NEW THIS YEAR: FRIDAY SOCIAL!!

When: June 4th, 2010, starting at 7:00 PM
Where: Great Lakes Distillery, 616 West Virginia Street, Milwaukee, WI 53204 (Map)
Who: Everyone! Come to our FREE meet and greet event on Friday night! Meet the WriteCamp crew and network with other writers before the event! All ages are welcome; 21+ to drink.

WRITECAMP MILWAUKEE 2

Watch the WriteCamp Milwaukee video

When: June 5th, 2010, starting at 9:00 AM
Where: The Hide House, 2625 South Greeley St., Suite 100, Milwaukee, WI 53207 (Map)
Who: EVERYONE!

Look at WriteCamp photos

Writers of any genre and ability level can hone their skills and fuel their creativity in the workshop’s unique “unconference” environment, where the participants determine the workshop topics and content as the event evolves. Writers can suggest topics now at www.writecampmilwaukee.com, and will be able to initiate and suggest topics during the workshop in a setting created to foster collaboration and spontaneity.

Seasoned writers will appreciate the chance to reawaken their creativity, while newer writers will have the opportunity to learn the craft and network with published and experienced writers. Past workshop topics have ranged from self-publishing, autobiographical writing, poetry and editing to technical, business and resume writing.

This year’s event will feature a slam poetry performance by Brave New Voices, a spoken-word group of young writers based in LA that has performed on HBO and uses hip-hop, voice and dance to express their poetic social commentary.

Learn what WriteCamp is all about by visiting our About page. Then see what others had to say about last year's event by visiting our Testimonials.

What can you do while you're here?

Join -- Sign up to be a part of WriteCamp and receive information about sponsoring, volunteering, and being a part of this unique event

THEN

Discuss -- Be a part of the conversation by joining the forums and being a part of things.

AND THEN

Propose -- Put up a session you'd like to host -- or maybe suggest one for someone else.

Want to help out?
Feel free to print out our flyer and spread the news around YOUR city!
CLICK HERE!

It's that time of year! With the wild success of WriteCamp in 2009, we're putting together another FREE writers conference for 2010. As we begin to put together this year's conference, we'll putting more information here on the site.

For now, here's the basics . . .

When: June 5, 2010, starting at 9:00 AM
Where:The Hide House, 2625 South Greeley St., Suite 100, Milwaukee, WI 53207 (Map)

Who: EVERYONE!

Learn what WriteCamp is all about by visiting our About page. Then see what others had to say about last year's event by visiting our Testimonials.

What can you do while you're here?

Join -- Sign up to be a part of WriteCamp and receive information about sponsoring, volunteering, and being a part of this unique event

THEN

Discuss -- Be a part of the conversation by joining the forums and being a part of things.

AND THEN

Propose -- Put up a session you'd like to host -- or maybe suggest one for someone else.

The Milwaukee Writers Workshop has been a project of mine since August of 2006. After a degree in Creative Writing at UWM left me wanting for a community of writers outside of the university. Since its inception, MWW has grown from our small group of four writers to a growing organization that has -- roughly -- 10 meetings every month.

It's time for some changes, though.

As MWW expands to offer more services to the growing community of writers that have become part of the organization, it has become necessary to pay for more and more things. In order to do this -- and in order to begin looking for a permanent home for MWW and The JB Dryden Company -- we are going to begin offering paid memberships along with a variety of new services. As well, The Milwaukee Writers Workshop will officially become a division of The JB Dryden Company.

What does this mean for our writers?

All writers who are part of the organization are welcome to our free critique sessions. These are the same groups we've always had. We've put up a list of member services and the prices for the various memberships up on the MWW website. Visit www.milwaukeewritersworkshop.com/content/mww-memberships for details on our new memberships and services.

Our Mission

The Milwaukee Writers Workshop has a single mission: we are a free, multi-faceted writers group for those of you who have made writing a part of your life. We focus on developing your craft, improving your material, and supporting your pursuit of publishing.

The goal of the JB Dryden Company is to provide professional editing for all styles of writing and a range of projects.

The JB Dryden Company believes that we will better be able to service the writing community of Milwaukee and its metro area by combining these two separate goals. It is our hope that in the coming months we will be able to implement new seminars, workshops, and classes in order to better serve. Our goal, as it has been for years, is to make good writing better, and we believe that we are better able to do that by building a strong community managed by a company with a strong writing background.

To all those who have been a part of MWW, we thank you. We are always eager to hear from our members (both current and potential) to hear how we might improve our services. Feel free to Contact Us to ask questions, offer suggestions, or request more information.

There are some words in the English language that have very quickly recognizable meanings. One of those words is Nazi.

The word is a shortened form of the German Nationalsozialist to describe the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, "National Socialist German Workers' Party," led by Hitler from 1920.

My argument for this word is to use it only to mean that. Too often, words get so normalized that they desensitize the implication of their deeper meaning. Calling someone a grammar-nazi (or any other kind of Nazi combination) is both inaccurate and insensitive. While I'm not one to really be on the side of the whole "politically-correct" movement, there are some words that simply need to be nixed from the common vernacular.

Next week I'll be a little less political. I promise.

Exaggeration is a wonderful tool when it comes to embellishing a story or trying to win a friendly argument. It's never good when you're writing an article or trying to make a rational argument.

Probable is an Old French derivation of the Latin probabilis meaning "provable." Thus, an event that is probable is something that could happen but really doesn't have a high probability -- improbable, then, being the opposite.

This word, in my experience, gets replaced quite often with impossible, which means "incapable of occurring." Both come from similar Latin words (probabilis -- to try; possibilis -- to be able) but mean two very different things in contemporary language.

To say that something is impossible when there is, in fact, a chance of it happening is fallacious, a topic I'll cover in the very near future. So use them appropriately.

The Office of Lights & Letters' yearly challenge, National Novel Writing Month is nearly upon us. I will be rising to the occasion again this year, though with a much more well thought-out plan than I had the last two years. I will more than likely report on my status on my personal blog for those interested.

I promote NaNoWriMo each year for a variety of reasons:

1. Any organization that promotes literacy for all ages is a good organization
2. OLL promotes cultural interaction by involving people from across the world
3. It's a great motivation tool, even if it's one that is mostly self-done

Mostly, though, I promote it because it's writing. And while there is a large contingent that takes up the challenge each year who don't take it nearly as seriously as I do (I am well known to be very serious about my writing, editing, and language), I still believe that everyone involved is doing a lot better than most when it comes to doing something worthy of being called art.

Ken Robinson spoke a number of years back about the education system teaching out creativity in our students; it's nice to see so many people each year working against the grain by doing something creative. Writing is a hard task when it comes to putting your imagination into a comprehensible form. So it should go without saying that those who even attempt the challenge - regardless of whether or not they reach the fifty thousand words - has done more than the average individual.

That is why I promote such a good concept and the people who run it. If you're not doing NaNo this year, ask some of your writing colleagues if they are. If they are, then do your very best to support them every step of the way. Much of a writer's motivation comes from encouragement.

Quite a few mavens of the grammar world will tell you that there is one and only one use of the word anxious: "to be fraught with anxiety." They'll then proceed to tell you that you should never use it as a synonym for eager. Anxious is a relatively new word from the 1600s, which derives from Latin for "troubled in mind." Eager, on the other hand, is from the 1300s and comes from the French meaning "keen, sharp." Over the course of the last 200 years, however, the two have come to have a similar meaning due to their similar emotion - a sense of immediacy and importance. Anxious has been deigned as being slightly more negative; eager being the more positive. However, there is no reason that they cannot be interchanged. Anxious might simply be used to express so strong an eagerness (for a particular outcome) as to be unhappy at the potential lack of the desired outcome.

John McIntyre, former editor from The Baltimore Sun has posted on his blog a piece about the newly-released Garner's Modern American Usage.

I wanted to repost Garner's request in order to support my colleagues.

I have a favor to ask of you as a loyal reader: In the next few hours or days, would you please go to http://www.amazon.com/ or http://www.bn.com/ and buy one or more copies of the new third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage as holiday presents? In fact, keep this gift possibility in mind through the end of the year, won't you?

I need your help in sending a message to the major bookstore chains: they're not stocking the book because they've told Oxford University Press that they consider usage guides a "defunct category." It's maddeningly unbelievable. Please help me show them that they're stupendously wrong.

Meanwhile, in the coming months you might ask about the book when you're in a bookstore: ask the managers why they don't stock copies, and encourage them to do so.

If you're curious to see what effect you're having, watch the rankings on Amazon.com or Bn.com in coming days and weeks. We'll be alerting the major chains to those numbers, and we want to get as close to the top 50 as we can. If you're trying to order and see that the book is labeled "out of stock," order anyway: the effort is also to ensure that the online booksellers keep adequate stocks.

In return for this favor -- it's a grassroots effort -- I'll be happy to inscribe copies that you send to LawProse for that purpose, if you (1) include a filled-out FedEx airbill for returning them to you, and (2) suggest an appropriate inscription.

It's important that as a society that communicates so readily and in mass quantities in written form, that we keep editors around to keep the quality of language in good working order. It's not about being grammar mavens; it's about making sure what we're writing is clear and concise.

Last week I wrote about the use of the word irony. This week I want to talk about coincidence.

Coincidence is derived from a French word meaning an exact correspondence. Now, however, it means "a concurrence of events with no apparent connection."

Many people misuse the word irony or ironic to mean coincidental.

Coincidence, too, is often misused as a way to defend an argument, using a misapplied definition (the old, French one) and claiming that two unrelated events means a direct correlation (it's called "Equivocation," and it's the basis for Slippery Slope).

So that's today's lesson.

When writing a story, choosing the point of view can be just as vital as the content itself. Presentation is a very important issue with a lot of readers and knowing the right point of view (or POV) for your piece is good.