Magic Hour Writers

Our Mission: To encourage and promote excellence in writing for children through
friendship, education, and peer support to writing colleagues.

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Monday, July 29, 2013

Meeting Highlights - July 11, 2013

MEMBERS PRESENT:

Lorraine Ackerman
Bernardo Gonzalez
Pam Gonzalez
Joan Pulsateri
Judy Whitcomb

DISCUSSION:

Pam and Bernardo were on vacation but chose to come to the meeting any way because they enjoy the group.  Everyone else agreed MHW was a good group to belong to.

·         The group discussed editing:
o   It is difficult to edit your own work
o   With grammatical edits, there is the issue of style vs. traditional standards.
§  When writing, there may be times when we choose not to follow traditional standards.
§  Judy brought up an article she had previously sent out that dispelled some traditional writing rules (ex. Prepositions shouldn’t be at the end of sentences) because they is no historical precedent for them. She’ll send it again.  
o   For the cookbook, we need to self-edit. Possibly use an outside editor after we have finished.
·         There was a brief discussion on how to lay out a page for publishing.


WRITING:

·         Bernardo submitted a poem and recipe for the cookbook.

·         Bernardo read the next chapter of his book, Red and Fred’s Adventure to the Sea. Judy commented that when he’s finished, he’ll probably do a lot of editing on the first part because his writing has improved so much.  The group agreed and brought up points about how his plot is now developed. He uses his characters to move the plot along and does much less “telling”. He is emphasizing characteristics to make his characters more distinct.  He is also integrating those characteristics throughout the book through character interactions and reactions. While he has made his characters more distinct, Bernardo still wants to concentrate on developing that technique further.  It was pointed out how well done his section (read at this meeting) on the mirrors was done.

·         Bernardo gave Judy the scripted copy of his book so far.  She will put it into a word document.  She told him that she would do the same for his next section. If he gets it to her  before the next meeting, she’s have copies for the group ready.

·         Pam continues to do a large portion of the writing for her job. She hasn’t been able to work on other projects.

·         Lorraine accepted Judy’s challenge to try and write a 150 word story for young readers sponsored by Children’s Writer. She wrote about a child’s exploration through an adventure park. She used repetition of single syllable words to appeal to the young reader.  She had a sketch of a park and talked about how a book based on the sketch could have a child move from area to area in a book for example a dial book.  She was able to use only 75 words. 

·         Judy shared her story for the same contest, Lily Grace Explores with Magic Shoes.  She used exactly 150 words and had a hard time doing that.  The group gave her some great suggestions and she was able to implement them and not change the total word count. She said that she wanted to do pictures for the story and showed those to the group.

·         The layout and graphics used so far in the cookbook were looked at. Judy stated that there wasn’t a decision about the graphics in the book.  The group liked the ones that were there. Joan asked her to do one for Myrtle the Turtle.

So she did!


Next Meeting is Scheduled for August 8, 2013

JLW