Here is the video for our August meeting:

Thanks to Derrick and the OKC CoCo for letting us use the facility and filming our meeting for us!

Here is a PDF version of the slides from our August meeting. The talk was titled, “Tools of the Trade”:

Enjoy! We should have video available soon.

I’ve reserved space the the OKC CoCo for our August meeting. Due to some unforeseen scheduling conflicts I had to push the date of the meeting to the last Wednesday of the month, August 26th at 6:30pm. I hope you will all be able to attend!

I plan on giving a presentation titled, “Tools of the Trade” discussing some of the various pieces of writing software that are out there and that I use personally in my own writing. I’d like to have a second presentation for the meeting, so if anyone wants to speak let me know and I’ll pencil you in to give a presentation. It’d be really awesome if we can rotate speakers so we can all learn from each other!

See you guys at the next meeting!

Hello!

It’s been a busy few weeks for me with vacation and work. But as promised, here are some of the ideas we had from our first meeting as possible presentations for future meetings:

1. Podcasting as a means of distribution. Authors can discuss their work, the craft, and even read their work for the podcast.
2. Use of licenses such as the Creative Commons for distributing your work electronically.
3. Writing software such as word processors, mind-mapping tools, interfacing with websites such as Twitter, and other tools of the trade.
4. Social media as a means of communicating your writing.
5. Pre-writing strategies and story structure.*
6. How to properly research for writing.
7. Writing for audio and narration.
8. Learning how to critique writing properly and how to accept critiques of your own work.
9. Featuring a “Rejection Slip Hall of Fame”.
10. Spending time finding out what everyone is reading. Reading is integral to anyone who enjoys writing.

* Ryan mentioned the late OU professor and author Jack Bickham (author of The Apple Dumpling Gang) who wrote an amazing book on Structure called Elements of Writing Fiction – Scene & Structure available on Amazon.com.

Of course I also still plan on bringing in guest speakers, using this mailing list to send out some writing prompts, and anything else that we think would be fun and beneficial to the spirit of the writing group.