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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. New for 2010: The latest issue of our chapter newsletter is now online. 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!
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