Last night I had dinner with local writers and then went to Village Books Open Mic. This is a summary with related links.
I had dinner with @nw_writergal, @jloakley, and some others. If they would just get twitter accounts I could tell you who. We met at a local restaurant and did the usual introductions of “what do you write.” We discussed twitter, Pacific NW Writers Conf, and Surrey International Writers Conf. Pacific NW reviewed as good but a full-meal deal (literally) while Surrey is a pay-as-you-go conference. Both had decent craft and marketing classes. One item of note with the Surrey conf was the Blue Pen Cafe where Speakers are available for 15-minute one-on-one appointments.
@nw_writergal brought her book and bookmarks and showed them off. This is her book cover.
Wild by Pam Beason
Then the conversation moved on to social networking and marketing ourselves as writers. Twitter and Facebook came up and we went through the pros of each. Four of the six were on Facebook. Two of the six are on twitter. I suggested to try twitter for 15 minutes in the morning and evening for two weeks and then make a decision. So this morning, it was three of six. Yeah! There were questions about privacy for both Facebook and Twitter. I’ll bring a laptop to the next critique group to show off twitter.
Other mentions from dinner:
After dinner, three of us moved on to Village Books for Open Mic which is on the fourth Monday of the month. I saw my writing teacher, Laurel Leigh, and two fellow students from a class a couple of years ago. Neat! The format is a sign-up for seven minutes of reading at the podium on the ground floor. This is the same space that all the speaker events are at and of course the computer books are right there so my mind did wander for a minute. Several of the authors were great speakers and had interesting stories. There was a social thing next door at the cafe afterward. I didn’t go – too hot outside! But I plan to go to Open Mic again and get up and read.
Open Mic at Village Books
Glad to see you take the plunge and read at Open Mic. I’ve been doing for several years on and off. Even took a workshop on how to do it better. When you read outloud, you can uncover soft spots in your story or words that trip up. Might mean a rewrite. It’s great when the audience connects.
The class sounds interesting. Where did you take the class? Was it local?