May 18th Chapter Meeting Notes

May's SEMO Chapter Meeting opened with President Janet Cannon welcoming everyone and inviting those who attended the April Missouri Writers' Guild conference to share some of what they learned at the conference.

Janet shared some of what she learned from C. Hope Clark's Early Arrival Seminar about how the "shy writer" can succeed by using a calendar to mark off days you wrote (proving to yourself you are successful and dedicated!), using positive language to talk about your writing, and making small and measurable goals you can see so you don't give up on the big goal you want to attain.

Bill and Sharon Hopkins talked about a workshop they attended that explained how to make your web presence more effective. Social media, web pages, Amazon author pages, using tags and key words, and Google analytics reports oh my! Lots to learn in that department!

Marybeth Niedercorn discussed a little about what she learned about how to figure out what small presses want from a writer and from their manuscripts.

We also celebrated the winners of several MWG contests: Sharon Hopkins' book Killerfind won Best book in the President's Contest. One of her short stories, "Rear View Mirror" won third place in the Short Story contest. Marybeth Niedercorn's "Demon Hawg" won first place in the Humerous Short Story category. Janet Cannon's "Blonde Curls and Scurvy Pirates" won first place in the Flash Fiction contest and her inspirational Essay "Dance: Driven by the Inciting Incident" won an honorable mention. Plus, our chapter won Basket Wars! (Marybeth accepted the trophy.) We think we had more members there than any other chapter as well! All in all, our chapter really stood out at the conference this year.

The group as a whole then discussed several topics. Last year's anthology did not have enough entries to make a full-sized volume, so we are going to put out a call for more members to submit and do a two-year volume. We decided July's meeting will be a social/idea sharing meeting at Steelcrest Winery. The Hopkins will get back with us on what weekend will be the best for us to meet there.

Several people also wanted to get started on workshop/critique groups. A sign-up list was circulated. An email will also go out through semowg to ask for others who want to be a part of the workshop/critique groups. Hopefully we'll be able to get these together in the next couple of months.

We also announced our summer and fall lineup of speakers (except for October, which we don't have finallized just yet!) And here it is!

June 29 - Dr. Frank Nickell on regional history
July ?? - Social day at Steelcrest Winery
August 31 - Margot Dill on blogging
September 28 - Peter Green - on working with editors and publishers
October 26 - ??

Janet Cannon then closed the meeting. We all snagged a few last cookies, talked a bit more, then went home.