In February, Patsy Pipkin was unable to attend due to her husband's illness, and her planned speaker, Dennis Bennett, was in an accident and had to cancel on us.  Hopefully, he will be able to join us later in the year.   Dot Hatfield pitched in with an exercise on writing.  She brought several 'first lines', and we wrote essays inspired by those openings, then read them .  They ranged from childhood memories to fantasy.  It was an interesting evening.

 

The March program was arranged by Winford Wallace.  He presented a speaker from Conway,  Lori       , who spoke to us about what she went through in getting her book,            , published.  She told us about selecting her publisher, and the editing and final draft process - sharing pitfalls and successes, and explaining what she would or wouldn't do again.  Several members bought a copy of the book, and have given it very good reviews.

 

Rhonda Roberts asked us to write something suitable for children for the April meeting.  Hearing each of us read our contribution to this emphisized the diversity of the group - there were short stories and poems involving kittens, mice, frogs and other children, and essays on childhood memories and experiences.  Rhonda collected them and was going to forward them to Children's Hospital to share.

 

May brought us a presentation by Georgie McIrvin on 'Show- don't Tell" in which she tried to help us all understand that command.  As Georgie pointed out, so many experts simply Tell us, but don't Show us how to do it.  Georgie used one of her own essays to illustrate how we can 'read between the lines' to gather information if it is presented well.  She also gave us a simple sentence, "The man crossed the street and spoke to the girl" and asked us to rewrite it to give us more information.  My, we sure came up with some different scenarios!

 

Jean Gipson arranged for several members to present a re-cap of the Arkansas Writers' Conference that was held in Little Rock the first weekend in June.  Jean gave an overview of several of the speakers that our group was already familiar with, and Patsy Pipkin shared her notes from the Saturday afternoon session with Laura Parker Castoro on characterization.  Jean again took the floor with a great interpretation of Sherri Organ's use of the book "How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci" in helping us develoop and use our creativity.  Then Chris Henderson explained Paula Morrell's demonstration on right brain-left brain training, and how to use them both in developing an idea.

 

The July session is an open forum, and Dot Hatfield plans on a reading/critique session.

December 19 , 2005