The Writers’ Nook is a place where we, as a group, can provide a safe and positive environment in which to encourage one another and hone our own writing skills.
Presentation Skills
Is it important for writers to have presentation skills? After all we’re writers, not performers. Yes? But why, you ask. Don’t you “hear” your words in your own head by reading them in silence the same as you do when you read them aloud? Nope.
And in the very next breath I ask, is it important for writers to be able to effectively evaluate their own, or their peers’, presentation skills?
This meeting will held via zoom at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 24th, Blind Bay Time (aka Vancouver Time). If you would like to join our group, please contact us. Your first meeting is free.
THE CHALLENGE to complete before the next meeting on December 8th, and over the Christmas Holidays as well, should you be inclined, is to write a story, essay, or poem; truth or fiction; beginning with a title that contains one, or more, of the following words:
Beyond a doubt the
most unusual Christmas
episode
that anyone from a sheltered life
such as mine could
imagine.
Or give it a title that contains the antonym of one or more of these words, above.
Responses
My Magic Christmas by Siv Pettersson
Hi Siv,
Wonderful story. Not everyone has been through a time of poverty or expectation of an empty Christmas and you explained that emotion effectively. Just a couple of small things, in case you have the opportunity to re-publish–which happens with holiday stories–.
In the sentence “On the morning…it may be more effective to put the word “when” before “mom” and just use “a large”.
“The tree was loaded with piles and piles” is a sort of complicated sentence because the tree probably didn’t have most of the presents, they were under the tree, and to use “piles and piles” may have been what you thought at the time, but you are telling it as an adult. Geepers I know there’s a name for that…kind of like a backwards forwards point of view? Anyway, probably one piles is plenty. You might consider, “They’d lovingly restored a special few.” I like how you brought the story into a circle at the end, the start of an expected disappointing and the true fun of an unexpected “richness” from those around you, and your family, who cared. Special.
Siv, My Magic Christmas: Excellent writing! See my comments posted on the December 8th meeting page.