February 2007 Meeting

"I just wasn't interested."
-Part of Oliver's critique of he who shall remain unnamed

I walked in to the back room of Barnes & Noble to find two surprising things:
1. A whole four visitors
2. A member who previously went AWOL, presumed dropped-out

Visitors can be fun, so no worries there. However, I was markedly less pleased to see the returned member. We worked long and hard to chase him away, damnit! Why am I so mean? He wrote a saga about a twelve-year-old girl prodigy hero who had, like mood swings, vast changes in character. She often went from whiny sprat to the gal all the adults followed within the distance of only a paragraph. There were other problems, too, some of which were kinda creepy – like how the EVIL spaceship captain was going to rape her. It just wasn’t right. Whenever you are an adult male writing about a twelve-year-old girl threatened with rape, you must tread very carefully. Not to mention that he stayed with the rape/violence to young gals in a handful of short stories he submitted to the group after giving up on the space saga. A bit disturbing. Now he’s back. On the bright side, he did mention that he might move to one of the other groups. I’ve got all my fingers, and toes, crossed for that one.

The good news is that our own child (okay, not child, he’s legal) prodigy, Oliver, has returned after missing two months to go sing and be at a sibling’s birthday party. Also fortunate was his critique of another member’s submission. Brief note on this other member – he’s arrogant, condescending, and writes poorly (excellent combination). So, hearing Oliver’s critique was definitely a high point. While very smart, Oliver lacks tact, so while you can count on him to make good points in a critique, you can also count on him to sound a bit insulting – not intentional, but still there. He’s known to make comments like, “this annoyed me” or “I just didn’t care if he died.” Great fun.

During dinner after the meeting, we got on the topic of a group romance novel Jenny got some of us English majors started on a few years ago during a night at the bar. The hilarious part was that each person would take their portion right up to the point where things were about to get dirty, then pass it on. The next person would then do a fake out in the lines of “but just then, her father walked in…” then build up to getting dirty and pass it. This wasn’t planned, but things just worked out that way, much to our entertainment. She’s planning to take some seeds from that night to create a whole novel, the outline of which sounds hilarious. I told her she should start it ASAP, but she was being obstinate and talking about some other project she wanted to do first. Bah!

However, those of us at dinner decided to honor the endeavor by creating our own multi-authored romantic saga. Starting with Oliver, one person each month will write a sequential chapter of the novel. It should be fun.