Due to the request of several members, virtual meetings will continue on 1st Saturdays! A nice little group of us met today, on the second day of 2021, with high hopes and some good discussion! See the recap below:

Sharing Pieces:

• Lollie shared her piece from the impromptu prompt ‘How Are You?’
• Jen shared an older poem titled “New Years Revolutions” that she’s including in her newest personal poetry chapbook/anthologies, coming out this winter/early spring 2021.

Group Updates:

• Mona started a blog! Musings With Mona (musingswithmona.com)
• Gudrun is thinking about starting a blog to document a road trip adventure she’s taking this year! 
• Lynn shared that she found a bunch of old stories, some that she didn’t even remember. And she is planning to share one about geese and cyborgs next month. This led to some great discussion on saving manuscripts (see the highlights in the Discussion section below).
• Jen updated the group about changes on the WWG website, namely the Anthology page and Events with virtual WWG meetings added for early 2021.
• The group discussed the upcoming ACCC Open Mic Night (possibly in February) that would feature our authors reading from the WWG anthology! We are in communication with the coordinators at ACCC to confirm a date, as we’re waiting for our books to arrive (hopefully in January!). We have three WWG members/anthology contributors who have committed to participate; please let Jen or Mona know if you’re interested!

Discussion:

• We had a great conversation about saving old manuscripts. How sometimes a piece isn’t ready to be written yet, but the potential remains. And how sometimes if you come back to the piece – revisiting that potential weeks, months, or years later – you’ll find it’s finally ready to be in the world.
• We also discussed how saving old writing can be a good means to document your growth as a writer.
• We also discussed options for blogs, as a few of our members a) have active blogs/websites, b) are just starting out in the blogging world, or c) are thinking about starting a blog! We talked about the pros and cons of Blogger vs. WordPress (vs. other website platforms that we felt as a group are geared more toward online sales/business functions, so our conversations was primarily around Blogger or WordPress. More to come on that!)
• While we as a group agreed it was useful to maintain a Saturday meeting each month (following our regular 1st Saturday of the month schedule), we also brainstormed possibilities for trying out new days/times, to incorporate a second virtual meeting. We landed on trying a weeknight… Wednesday nights at 7pm may work for many, as this was a night we used to use for write-ins at Mocha Monkey (oh how we miss those days!!!). 
  • • Some thoughts about how to use this time:
      • Incorporating a 10-minute free-write could be fun
      • Thoughts about how many of these extra meetings per month? 1 Wednesday or multiple weeks?
      • Starting date? We agreed on February. We’ll be setting up a Zoom meeting for Wednesday, February 10th  at 7pm as a trial.

Next Saturday Meeting:

“Winter Day” is the prompt for next virtual Saturday meeting, February 6th @ 10:30am