The slides are up for anyone interested in them. Unfortunately several of them don’t make sense without the context of the talk given with it, but use your imagination. You might even imagine something even MORE EPIC than what really happened! Be warned! The PDF linked below comes in at a whopping 9.9MB in size.

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.

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.