WordSmitten.com Writers May Meeting

In April, set your objectives for your manuscripts. Work on your query letter, your book proposal, and start to revise your manuscript, this time for tech edits. On May 4, an expert book PR guy from Manhattan, Scott Manning, has agreed to spend an hour to answer your book promotion and media questions. For details on this live call-in show, go to www.blogtalkradio.com/wordsmitten and save the date for Sunday afternoon on May 4 at 4:00 PM to call in to talk with Scott about your book.

We will take a few minutes at the April meeting to discuss the March 22 workshop held at the University of Tampa, sponsored by the Naimoli Institute for Business Strategy and WordSmitten.

If you have questions that you want to ask of those great speakers, let us know. For those of you who did not attend on March 22, the speakers were:

• Alison Steele, partner in the law firm of Rahdert & Steele
  
• Bob Tarte, podcast producer and author of "Enslaved by Ducks" a film optioned by Patricia Heaton of "Everybody Loves Raymond" fame
  
• Connie May Fowler, author of "The Problem With Murmur Lee"
  
• Jane Friedman, editorial director of Writer's Digest Books
  

Rather than have a single large meet-up every month, the WordSmitten.com Writers Meet-up has a number of small (up to eight writers) groups that gather to share each writer's work and exchange thoughtful, thought-provoking critiques and suggestions for development, submission, and marketing.

We want to keep these groups large enough to provide good feedback, but small enough to give each writer the attention his/her work deserves. Our first group of eight writers is already making a difference in the work of our participants, and we look forward to drawing more writers together to benefit from this process.

Writers bring to each meet-up their short stories, magazine articles, or novel manuscripts. Those who bring enough copies (8) for each of us to read along with you gain the added benefit of having our written comments returned to you. We'll be reading the first five pages (12 point type, double-spaced) of your work and talking about writing tips, literary agents, and marketing.