Word Pirates

Last Tuesday’s Word Pirates meeting was a humdinger. For the first time in 2008, the group met and shared tales about Christmas and other holiday adventures. After that, we covered the following:

1. Personal writing goals for 2008. The Word Pirates went around in a circle and shared what they would like to accomplish in 2008 with writing. Some of us had ambitious goals, some of us had modest ones, and that is okay as long as we keep rowing along.

2. Goals for the group in 2008: In addition to normal operations, we are going to concentrate on giving one-on-one feedback for those sending out work for publication, sharing markets with each other, and planning a second Word Pirates reading. Oh, and we are going to look around for one more possible member.

3. Prompt: Marcia presented her prompt: Write something inspired by your dreams, either childhood dreams, reoccurring dreams, or a dream you especially remember. We talked a bit about the role the unconscious (dreams) plays in creative development, and then wrote for 20 minutes on the prompt.

Ross also e-mailed us some links to check out.

Pseudopod, the horror podcast (and a darn enticing market) can be found here - they’re a sister site to Escape Pod and the still-forthcoming fantasy-based PodCastleThe particular story that I mentioned was “Blood, Gridlock, and PEZ,” by Kevin Anderson.

A couple other good podcasts are Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing and Adventures in Scifi Publishing, both of which offer plenty of inspiration and perspiration for would-be writers.

And of course, here’s the link to the Night Shade page, which has been keeping me up nights lately.

See you at the next meeting, Tuesday February 5, 2008

~ Joy