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.