By Linda Donaldson
Most of us are grateful to see the winter weather receding as March brings many new Writing Center classes, workshops and discussion groups. Our Writers Guild began our 2017 season, meeting in the Cultural Center on Sunday, March 19th.
Announcements prior to the meeting pointed to the change in April’s meeting date to the 23rd – the fourth Sunday in April – due to the desire to avoid Easter Sunday on March 16th.
The deadline for the Literary Journal – Issue 3, Spring 2017. has been extended and Writers Center participants are all encouraged to submit stories and poems by May 15th. You’ll find a link to the Submission Guidelines here.
Anne, Cindy and I welcomed one new member, Beth Taylor, and five other Guild members. Our number may have been small – several regular members sent emails explaining health issues would keep them away – but 3 selections were shared!
First, Jane Bleam brought a story of the adventures of her standard poodle, Spooky. I mention his breed to differentiate him from toy poodles. Spooky was big and so were the scrapes he got into. Comments encouraged Jane to include some more of the family’s feelings in Spooky’s earlier years. All found this a very enjoyable dog-lover’s story.
Next was a newly written introduction to John McCabe’s epic trilogy about exposure to nuclear testing by the Army by soldiers in the 1960s. John profound description of the dread and wonder of the first of his two test exposures was very moving. The only corrective comments were about sentence length.
Bob McCrillis read his selection, the second half of a chapter about how his high school teacher encouraged him and influenced not only his educational opportunities, but his later love for writing. Comments applauded his use of humor and realistic dialogue. The best compliment was requests about the first half of the chapter, wanting to know more.
Our best wishes for a swift recovery go out to Beverly Sce and Carol Kretovich, both of whom have had foot surgery and are recuperating. Sue Wagner is also recovering from a recent hospitalization and we hope to see her next month at the Guild meeting.
Finally, many writers find themselves including words inadvertently in their prose that are actually trademarked brand names. Some, such as Xerox™ and Kleenex ™ jump readily to mind, but after reading an article about attributing trademarks properly I wrote to DigitalSynopsis.com for permission, which they kindly gave, to reprint this up-do-date list of such words. Your link to that page can be found here.
Pearl S. Buck Writing Center 