Tonight's INK online meet up.

The first INK online meet up is tonight from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. I hope to see a post from INK members or an email saying you're here with me. If not, well, I'm here working on my NaNoWriMo novel for the year. What are you working on? Something old? Something new? Something you or someone came up with at the last minute? Outline or not? Winging it? And how often has the NaNoWriMo.org site crashed for you? (I'm at six and counting.)

Anyone looking forward to OryCon next week? Or do you have a 'can take it or leave it' attitude? Looking forward to your next writer/author convention/event/out of town talk?

Welcome Mark Jones and Next INK meetup!

Welcome Mark, our newest INK member! Mark is a very patient man, and talented author too with books and story sales left and right. INK is proud to have him onboard.

Next INK meeting is Friday, February 12th, 2010. Since all current members will be at RadCon (most of us in 'interesting' panels too, I believe, ahem), INK will meet when we're all free for a few hours. Maybe at the unofficial INK room Pajama Party!

January INK meeting 01/22/2010

Welcome to 2010. Our first meeting of the year will take place this Friday, January 22nd at the Mall 205 Elmer's Restaurant at 7 p.m.

9660 Southeast Stark Street
Portland, OR 97216-2404

Google map link

The restaurant closes at 10 p.m. and there is WiFi access.

Hope to see you there!

Meeting location wanted

INK is looking for a location for it's next meeting on Friday, January 22nd. Are there any great cafes or quiet coffee houses around that are open at least until 9 or 10 p.m.?

Next INK - July 17th.

Next INK meeting is coming up, July 17th to be precise, at the usual summer venue in Vancouver. Deadline for critique material is one week beforehand. That means today, up until midnight, stuff for critique will be accepted. So far (10 a.m. Friday July 10th), there is nothing on tap to critique.

Don't you just hate it when time sneaks up on you?

At the last INK meeting, writer Mark Jones pulled off what I personally felt was missing in my own writing life -- Talking with excitement on the Joys of Submitting Stories. Thank you Mark! I don't know what exactly you said but it got me up off my butt and I've submitted three stories in the past week. Still looking for a market for a fourth but I'm confident that I'll regain my, um, confidence in that regard.

State of the Submissions

I have stuff out to the following places:  Wet Ink, Writers of the Future, Brain Harvest, F&SF, and Byzarium.   Oddly, four of the five are flash fiction subs, and the fifth is one of my shorter short stories, though not quite a flash.  Considering that flash is the form I find the most difficult to write, this is rather kewl and strange and funny.  It also means that I really need to work on those longer length short stories, and I really need to get some agent subs out there.  Right now I have no queries out.  None.  

After an edit I sent out a short, the one that INK looked at recently, to Lucky Labs.  Now C.S. can, if she likes, pick apart my editing style.  

I keep meaning to work on T.E.P. (aka the weird bird story) but it's a daunting project. I didn't mean for it to have parallel plots of equal weight that dovetail at the end into a (not quite there) uneasy ending.  It's so much easier to edit on Masks or one of the other novels.  That's telling to my level of (un)skill with short stories--I can dive into a novel and play for hours and the time seems to zip by, but when I approach a short story I feel like I'm handling a cactus and I don't have gloves on.  The minutes crawl by.  The only thing that's easy about editing a short story is that I can scan through the thing in just a few minutes and get a good sense of the overall pace.  That's a handy thing to be able to do.  I suppose it would be possible to do with a novel, skimming over the chapters almost as fast as a flip book, relying on intimate memory to get a sense of the overall feel.  It's something that would require practice, I think, and it wouldn't take a trivial amount of time.

I've mailed my deposit for Dean Smith's Master's Class coming up this fall.  Amazing how not that long ago it seemed that the class had been put off until the distant future, a future that now appears to be racing up on me.  I've started reading the required books for the class.  The first one is a pleasant surprise--definitely not one I would have picked up on my own.  I'm glad Dean recommended that we start with ones we're least likely to read.

So that's the state of Kami's writing.  I hope we'll meet this Friday on schedule.  See some or none of you then!

INK meeting.

INK meeting tonight, the last one before RadCon5 A! Panel reviews, upcoming workshops, treasury audit, new name, info packet progress, perhaps even time for Writers Round Table. If not, Scrabble is always good for the wordiness of a writer's soul.

INK meeting a success

We had a lot of bureaucratic stuff to do, and we got most of it completed.  Yay!  Dues are back in force after a short hiatus, we have some updates, some goals, some definitions, and we're exploring a change in web presence.  We'll keep y'all posted.

We've decided to donate part of our funds to a literary charitable cause.  Hopefully we didn't miss some sort of deadline.  Even if we did, I like the idea of paying our dues back into the writing community, so we'll find another one we're excited about if the one we chose doesn't pan out.

I paid a penalty for not making one of my December goals.  D'oh!  I knew that skimping out on editing Masks would bite me on the butt.  That'll learn me.

Good observations at Flights of Fantasy on some of the strange attitudes that appear with the sense of entitlement some authors have in regard to being published.  It got me thinking, so I blogged about an additional thought on that subject.

Free Financial Book

Yay! It's free it's free it's free it's free it's free!  I've enjoyed Suze Orman's books and radio shows and all that over the years.  Don't miss this chance to get a free .pdf of Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan, available on Oprah's website.  It won't be available forever, though.  I believe it's only going to be available there until the 15th.  Don't wait!

Because we don't want to be starving artists.  That's just so cliche'!

See some of you at the INK meeting tonight.  I hope the Friends of INK have gotten a great start to the writing year, and wish you the best luck, focus and skill for 2009.

INK meeting tomorrow!

There's an INK meeting tomorrow at the sekrit cat cave!  I can't wait!  There's lots to talk about.  Conventions, regress reports, dues, goals, events, and the ever-popular socializing and yammering about our projects.

Also, don't forget the Washougal writing meeting is on the 24rth, and Radcon is coming up fast.

See y'all soon!

Autumn INK Sightings.

WooHoo! INK meeting tonight. Wide assortment of topics to be discussed.

INK at Library Saturday with NaNoWriMo brainstorming immediately afterward.

INK meets again on the 24th. Prep for NaNo plus outlining/writing time and looking ahead toward OryCon 30 and beyond are topics.