Hello Everyone,

Today we held our April meeting. The next meeting will be held on May 20, 2012, at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids, MN, from 12:30 to 3 PM.

PRESENT:
Niomi, Mike, Deb, Marlys, LuAnne, Sharon.

TALKING STICK:
Tarah is working on the layout and Sharon has started proofing. All letters have gone out and all winners have been called. Now contracts are coming back in. We are probably going to do this year’s book on CreateSpace through Amazon.com. Starting with Volume 12, we had been using Morris Publishing. We think this change will save us both money and time.

WRITERS’ EVENTS:
Coming up on April 21 is a writers’ collaboration put on by Region 2. Jerry and Sharon will attend, maybe others. This is writers’ groups getting together and working together.

MISCELLANEOUS EVENT:
LuAnne is having an Earth Day event near her house on Long Lake on April 22, 2012 at 11:30.

BLOGS:
We talked about blogs. Deb and Tarah both have their own blogs and LuAnne is considering it. We asked if bloggers use their blogs to keep in touch with friends and tell them their news. We asked if they used it more as a sounding board, a place to spill out their feelings, explain it, hash it out, maybe come to a resolution in your own mind. One person wondered if you found that you spent so much time and energy on Facebook and blogs and emails that you might not have enough energy or time left for your own writing. It seems that people blog for all of the above reasons. It seems that some people actually are able to take ideas from their own blog and use some of the ideas, words, and lines to put into a poem or story or novel. That, of course, can also be done from journaling.

MISCELLANEOUS:
Several of the writers in attendance were working on things that they shared with the others. Sharon had even had time to write a poem! We commented and critiqued merrily. The great thing about our group is that we all speak up and say what we think–we know that there are no wrong answers or wrong comments. We take them all in stride and the writer may or may not use them. But we all learn from this process.

One person mentioned that if they sit down with a book by a favorite poet and just read for a while, sometimes that can completely inspire them and they can sit down and write new poems more easily.

This day was cool and wet and gloomy–the rain was coming down sideways. It was unpleasant to be outdoors but it was a great day to have a meeting inside where it was dry. It was a great day to hold a hot cup of good coffee and to talk with other writers about writing and reading and the unending mysteries of life itself. We had a great conversation and we hated to leave. It was one of those days where we probably could have talked easily for many more hours.

Hope to see you next time!

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