[stylist] Telephone Meeting Notes- 11-9-2008

[Robert Newman]

Here are my brief notes relating to the topics which were discussed during
our Sunday evening meeting:
We talked for just over an hour. People present were- Robert from Nebraska,
Jim from Kansas, Chelsea from new Jersey, Shelley and Angie from California.


(In the remarks written out below, I didn't put the authors name by what
they contributed; you guess who said what.)

Does health issues or your mood effect your writing and how? Most said yes,
how you feel be it physical health or mental health, it had an influence
upon either if you wanted to write or not or how the actual writing came
out. Some said they could be down and writing would raise their spirits. 

We talked about what conditions would bring about a extra focus to our
writing. One person spoke that being ticked off could really focus her
thoughts and writing during that state of mind made that work some of her
clearest and most effective.
Another person shared that exercise like a walk could help him work out a
tough passage or development of a character.

We also got into wanting to learn to create more alive acting characters. We
discussed steps on how to develop our skill in writing a multi-dimensional
character: Such as study favorite authors who we feel can create that type
of character (James Lee Burke or Steinbeck) We got into if we liked looking
back at some of the old classics or more contemporary authors.

We talked about if any of us had studied writing. Most have read articles or
gotten feedback from friends. We all felt we could use more feedback about
our writing. 
One internet site mentioned was http://www.englishpage.com 

We discussed our Division's quarterly magazine- Of late, had it become more
about blindness than in past years and was that good or bad? We discussed
S&S's purpose: decided it had two main purposes- First, it is about
blindness in the form of furthering the NFB philosophy by showcasing blind
writers and/or stories about blindness. Second, articles about writing. 
Also, authors didn't have to be blind, nor necessarily a Division member
(though we'd like to see more Division members contributing to S&S). What
we'd not like to see being published would be a short story written by a
sighted person in which the story had nothing to do with promoting our
cause, as in the abilities of the blind (there are countless other mags for
this type of story).

Other topics and great comments or suggestions were made that I did not
capture.

The next meeting will be the third Sunday in December, the 21st. 

President NFB Writers' Division
Robert Leslie Newman
Email- newmanrl at cox.net
Division Website- 
Http://www.nfb-writers-division.org