someone's absurd letter about the problem.

8th of March

Despite Marsha's discombobulation, several people showed up to the meeting today and participated in the discussion and writing exercise. Unfortunately, due to Marsha's discombobulation, we didn't have time for reading our work. She apologizes.

The 15-minute writing exercise on the prompt to write in any form or genre about "the last time you slept outdoors" had our participants scribbling madly away for the allotted time and beyond, and quite a bit of good work came from it. Some pieces fell into the category of non-fiction, one was a poem, and others were fiction.

We had our individual arms twisted to give 15-minute lessons over the next few months. Our teacher at the next meeting (March 22) will be the ever-gracious Chaya, who will address "Critiquing."

See you in two weeks!

March

Meetings this month are on the 8th and the 22nd, at 12:30 p.m. We'll stick with Mountain High Coffee Works, in the Swiss Village, until Marsha can check out other locations that have been suggested. Sorry, she's been terribly busy and not in town, of late.

See you later!

February

We're going to have an awesome meeting on Feb 23, hopefully just as fine as the one we had yesterday. Larry will bring the memoir of a family member, and we will get to see what has been done so far to edit and get it ready for printing. We can give him our insights as to what more needs to be done.

Yesterday, we each wrote to a prompt. Since the assignment was to write a letter of resignation, Marsha took the time to write an actual one she will present, while Larry and John's efforts were more in the realm of "just pretend." I think! Ted went into the other room to see if we could get a bit less music filtering into our portion of the building.

Afterward, we read our work: a scene from a novel, an autobiographical essay, a chapter from a personal memoir, and a poem inspired by a recent journey.

We welcome all writers to join us in two weeks. Larry will have the floor for a lesson on editing memoirs.

August 11 Meeting

We had four attendees at our meeting, Betty, Lucy, Marsha, and Jamie (with kidlet). Marsha suggested three blogs/websites that address self- or indie-publishing issues. We found out what everyone is working on, and Betty and Marsha shared some of their work.

We missed several of our regulars, including Ted, Jaimie, George, Sandy, Chaya, and Carol. We hope to see more of them in future meetings.

July 28th Meeting

Because of several things, I'm behind a bit with updates. Major surgery recovery is one of my excuses.

Our last meeting took place at Scoops, our new meeting place. We gathered at noon, and those present were Ted, Marsha, Sandy, Betty, and Jamie. It was good to have a chance to share our news, resources we have found, and other gems.

We did a writing exercise using prompts, and wrote for fifteen minutes. After we shared what we had written, Ted and Jamie shared their work. Good going!

We hope to see everyone on August 11 at noon in the Sawmill Crossing at Scoops. We meet in the back room.

Today's Meeting

We had a lovely meeting today. Six people attended, plus sweet little Jessica, Jamie's daughter. Bettie was the only one who worked on the assignment, which she shared with us. Her honest style of writing is intriguing.

We discussed each person's current writing project, and four of us read work. Andy read a class assignment dealing with dialog, Chaya read parts of her FINISHED NOVEL (HURRAH!), Marsha read a scene she wrote last night, and Jamie read a blog post.

Our next meeting is on April 28 at 12:30 p.m. at East-West Exchange, 100 N. Tonto St. Bring six copies of up to three pages of your latest work to receive editing suggestions. Please join us.

Welcome to Rim Country Writers

by Marsha Ward

Since I became the leader/mentor/general factotum of Rim Country Writers a few months ago, I've been working to increase attendance and find a meeting time that would fit most schedules. Although it's not perfect for everyone, those who attended our last two meetings agreed that Thursday afternoons at 12:30 were workable. Then they asked if we could meet twice a month, as we used to do. Okay. The site could accommodate us for that.

The upshot of this is that our meetings are held on the second and fourth Thursdays from 12:30 to 2 p.m. at East West Exchange, a bookstore, coffee shop, and gift shop at 100 N. Tonto (just off Longhorn), which also sponsors a variety of classes and events.

Next Thursday, we are to bring an assignment to read. Write about the time when you knew you were a writer. If I'm not mistaken, this can be up to 1000 words long, but if you write poetry, don't feel obliged to do an epic work. ;-)

But what IS Rim Country Writers, you ask. Will I fit in? Are there dues? Do I need an MFA to attend? Am I welcome to drop in and check you out?

The answer are: Probably, No, No, and Most Assuredly. If you like to write (in any form or genre), need encouragement and helpful critiques, and want to hang out with some really great folks, Rim Country Writers is probably the right place for you. We don't have dues. We don't have a charter or heavily structured organization, and we aren't snooty. Well, maybe I am, but I disguise it well. Just kidding! We like people and we like to write in all sorts of forms and genres, including poetry, essays, journalism, travel writing, novels, and how-to books.

We hope to see you on the 14th.