Readers, today we hear from Bowen Gillings, president of Pikes Peak Writers. This month, Bowen provides a report on Pikes Peak Writers 3rd quarter Board of Directors meeting  Look for the Prez Says Column each quarter as Bowen continues to keep Pikes Peak Members informed and aware.

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Report on the September 2017 PPW Board Meeting

Continuing with my goal to keep you, the PPW member, engaged and informed about our terrific organization, I present this latest update on the efforts of your amazing Board of Directors.
The PPW Board met at the end of September to hold our annual elections for various Board positions. You may check out our bylaws (available to the public at https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PPW-Bylaws-2015-09-23.pdf) to know the necessary process for becoming a member of our Board. It is not very difficult, but does require candidates to honestly depict their qualifications, goals, and reasons for wanting to be part of the Board.

This election brought in new Members at Large Damon Alan and Gabrielle Brown for two-year terms. Our new Vice President is Kameron Claire. She is a regular attendee at PPW’s monthly improve writing event, Write Drunk, Edit Sober, so come by and meet her. Also, Treasurer Charise Simpson will continue for another two years, as will Member at Large Karen Fox.
When I became your President in March, I replaced our Immediate Past President, J.T. Evans, who had 18 months remaining on his term. At that time I felt it improper for me to step into nearly a full term as President without an open election. The position of President was open to the entire PPW membership in September, yet no one submitted his or her name for consideration. So, the Board voted to keep me in place until the September 2018 elections when the position will again be open for a new candidate to serve a two-year term.

For a full look at your current Board of directors, go to https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/about/board-of-directors/. These are the people you can reach out to with ideas and concerns regarding PPW.

The Board also took a hard look at our web footprint. In late August, an outstanding trio of volunteers joined forces to become our web team. Todd Gleason heads this group as Webmaster and is supported by Jim Beavers and Liz Jeffries. Together these three have worked with our previous Webmaster to take over the managing and maintenance of our website, our membership database, and our submission portals.  Along with Gabrielle Brown, the new managing editor of our blog, they’re also working to streamline blog functionality as well as our news feed. For a tech noob like me, these seem daunting tasks, but these folks charged right in and set to work.

In the next few months you can expect to see some changes to our site. The team is building proposals to make our site more functional and easier to maintain. With a 100% volunteer workforce, simplicity is key for continued success. The Board will be deciding in November which changes to make and which products to use.

That is it for this installment of Prez Says. If you have questions about PPW and how it works, please reach out to me. The address, again is president@pikespeakwriters.com.

Thank you.
Bowen Gillings
President
Pikes Peak Writers

Pikes Peak Writers President's Report -- The Prez Says

By: Bowen Gillings

When I became your president in March, one of my key interests was keeping PPW membersPrez Says blog is intended to do just that. Once per quarter, following our Board meeting, you will receive a summary of what occurred, what decisions were made, and how we are moving forward.

informed about the workings of their organization. The

Please understand that, as a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, this organization is governed by bylaws. Those bylaws are intended to protect individual members as well as our organization. Therefore, some of what occurs at Board meetings cannot be shared. Still, it is my hope that keeping our members informed will help draw in new volunteers and new ideas to help the organization grow.

This last meeting covered a broad range of topics from financial reports to getting new signs for our various monthly events.

The success of April’s Pikes Peak Writers Conference has given us a path for our next one in 2018. However, several key positions on the Conference Steering Committee need to be filled. Please, if you love attending Conference and are planning on going in 2018, why not help out as a volunteer? Check out https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/about/key-volunteers/ for opportunities. Some positions come with big discounts on the cost of Conference!

Angie Hodapp

June’s half-day event with Angie Hodapp also proved a great success and the Board is looking into the possibility of conducting events like these more often, perhaps quarterly. To do this, we once again need volunteers to help out. If you’d like to see more big events more often and have the wherewithal to help see them done, contact me via email at president@pikespeakwriters.com. If you have an idea for an event you’d like to see, be sure to visit our workshop request page and fill out the brief form at https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/ppwc/request-a-workshop/.

A big issue discussed this past meeting concerned our vacancies in key positions within PPW. Aside from Conference, PPW needs volunteers to keep itself functioning. One shortfall we have right now is the need for a qualified webmaster. Our current one is stepping down after having given us great service for the past few years. My goal as president is to create a web team around any webmaster serving PPW. Right now, we have two talented individuals who are helping out with the website, but neither can take on the full duties of webmaster. If you are a talented web guru, work well as part of a team, and can take vague direction from a non-tech savvy president, then we need you!

Other vacancies include a volunteer coordinator to help keep PPW up to date with its members and a new facilitator for our monthly Open Critique sessions. Pay attention to our website and social media as a fun, informational social event is coming up in late August. There will be door prizes! For more information on all of our needs, check out https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/about/support-ppw/volunteer-opportunities/.

 Next month we hold our annual Board Elections. Several positions will be up for election this time. Those include President, Vice President, and a few Member-at-Large vacancies. Normally, President and VP elections are offset by a year. However, due to the circumstances of my becoming President, it’s only fair to allow other qualified candidates to submit their names for the position this year, knowing that the position of president will be up for election once again in 2018. If you are interested in running for a position on the PPW Board, send a formal, one-page letter stating your interest and a short resume of your qualifications for the position to president@pikespeakwriters.com. A selection committee then forwards candidates to the Board for the vote in September.

Two other items of note at this meeting was the approval of Laura Hayden as a Board Liaison. This is a non-voting position and one that allows us access to Laura's experience and insight as one of PPW’s founding members. We also discussed the power of our social media presence, particularly PPW Connect (https://www.facebook.com/groups/PPWConnect/). PPW Connect is a great place to seek out other writers should you be looking for a critique partner, have questions about the craft, the business, or just want to get opinions on some of your literary ideas. Check it out if you have not already.

That is it for this installment of Prez Says. If you have questions about PPW and how it works, please reach out to me. The address, again is president@pikespeakwriters.com.

Thank you.

About the Author: Bowen Gillings lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, daughter, and dog.  He became a member of Pikes Peak Writers in 2015 and is President of Pikes Peak Writers. You can catch him climbing the Manitou Incline or at Garden of the Gods Park, where he heads the school programs for area elementary and high school students.  Or come listen to his overbearing voice as the emcee of Write Brain the third Tuesday of each month at Library 21C. He is screaming along the rollercoaster ride of his first novel about a disgraced soldier and pregnant sorceress fighting their demons in a fantastical version of the French and Indian War.  

Revealing your World without Losing your Reader

By: Bowen Gillings

No matter your genre, you have to engage is some form of world building to orient readers to where, and by what rules, the story takes place. Even if you set your novel in modern-day New York City, you have to be familiar with the landscape of Manhattan and the outer boroughs, the patterns of traffic, the smell of the side-streets, the presence of law or lawlessness in each neighborhood, and more.

World building is a necessity as a writer. But, you don’t need another article on how to build the world of your novel. There are resources aplenty out there for that. Google it. What I want to spend a few hundred words on is how to reveal the world you’ve built to your readers.

Many beginning writers, particularly in speculative fiction, fall into the trap of starting off with a massive chunk of descriptive information in order to set up their world and its paradigms for the reader. Don’t do this. Ever.

“But what about Lord of the Rings?” you ask.

Don’t do it. Only Tolkien was Tolkien. Don’t do it.

“But what—”

Don’t!

The opening info dump does nothing for your story. There is no action, no conflict, no character development. Here are a few better ways to reveal your world and its rules to the reader. And you don’t have to take my word for it. I posed the idea of revealing your world to a room of twelve fellow writers. They came up with the following ideas. So, keep your buts until the end.

The first, and overwhelmingly agreed on best method, is to reveal your world through your story. As your characters move through the world and interact with the world, that is where you give details to the reader. You can do this easily in action. You can do it in dialogue, though be careful that the dialogue stays real to the characters engaging in it. Narrative can be used, too, particularly if the reader is getting the character’s perspective on the setting.

One of my favorite examples of revealing the world through the story is the opening chapters of Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Logen Nine Fingers is on the run. By the end of page one, the reader knows the world uses medieval technology, there are fantastic creatures, and that the north is lawless and dangerous, plus all the sensory details that paint the vivid, action-packed opening scene. As the chapters progress the reader learns more and more about the world’s geography, its politics, the use of and feelings towards magic, and all through character action and interaction.

It is an ideal example of letting the story reveal the world.

Another key is to only reveal elements germane to the immediate scene. If it makes sense for your character to think about other lands, the political situation at present, or what atrocities led up to the current state of affairs, while sitting down to tea with an old friend, then you can use it. If not, don’t include those elements of your world until the story dictates that they should be revealed.

In my current work in progress there is an ongoing war. The opening scene is a battle, but I don’t have my protagonist pondering what led the nations into conflict or how the colonists view the natives because it would not make sense for him to do so. What is shown are my character’s thoughts on the present moment, which allows me to tie his motivation to the greater conflict and give the reader enough information to follow the story.

Having your characters engage in everyday activities is a great way to reveal your world. A character hitching a plow to a horse sets up an entirely different world to the reader than having a character pull clothes from the dryer or connect her iPhone to her Volvo’s Bluetooth. What’s more, showing how the characters feel about these activities lets you double your money. You’ve educated the reader about your world and your character at the same time. You’re welcome.

There are also certain tried-and-true tropes (or tricks) you can use to reveal your story. Having a character mentor another character is perhaps the most wildly used method. Think Gandalf or Obi-wan teaching Frodo or Luke. Through their teachings the reader (watcher) learns more about some of the world’s secrets. Be careful, though, the mentor trope needs to be used subtly. Having the crotchety older police detective tell the rookie how it is for three pages just so you can reveal the level of corruption on the force and who is involved and which mob bosses are profiting will come off as exactly what it is—a tedious info dump.

So, remember how emphatically I told you not to open your story with a big piece of world background information? Well, there are ways to do it and do it in a way the reader likes.

“But, you said to—”

Forget what I said! Every rule in writing can be broken if you can do it well.

There is value in starting the reader at a distance, giving her the broad scope, then narrowing in on the particular characters and their place in the world. Few books do this more enjoyably than Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The key to the success of Hitchhiker’s is Adams’s narrative voice. The deft use of humor in a third-person omniscient point of view lets the reader chuckle her way through the background about aliens and expressways until actual characters are introduced.

If humor is not your thing, you can still be successful as long as you have a strong narrative voice. Or, you can cheat, one of my favorite books as a youth opened with a song, called The Canticle of the Dragon. The song sets up the world even before page one of the prologue. This is not too common in today’s novels, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

Hopefully, these thoughts give you a few ideas on how to open up the world you spent so much time building to a reader eager to be immersed in it. My thanks to the folks at Writers Night who contributed their thoughts to this article.

About the Author:  Bowen Gillings lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, daughter, and dog.  He became a member of Pikes Peak Writers in 2015 and now serves as President. You can catch him climbing the Manitou Incline or at Garden of the Gods Park, where he heads the school programs for area elementary and high school students.  Or come listen to his overbearing voice as the emcee of Write Brain the third Tuesday of each month at Library 21C. He is screaming along the rollercoaster ride of his first novel about a disgraced soldier and pregnant sorceress fighting their demons in a fantastical version of the French and Indian War.

Pikes Peak Writers Write Brains: What's in it for You?

By: Bowen Gillings

I mark the third Tuesday of every month on my calendar. 6:15. Library 21C. Write Brain.

These two-hour workshops focus on improving writers and authors. Educators at Write Brain range from published novelists, short story authors, and non-fiction writers to agents, editors, and marketing experts.

Write Brain consistently provides wonderful insights into the breadth and depth of what it means to be both a writer and an author. There is a difference. A writer is an artist, a creative person who composes narrative/prose/poetry/etc. An author is someone who does likewise as part of his or her livelihood.

Attending Write Brain taught me this.

Like so many others, I first approached writing as simply sitting down and putting to paper what was stirring in my brain. Little did I know at the time how much more there was to the process. Also, I was oblivious to what it took to get published and find readers.

I started attending the Pikes Peak Writers Write Brain workshops in 2015. Write Brain showed me Scrivener, the fantastic word processor and organizational tool on steroids. From Write Brain I learned the necessaries of marketing and how much of an author’s time must be committed to it, whether traditionally or self-published. A recent workshop used neuroscience to explain what story elements engage readers and why, giving fiction writers a road map to keep readers turning pages.

These workshops spurred me to relook at my work in progress. They made me reassess whether I wanted to put in the work to finish a manuscript, query, network, market, and all the rest of it. They motivated me to participate in the Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference and get my work in front of agents.

The monthly injection of new information and new approaches that these free workshops provide always leave me invigorated, recharged, and ready to plant myself in front of a keyboard to hammer out the story that has tormented my brain for years.

I have to say, “Thank you, Write Brain.”

Each Write Brain workshop is selected by the Pikes Peak Writers Non-Conference Events (NCE) committee from the hundreds of submissions on our workshop proposal portal.

Have an idea for Write Brain or want to see a particular subject covered at a workshop? Go to https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/proposing-a-workshop/, read through, follow the guidelines, and click on the corresponding link to fill out a submission form. Better yet, join PPW here and volunteer to assist on NCE! Then, you can help decide which workshops get on the calendar for Write Brain.

See you there!

About the Author: Bowen Gillings lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, daughter, and dog.  He became a member of Pikes Peak Writers in 2015 and is President of Pikes Peak Writers. You can catch him climbing the Manitou Incline or at Garden of the Gods Park, where he heads the school programs for area elementary and high school students.  Or come listen to his overbearing voice as the emcee of Write Brain the third Tuesday of each month at Library 21C. He is screaming along the rollercoaster ride of his first novel about a disgraced soldier and pregnant sorceress fighting their demons in a fantastical version of the French and Indian War.  

A Letter from PPW's Incoming President

Dear Reader:

A heartfelt thanks to the PPW Board of Directors for electing me president of such an

amazing organization. It is my sincere hope that together we can continue to move PPW toward a goal of being the premier writer’s organization for the Front Range.

This letter will convey to you four areas of focus for my presidency. While I have many more ideas for PPW, this first blog post will cover the four broad topics that most encompass who I am as a leader, and what I seek to do as your president.

First, I am a stickler for communication. It is my firm belief that poor communication is the root of most failings within any relationship, be that between two people or within an organization boasting more than 1,500 members. To open the lines of communication with you, our members, I invite you to reach out to me at president@pikespeakwriters.com with your suggestions and ideas for the organization as a whole. I cannot promise responses to every email, but I will take seriously your input and present viable ideas to the Board.

Furthermore, I will communicate with you with as much transparency as allowed by our bylaws. Decisions, opportunities, events, changes, etc. will be made public, if at all possible. You can expect our website and social media to reflect this.

Next, I hope to increase member engagement. Every component of our organization relies on members volunteering their time, talent, and resources. For PPW to thrive, we need a diverse body of engaged and committed people at all levels of leadership, management, and operations. Again, keep checking our website and social media for open volunteer opportunities ranging from assisting with monthly events to serving on the PPW Board of Directors to helping with our next conference. These will be posted soon and updated regularly.

Third, I seek to renew PPW’s commitment to promote its member authors. We currently have a way for you to let us know if you are holding an event (release, book signing, etc.) by completing the form found at https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/submit-an-event/. I will work with the Board to develop additional efforts, such as a regularly scheduled announcement of member authors recently published, be it traditional, self-published, anthology, periodical, or other medium. To make this work requires a combined effort from me, the Board, and of course, our member authors.

Lastly, as a fellow writer, I believe it behooves me to seek as much education, advice, networking, and promotion as possible. It would be hypocritical of me to not expect and endorse the same for you. With that in mind, I hope to partner PPW with other non-profit writing organizations in Colorado in the hope that we could promote each other’s events, recommend and share ideas, facilitators, workshops, and modus operandi, and in every available way combine forces to improve and promote area writers.

These are just four topics from a list of things I will be working with the Board of Directors to develop. I offer no guarantees.

Again, this is a volunteer organization and as such is only as successful as those willing to make it so. The PPW Board has consistently proven to be committed to making this organization the best it can be. Our volunteers are dedicated, amazing people, but we need more. If you are interested in committing your time and effort to PPW, send me an email at president@pikespeakwriters.com.

Thank you, Dear Reader, for being part of Pikes Peak Writers. I look forward to working with you."

Bowen Gillings

President

Pikes Peak Writers

About the Author:  Bowen Gillings lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, daughter, and dog.  He became a member of Pikes Peak Writers in 2015 and sits on the PPW Board as a Member at Large. You can catch him climbing the Manitou Incline or at Garden of the Gods Park, where he heads the school programs for area elementary and high school students. Or come listen to his overbearing voice as the emcee of Write Brain the third Tuesday of each month at Library 21C. He is screaming along the roller coaster ride of his first novel.  

Improve Your Writing: Critique Someone Else's

By: Bowen Gillings

Even if you are not part of a critique group, you want people to critique your work. You want it for the most basic reason: to show that someone read what you wrote. You want reviews from your readers. You want reactions from critics. Having your diligent typing efforts scrutinized by others is a big part of the whole, “I am an author” package.

Now let’s flip this notion. You want to critique others, not so that they have proof someone read their stuff, but to improve your own work.

The how of this concept is elegantly simple. By conducting a thorough critique of another’s work, you improve your own.

For starters, you need to grasp how to conduct a good critique. Becky Levine, in her article Critique Your Way to Better Writing (Writer’s Digest Yearbook, Fall 2013) sets up three principles to focus on when critiquing:

• Identify Trouble Spots – Read deeply looking for what works, what catches you, and what leaves you flat. Do you want to keep reading? If you find yourself tempted to skim a section, go back and discern why.

• Root Out the Problem – Are the characters uninteresting? Perhaps they all speak the same or behave so indistinctly that none are unique. Does the plot lack tension? This may be because problems are solved too easily or the stakes are not high enough. Perhaps dialogue is unnatural or the author’s voice is flat.

• Present Options – Focus on the big elements that need work. First, thoroughly explain the issue(s). Then cite an example from the piece that illustrates that issue. Finally, offer possible solutions. This is not writing the story for her. This is opening her eyes to possibilities she may not have been aware of.

Conducting a critique in this way will reap rewards for you as much as it will for the author you read.

When you read deeply, looking for those trouble spots, your mind searches for anything to enhance your own work. You find a metaphor you can tweak for that love scene. You discover an undercurrent in the dialogue that you can adapt for your villain, achieving the subtle wickedness that’s eluded you.

When you identify problems, you start recognizing the same in your writing. You realize you, too, tend to start paragraphs with character names. You also use lists or groupings of ideas too much when a single phrase could convey the same concept and spice up the flow.

Finally, by offering suggestions, your creativity engine revs up. You find offering ideas to the author opens new paths to your own characters, adds flavor to your voice, and streamlines your plot. Your writing becomes Steve Austin—stronger, faster, better.

So, even if you are not part of a regular critique group, dig deep into those works that you like to read. Really look at them as Becky Levine suggests, and your writing skills will grow exponentially.

About the Author: Bowen Gillings lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, daughter, and dog.  He became a member of Pikes Peak Writers in 2015 and sits on the PPW Board as a Member at Large. You can catch him climbing the Manitou Incline or at Garden of the Gods Park, where he heads the school programs for area elementary and high school students. Or come listen to his overbearing voice as the emcee of Write Brain the third Tuesday of each month at Library 21C. He is screaming along the roller coaster ride of his first novel.  

Quote of the Week and the Week to Come

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”  ~ Allegra Goodman

Source: Wikipedia & Writer's Digest

Allegra Goodman, born in 1967, is an American author based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her most recent novel, The Cookbook Collector, was published in 2010. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven.

This week on Writing from the Peak:

April 17:  So, How Did You Get Your Book Published? by Margo Catts

April 19:  Improve Your Writing: Critique Someone Else’s by Bowen Gillings

April 21: Sweet Success Celebrates Catherine Dilts

Lessons from an Abecedarian

By: Bowen Gillings

I am a new writer. Nothing published. No awards. Just expanding Scrivener files. 

Novice that I am, I have gleaned a few nuggets from the sluice trough of experience that might help other rookies. I believe in the strength of these ideas the way my four-year-old believes fairies populate our backyard.

Understand advice is like bacteria—everybody has some, and, like it or not, they’ll share it.  Feel free to turn away if I appear to cough on you over the next few hundred words.

Write.  Seems obvious. But how often does writing get set aside until after your to-do list is done? I used to think I needed to get other stuff out of the way so that I would have time to write. Nonsense. Write first. Housekeeping can wait. Mowing the lawn can wait. Oiling the cajón can wait…until after you write.

Write your best.  Obvious too? I mean to write the best possible options into your story. My protagonist could find out who’s clear-cutting the forest by asking around town. Or he could track down the foresters just as they are being attacked by an armed group of environmentalists. Both further the plot, but the second option will likely hold more interest for the reader.

Write now. Editing is part of writing, but it is a separate part. Editing does not further your story. Editing only improves the telling of it. I was a chronic editor, bogged down in my writing by mental dickering over a word or metaphor. It’s not a good thing, not in the first draft. Now, if I’m stuck on a word or phrase, I highlight it for later review so that the story begging to be released from my hops-muddled brain can continue to flow.

Set a timer. Unless you find yourself with nothing else pressing (which means you’re dead) set a specific amount of time to write. I typically give myself an hour. Knowing the alarm is going to go off makes me write faster and cleaner.

Show off.  Put your writing in front of other people. Nothing improves my work more than getting feedback from folks who give of their time and taste to tell me what to chuck, what to tweak, and what pissed them off because it was so well written. This last bit hasn’t actually happened, but it’s good to have a goal.

Know you’re dumb. Raise your right hand and repeat after me: “I (state your name) know doodley-toot about the true craft and business of being an author.”  Writing requires an idea and a laptop (or a notebook if you’re old school). To be a successful author takes so very much more. There are books, magazines, and websites on writing (I’ve read two of them). Join a writer’s group. Join a critique group. Attend workshops. Go to writing conferences.  Join Pikes Peak Writers and attend Write Brain, Writer’s Night, and Open Critique each month. I did and looks how goods I write!

Don’t fall in love. You’re proud of a scene that really shines. When your critique group reads it, they are confused by character motivation and how the scene fits into the narrative. If readers consistently tell you something doesn’t work, change it. Don’t defend your work based solely on how much effort it took to create.

Write your way. I am not George R.R. Martin, Joe Abercrombie, or Susanna Clarke. I love their work, but they are not I.  They are not me? Whatever. The point is: avoid comparing your writing to other writers in a way that drags you down. Good authors tell stories in their own voice. You are a good author. Accept that your story must be told your way. Then tell it.

There. A few hundred infectious words of amateur advice sprayed across your brain like a sneeze from the guy behind you at the theater. Now wash your hands. You don’t know where I’ve been.

About the Author: Bowen Gillings lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, daughter, and dog.  When not writing, he can be found at Garden of the Gods Park where he heads the school programs for area elementary and high school students.  He is enjoying the rollercoaster of writing his first novel.  He became a member of Pikes Peak Writers in 2015. At the 2016 Pikes Peak Writers Conference, an agent asked for a complete manuscript based on his first sixteen lines. With only two chapters complete, he was able to negotiate submitting the manuscript before the 2017 Conference. Yes, it's good to have goals!