Carolyn, Sally S., Sal M., Claudette and Joe attended the May 11, 2007 Beanery Writers Group meeting. Some days are not meant to be efficient. I planned our meeting and left the disc with the information on it at home, so had to re-create the items as we went. Then, somehow I deleted the notes on the actual meeting…so I have to recreate them, too! The meeting began with a word test, which was completed quite successfully by all the members present. I tried to do a presentation of the keynote speaker at the St. David’s Writer’s Conference, but said I would do a more complete presentation in an E-mail and on the Beanery Writers Online Literary Journal. The summary I was supposed to present, containing several points made by Page, will be posted tomorrow night. They come from his keynote address and two of his workshops I attended. The thoughts are not necessarily connected, and it isn’t meant to be a good writing. Just a sharing. At a conference workshop Page had attendees do an exercise: a one-sentence monologue on our life. Afterwards, he had three people present their statement and others asked questions (this demonstrated a trait of a good critique group: the ability to lead the writer to new depths by asking questions). For an exercise at our meeting, we tried this---but I gave our members a three-sentence monologue. One commented three sentences was harder than one sentence would have been. My article came out in Westmoreland History. Sally S. had read it. As a result of writing it I was solicited to work for a company in Illinois that does town profiles for chambers of commerce. My assignment is Delano, CA, due in four weeks. One never knows from whence a writing job will come! The Beanery Online Literary Journal surpassed 30,700. Readership goes down as the temperature goes up, but one day we had 627 hits. I shared a couple of points in an article on blogs that Pat gave me. It said blog use will peak in 2007, and will reform as new technology develops to include more pictures and audio. Sally S. announced the Ligonier Valley Writers Conference is cancelled. Sally S. shared a cartoon; someone else shared a piece and I had a piece to be critiqued (the latter created a lively discussion). The meeting ended on time. ---submitted by Carolyn | 
