Hooray it's 2006!

Hello Everyone

Welcome to 2006! Hope you all had a warm and cozy holiday. I'm actually getting the clutter cleared away and can see my desktop this morning. Of course, my thoughts have turned back to writing.

I have received two queries from people interested in our group, Joanna Schwarz and Graham Fuller. I have added them to our email list. I've also heard from Riun with an interesting suggestion. Do we want to meet and talk, or would it be easier to discuss through our blog?

Here are the issues:

Group Direction

Last year, we concluded that members in our group are of two minds - some are looking for a workshop and others are looking for more of a sharing. This is quite common in the online literary community too, by the way. Some forums are simply to share and post positive comment, others are for complete critique, and there are many in between.

Some have suggested we could alternate our meetings - one a month for workshop, one a month for sharing (speakers, reading out loud, discussion). Riun wonders is maybe we could have two completely separate groups.

I think we could maybe have a combination of both going and keep our numbers intact.

Here's how I see our meetings could go

First half hour - workshop
Rest of meeting - speaker, discussion, education, challenge etc.
This way, any invited guests can arrive at 7:30 pm.

The guidelines for the 'workshop' would be - round the circle with mild comment, and maybe some reading out loud by the author. I'd like to see us doing this more in the future! This 'new' workshop will provide authors the chance to present new stuff, even in rough form. It will be fun to read the latest material from our members. After the meeting is done, the author can meet privately with anyone who has more comment, if this is desired. Each author can make it clear to what degree they want to workshop their piece.

I hate to simply drop the workshop aspect for one big reason - reading other people's work and analyzing it from a critical standpoint is part of writing practice - all the books and teachers claim it is a big big part.

Group Administration

Another issue is that of organization. I think we can make the planning and organization easy if it could be divided up amongst us. A meeting chairperson, an event chairperson, a membership chairperson, that sort of thing. Certainly I would love to remain involved and I will spearhead the Arts Festival in February, try to keep everyone on target for their reading. In the suggested list below, I have volunteered as Membership Chair.

So, for our very first meeting of 2006, we need to decide on this

SWG Chair (General chairperson for the group)
Meeting Chair (Plans meeting dates and site)
Event Chair (Seek out speakers, etc. This could be a rotating position with next meeting's event chair decided at previous meeting or it could be one person)
Membership Chair (I volunteer for this position, and will manage the email list)
Secretary (Keeps track of what and when and who from each meeting - and posts it on the blog after the meeting is over)

These are my thoughts
I'm posting this on our blog, and any answers or responses can be sent to me by email, or posted on the blog as comment,

Let's get together!

Cheers
Jude