November 17, 2015 Minutes

Those who attended the Bartlesville WordWeavers Club meeting in November were Jennifer (President), Saralyn (Treasurer), Abigail (PR), Erin (Secretary), Cindy, Tawnya, Charlotte, Sally, Rita, Stacey, Marilyn, Linda, Margery, and Ann. We also had two first time guests: Glenn and Francia Vermillion. Glenn and Francia were extremely fun to talk to and would be valuable new assets to our club. We hope to see them again soon!

On the day of the meeting the club had given away free copies of the Seasons of Life anthology on Kindle. Most people forgot until that afternoon, but we ended up having 118 Kindle copies taken that day with no PR.

Old News:

We were reminded not to forget to share the Book of the Day on Facebook.

There was information given out about four upcoming writing competitions:

• 2016 Oklahoma Book Awards - Deadline January 8, 2016
• OWFI Conference May 13th and 14th - Deadline February 1, 2016. www.owfi.org
• Friends of the Library, February 1st, 2016 - enter by the end of December, 2015
• 10th Annual North Texas Book Festival Book Awards on April 8th and 9th, 2016 - Submissions Sept 1st, 2015 - December 31, 2015.

Kindle copies of Seasons Remembered will be given out for free on December 13th and 15th. Let's try to remember to publicize this time around. Who knows how many copies we could get out there with some PR effort if we gave away 118 without any!

New News:

OWFI has changed formats on their Newsletter. It is now being updated monthly on the webpage.

Our December meeting will be shared with our club Christmas Party. It will be taking place on December 15 at 6:00 pm at President Jennifer McMurrain's house. Bring your favorite goody; sweet or savory. Please remember that we will be conducting a normal club meeting as well as celebrating, so print out and edit the stories we are sent for a critique session. An e-mail with more details will be forthcoming.

There is some exciting news for various club members! Jennifer was accepted by BookHub, which is notoriously difficult to get into. Charlotte had a book signing the Saturday after the meeting at the Nowata Library.

For NanoWriNo this year our club had 3 participants. Abigail wrote her first full draft of a book, Saralyn worked on a rough draft for All the Little Pieces, and Jennifer was writing the rough draft of her next novel. These ladies deserve lots of respect for making that commitment and trying to write everyday!

Margery announced that she is almost done editing a book for Robert Peters. He already has one book published in the 90's. He needs help formatting and publishing on Amazon. He also needed editors. Several club members volunteered to help Mr. Peters.

Last but not least, Abigail got not one, but two contracts for "Pockets" Magazine. She will be in two back to back issues: Jan/Feb 2016 and March 2016.

I hope to see you all in a couple of weeks at the Christmas Party!

Erin McMillan, Bartlesville WordWeavers Club Secretary

October 20, 2015 Minutes

Members attending the October 2015 meeting were Jennifer McMurrain, President; Cindy Bolder, VP; Sarah Lynn, Treasurer; Erin McMillan, Secretary; Tawnya Hobbs York; Marilyn Boone; Sybil Copeland; Linda Durkiss; Rita Durrett; Charlotte Smith; Darla Tressner; Hillary Smith; and Eloise Peacock. We also had a guest, Suzanne Read, who paid her dues and joined at the meeting. Welcome Suzanne! We look forward to reading your work.

Sarah Lynn gave the Treasurer's Report.

Jennifer informed us that the club had given away 44 Seasons of Life the weekend before as a promotion.



In our New News, Jennifer had come out with her 3rd novel in her Quail Crossings series: Missing Quail Crossings, the Tuesday before. Jennifer is currently busy with a book tour. We congratulate her on the fruits of her labor and wish her the best in her travels.

Charlotte Smith had received another delivery of her book Murder, Murder Everywhere that day. Congratulations, Charlotte!

Congratulations are also in order for Sybil; she just completed a story about her home for her memoir. It is a tour of her home. Sybil gave a helpful suggestion in that pictures are a handy tool for writers.

Rita informed us that she has a 4th editor for her project, and we are all hoping for headway.

Pepper Hume has an art exhibition in Dewey. Go check it out.



For our Main Business portion we discussed our new anthology, Seasons to Celebrate.

Jennifer gave all the present members handouts on the overview of the book, such as rules and protocol. On October 27th she e-mailed the guidelines to all members.

Present members were able to sign up for her own submission deadline. There are two for each meeting until August 2016.


Tawnya took some pictures of the meeting for the WordWeavers Club website. Thank you, Tawnya!

The next WordWeavers meeting is November 17th. Details are forthcoming.

Thus ended the Official Meeting.


Jennifer McMurrain then took us through her notes on the "Fast Draft" workshop given by Candy Heabens. We learned many suggestions on how to write a draft in two weeks.

The meeting adjourned.

January 2015 minutes

*No December minutes were take due to it being our annual holiday party. 

President Barbara Shoff brought the meeting to order with seventeen present.  Anyone having trouble sending entries to OWFI should watch the video by Jennifer McMurrain. Try to make your word count have a 50 word “cushion” because some programs come up with different numbers which can disqualify your entry. We covered the costs for OWFI and the scholarships available. We encouraged entries to the Friends of the Library contest, which also has its deadline on February 1^st, and to Listen to Your Mother Oklahoma, Chicken Soup, and Good Old Days magazine. In memory of Bob Long, a motion to give $50 to the Homeless Shelter was passed. Several also gave donations totaling $16, so the amount from our treasury would be for $34.  A motion to compile a list of books about writing our members would be willing to loan to others was passed. .  We critiqued  two stories. Then Barbara encouraged anyone wanting to submit something (10 pages or less) to be critiqued to send it to her  by Friday Feb 13 to then be sent out to others for our next meeting February 17. Meeting adjourned. ~ Diana Purser