THE REVIEW

MINI WRITERS’ CONFERENCE

Luke, Jason, Kay and my husband, Bryon (aka Honey), joined me on Wednesday and the Meeting was mostly a discussion on various aspects of writing.

The first topic discussed was tabled by Luke, who wanted to know what we thought about the perceived deliberate intent of various writers to control the fiction that is written, published and distributed. I continued asking questions and discovered that Luke had been running into online writing blogs that were urging others to write only about specific topics in order to influence how society reacts to certain issues. He wondered if there was a conspiracy afoot. Further discussion led to our agreeing that fiction has always been used by authors to present their take, or their questions, on issues that have confronted society through the ages. But as readers, we all felt mature enough to accept or discard whatever did or did not make sense to us. We felt that was true even as we had read as children. So perhaps writers can attempt to influence society, but they don’t have control over what others think.

Jason shared that he had been working with his wife to produce a concise but comprehensive outline for the whole book he has been writing, preparing for submissions I assume. He said his wife is more analytical than he is, and an enormous help in getting this done.

Bryon told us about major projects he had planned for construction and maintenance in pulp mills as an engineer, and how each minor detail could only be predicated in conjunction with all other steps before, during and after that one specific detail. That sounded very much like plotting a novel beforehand.

Kay explained that writing and/or publishing her memoir is on hold as long as the criminal investigation is still ongoing. There was some discussion on that topic and how to handle all the complex emotions that keep exploding in this situation.

I read another ‘Honey’ story, “Win Some, Lose Some”. This was about my frantic attempts to rectify things after I left a kettle burning on the stove overnight. I didn’t want Honey fuming about maybe having to buy a new stove.

Don’t know if anyone else submitted a short story to Polar Expressions this year, but I did receive notice that my submission of “The Unwritten Story” was accepted for publication in their upcoming anthology “Shorelines”.

Charity said she hopes to be back at our next Meeting in October. And Margaret F. said the same when she told me she was off to Arizona on holiday. Monica Buchanan had said she wanted to come to the last Meeting but became ill. And Lorelei said she had a previous commitment.

Margaret Moffatt has an article on the history of the towns named Hazelton in the September issue of Senior’s Today Newsmagazine.

Our next Meeting will be Wednesday, October 5th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see you then.

Lisa A. Hatton
Author