Sometimes
it’s fun to change things up every once in a while and that’s what we
did at the April meeting of the Hill Country Women of Words – we took a
road trip! Eight of us piled into two cars and drove to Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas, for the Texas Writers Conference they sponsor every Spring.
Sally Clark, Sheila Kale, Karen Vanek, Beverly Naumann, Betty Murphey, Barbara Loyd, Paula Bramlett, and Bobbi Grimmer heard Bret Anthony Johnston, the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University, speak about his books, Remember Me Like This, and Corpus Christi: Stories,
and answer questions from the audience. I think everyone of us carried
some special piece of teaching back with us. Bret is a great speaker.
After the conference on Monday night, a group of us met on Tuesday, at the regular TWiG meeting.
Linda Christensen
attended the San Antonio Book Festival and talked to us about her
experiences there. Linda is working on the third book in her Annie’s
Love series. She brings chapters to TWiG regularly for us to critique.
Barbara Loyd brought her copy of Patchwork Path: Treasure Box,
an anthology that was published in 2010 by Choice Publishing and
featured one of Barbara’s stories, “Silk Quilt.” She read the story to
us and we all enjoyed it.
Paula Bramlett
brought her chapter on Joan of Arc that she is planning to include in
her book about Catholic saints. Paula has used this material in the
past, when she was the Education Director of a Catholic church in Elgin, TX.
She has decided to gather all her teaching material together and try to
publish it in book form. Personally, I’m really enjoying Paula’s
writings. I always learn something new.
Lynn Harris has lost her notebooks! We are grieving with her and praying that she finds them soon. Lynn
writes all her stories out in longhand, in notebooks. There are so many
of them, surely they will turn up soon and she can read to us again. I
hope so!
Sally Clark has prepared a press release for her book, Where’s My Hug?
that she plans to take to the Fbg. Standard next week. I’ve failed to
interest them in an article, so I’ll just write the press release and
take it to them. Hopefully, they will print it. Thanks to everyone for
your help.
Those who had planned to come with us to Kerrville, but were not able to:
Anna Mendeke emailed:
I will not be able to go with you all to Kerrville this Monday night. I have an early Tuesday morning appointment in Austin. Sorry to miss it.
Linda Christensen said:
I
won't be there tonight, planning on tomorrow (TWiG), but things are
crazy right now. If I'm not there, you will know I'm in a nut house
somewhere!
Vici Wray let me know:
So sorry that I won't be able to make it....out-of-town guests expected.
Megan Willome had planned to come, but her plans changed at the last minute and she couldn’t make it.
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Valerie Gaumont couldn’t be with us, but she did send a writing prompt for this month:
“It was taken over by bandits in 1607...”
If you want to write something and email it to Valerie, she will post it on our blog: https://fredricksburgwomenofwords.wordpress.com so other members can read and comment on it. Valerie’s email is valeriegaumont@gmail.com Remember
you can write in any genre you want, fiction, nonfiction, poetry,
children’s, devotional, just time yourself to 10 minutes of free-style
writing. You may be surprised with what you come up with!
Valerie is doing such a good job with this blog, let’s keep it up.
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Upcoming birthdays: Rori Crawford – April 24 and Liz Brookshire – May 9
Until then, be inspired and keep writing!!
Love to all, Sally
