March 2022 Newsletter



March 2022 Newsletter








Next Meeting:

Wednesday, March 9

6:30 to 8:30 PM

McCallum Room, 4th floor

Frisco Public Library

6101 Frisco Square Blvd.

Frisco, TX 75034





Mark your calendar for March 9 at 6:30-8:30 PM. Look forward to seeing you then!


All are welcome to attend Write Club meetings….no formal invitation needed. Write Club meeting information can be found on the Frisco Library web site and on the club's Facebook page (Frisco Write Club). Additionally, every month, in advance of the meeting, Rich Blazevich (richblazevich@gmail.com) will send an invitation by email to the active members.


Anybody who has attended a Write Club meeting is automatically subscribed to our newsletters. At the top of each newsletter is a notice of our next meeting.





Our Website: FriscoWriteClub.org


Please visit our website, run by Kevin Mann, for updates and announcements.






Our Facebook Page: Frisco Write Club | Groups | Facebook






March Meeting





Arrive early to check out a book or two from the Write Club’s lending library on the craft of writing. See Bill Etter for details.





Library News





The new library’s projected opening is for the fall of 2022. Fall begins September 22 and ends December 21, so the city of Frisco will have a wonderful present. The plan is to have a video and sound area where you can record. I know some of you will want to take advantage of that option. March will be your opportunity to vote for the name of the dinosaur who will reside in the new location. The staff received over 2,000 suggestions and are narrowing them down to a manageable list of finalists.





Writing Hints from The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression





To create empathy for a character (including the antagonist), take the time to humanize them through their actions. Even the most unlikable person has a redeeming quality, so show it to the reader in a small, subtle way.


Don’t be afraid to challenge your character’s morals. Putting them in situations that are outside their comfort zone will make them squirm, and the reader will too.


In scenes where information must be shared, characters should still be moving, acting, and revealing emotion to keep the pace flowing smoothly.





Frisco Public Library Flash Fiction Writing Contest





Enter your original work, 500 words or less, to the library's annual Flash Fiction writing contest by April 30, 2022.

Submission Rules

  • Original unpublished works of 500 words or less in English.

  • There is no restriction on style, genre, or theme.

  • One entry per person.

  • Open to participants ages 18 and up.

  • Entrants must live in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area.

  • The Frisco Public Library reserves the right to reproduce and distribute all submissions.

  • Submit your entry by: April 30, 2022

Judging

  • Submissions will be judged by a panel of judges.

  • Winners will be contacted the first week in June.

Awards

  • Selected submissions will be featured in Frisco Public Library's annual Flash Fiction eBook.

Submit online at https://friscolibrary.com/flashfiction/





Contests Without Entry Fees





FICTION CONTEST

The theme for the 2022 contest is: Hearth, Song, and Table.

There is no fee to enter.


We ask that authors try and incorporate at least two of the three concepts into their speculative work. This can be conveyed in the setting, plot, characters, dialogue; the only limit is your imagination. The theme must be integral to the story in some way and not just mentioned in passing.

While the theme certainly seems to lend itself to fantasy, we can see many ways to twist the wholesome sounding prompt towards horror. Likewise, with a bit of creative interpretation, there are plenty of science fiction stories to be told with this theme.


Dates and Deadlines:

Contest opens on January 1st and closes on May 1st 2022 at 11:59:59pm EST.

Stories will be forwarded to the judges by June 1st. The coordinators will receive the judges’ decisions by June 22nd.

The three winners will be notified by June 25th.

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will be announced during the Confluence Conference (July 27th-July 31st 2022)


Word count for all entries: No minimum, no more than 3500 words.


Requirements: The winning story will be the one that most effectively uses the contest theme as a key element.


Number: A maximum of 2 submissions is allowed. Submit each story separately.


Eligibility: The contest is open to non-professional writers; those who have not met eligibility requirements for SFWA or equivalent, sale of a novel or sale of 3 stories to a large-circulation publication. Previous first-place winners and current contest coordinators are ineligible to enter.

Here's link to the contest: https://parsec-sff.org/short-story-contest/

NONFICTION CONTEST


Chicken Soup for the Soul

We want holiday stories that share your traditions and memories of normal times — pre-pandemic. We want your holiday stories that share how your traditions and celebrations changed because of the pandemic. We all hope that by the time we are reading our 2022 edition that the pandemic will be completely behind us. But maybe some of the changes you made will become the way things will stay for years to come. Please remember to make sure your submissions are "Santa safe" so we don't spoil the magic for our precocious readers!

Here are some suggestions but don't let these limit you. We know you can think of many more.

• New holiday traditions started — and to be continued?

• Thanksgiving — holiday fun, disasters, and family bonding

• Hanukkah — all by itself or incorporated into your Christmas tradition

• Kwanzaa — traditions and celebrations

• Boxing Day — traditions and celebrations

• The weeks leading up to Christmas — anticipation, energy, the kids

• Using technology, Zoom or FaceTime gatherings instead of meeting

in-person

• Decorating — oh, how we love to do that!

• Undecorating — oh, how we hate to do that!!

• Shopping and finding the perfect gift

• Shopping on-line only — hits and misses!

• Staying home instead of traveling

• Holiday humor — things that went wrong

• Holidays through the eyes of the children

• Around the table — eat, eat, eat and be merry

• Family reunions

• Unique gifts, creativity, the best gift you ever gave or received

• Unique gifts, creativity — the worst gift you ever gave or received!

• Regifting

• Happy New Year!

• Holiday miracles, amazing coincidences, answered prayers

• Gratitude, counting your blessings

• Forgiveness and how you used it during the holidays

• Family dynamics — milestones, tender moments, epiphanies

• What you learned during the holidays

A few guidelines for you and some general information:

*All stories and poems need to be true — we do not publish fiction. Stories should be no longer than 1,200 words.

* Please write in the first person about something that happened to you or someone close to you. *Every part of your story must be true. No "composite characters." But yes, you can use a pen name, if necessary, to protect yourself or someone else.

*If a story was previously published, we will probably not use it unless it ran in a small circulation venue. Let us know where the story was previously published and the approximate exposure it received in the "Comments" section of the submission form.

Deadline is May 1, 2022





Successes






Exhibit at the Heritage Museum of Frisco where DONNA ANDERSON was researcher and writer won the Arts & Humanities award for Class 1 (large cities) for ALL of Texas! Our first award in November was for the North Texas Region. We resubmitted and this time won at the state level. The award is from the Texas Recreation and Parks Society. We are up for an award from a national museum organization.


Donna was involved as a volunteer researcher and logged over 400 hours prior to the exhibit opening last March. That included communicating with archives in Germany, Israel, and New York. Additionally, She did a full genealogy work-up in order to locate extended family members of Leo and Irma Wollenreich, which was a challenge, but managed to find their great nephews, a cousin, and other members of the family--some who traveled to Texas to see the exhibit. Rayna Alam, the Frisco Heritage Museum Director, and Donna worked on presenting the artifacts and preserving the ephemera in the collection. The Heritage Association received a grant from the Collin County Historical Commission to have more than 70 letters and documents translated from the old German Sutterlin script, which helped immensely in our understanding of the Wollenreich's story. Because Donna was the researcher closest to the story, she wrote several of the interpretations for the museum exhibit, which allowed Rayna to focus on the artifact interpretations.


The exhibit became a national and international shared experience as the museum was able to borrow Irma's 350-year-old Shabbos Lamp, which a great-nephew had donated to a museum in Ohio. The archives in Straubing, Germany were thrilled to receive copies of some of the critical letters that Irma wrote and she and Leo received after the war--when the town was trying to prosecute the participants of the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9/10,1938 that found Leo beaten and tortured and sent to Dachau. Irma never spoke about what happened to her that night. The museum team discovered Irma's mother, Luise, was transported and murdered near Izbica, Poland. Leo lost aunts, uncles, and cousins. The Nazis seized their business, personal property and home, worth millions in the 1930s, and they arrived in America with four cents. They were given the opportunity to work on a farm in Frisco thanks to Irma's first cousin, once removed. Becoming Americans, rebuilding their lives and fortune is an incredible story.














Kevin Carlos will be submitting to the short story contest listed in this newsletter.

Linda Baten Johnson will be teaching “Writing the Low-Heat Romance at the Frisco Senior Center each Friday from 10-11 during the month of April.

Linda Baten Johnson will be featured speaker about “The Friendship Train of 1947, America’s Christmas Gift to Europe” at the Frisco Senior Center on April 6.





Presentation Format for Members Presenting Work for Critique:





  1. Writers: Send your document to Jennifer Evans at dallaswestie@gmail.com prior to the meeting which include the following:

    • title of your document

    • your name

    • your email address (optional)

    • Add line numbers to your document (Go to Layout, then Line Numbers, then Continuous)

    • Limit your document to 500 words (approx. 2 pages) for time constraints. Each reader will be given 10 minutes to present and receive feedback.

  2. Jennifer will post documents to this Google Drive folder.

  3. Critiquers may download documents, make comments, and provide feedback during the meeting.

  4. Critiquers may send comments to writers who provide their email address.

  5. If the writer doesn’t provide an email address, critiquers may send edited doc to Jennifer who will forward to author.

  6. Find additional information about critiques on our website.





Blogs from Our Members





President: Rich Blazevich

Secretary, Newsletter: Linda Baten Johnson

Vice President, Social Media: Kevin Mann (this role includes Write Club web page, Google Docs and Facebook)

Vice President, Critiques: Jennifer Evans

Presidents Emeritus: Gary Thornberry, Fergal O'Donnell

*Other contributors: Zoom meetings: Donna Anderson, Facebook administrator: Ari Frick