IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! The meeting room
location for all 2010 meetings will be the Senior Circle Room at the
Watsonville Hospital, not the room that was previously announced.
See our map
page for directions to our new 2010 meeting location.
Vice President's Letter
From the February 2010 newsletter - by Kathleen Dougherty
This week I killed an ogre. He was a very nice ogre and he did not
deserve to die, but I killed him anyway. Two days later I brought
him back in a blood ritual that was both funny and scary.
Did I bring the ogre back out of a sense of guilt? Yes…I think I did.
But if the blood ritual had been anything less than funny and scary,
and most important, if it hadn’t moved the main character deeper into
trouble, I would have left the ogre dead.
This is my fifth re-write on this book. The road behind me is scattered
with the discarded pages of funny, scary, heartwarming, nifty scenes
that did not make an important change in my character’s life. I hated
cutting out each and every one of those scenes. I agonized about each
of them, but in the end, the book is about 80,000 words long and I
have left at least another 80,000 words in the recycle bin. In case
you aren’t a math genius, that means that to arrive at 80,000 acceptable
words, I had to write 160,000 and discard half.
I wish I were the kind of writer who’s first 80,000 words of a book
were the last 80,000 words of a book. Alas, I am the unfortunate writer
who, like any toddler, must follow every bug, every tiny stream, and
every bird that crosses my path. When I try to ignore the streams,
the bugs and the birds, I wind up with a voice and story that feels
contrived, predictable and flat.
The Monterey Bay Fiction Writer’s first meeting of 2010 was a collage
session. I had a great time cutting, laughing and pasting pictures.
For me, this activity did not provide concrete ideas, but rather opened
the creative flow—gave free rein to the bug chasing toddler inside
of me who wanders around gathering cool characters and odd places
that are so important in my stories. I’ve felt a renewed enthusiasm
for writing and stories and my characters this year that is like a
cool breeze from the past. I am looking forward to many more creative
workshops where I can work side by side with all of you on our stories.
Until then, keep writing, keep discarding…and keep chasing bugs!