Friday, December 16, 2005

News from AlaskaWriters.com

Sharing the Bounty
Enriching Our Writing Community

Greetings!
The first guest moderator of our new online discussion area is Anchorage novelist and AlaskaWriters member Andromeda Romano-Lax. Read on to learn why she thinks the forum could be the best thing since sliced, um, goat.

Recently, my friend Cindy asked us to stop by her little house on West Dimond Boulevard, where she loaded our arms with an enormous bag of wild mountain-goat meat. A hunter had given it to her. She'd spent hours washing it, scraping it, picking out hairs. Then she'd passed it along to us -- with some homegrown apples, tomatoes, sage and a family recipe for Mexican birria. I was bowled over by the bounty.

"That's how we old-timers do it," she said, she said, slowly and deliberately enough to that I knew I was supposed to be taking notes. "You have extra, and you share it. Everybody used to do that."

My annual Kenai River dipnet trip yielded only three salmon, and you would pity my garden. Words are what I have to share. Which leads me to wonder, as I move into my second decade as an Alaska writer: What could we do for one another, if we tried?

We're lucky. In Alaska, there are few enough of us that we can get to know each other personally. And though we do compete with one another, we compete far more with Outsiders. (There are 200,000 authors out there publishing books each year, and
many more writing articles).

What do any of us need? Is it advice, networking, recognition, simple respect? A well-timed e-mail or phone call, passing on the name of a recommended book or a friendly editor... What does each of us have to offer?

I don't have the answers. In the next room, the goat is marinating in a chile and garlic paste. Our online community is just beginning to take shape. I do hope others will join the conversation, easier to do thanks to the discussion board now
launched at Alaskawriters.com -- a gift being shared with all of us who are willing to take it into our lives, season it, and make it our own.

I’ll be helping to moderate the forum, and I invite you to join in. Maybe you can start by sharing your comments on this question: What is the most helpful thing another writer, reader, or editor did for you?

-- Andromeda Romano-Lax
Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Meeting Rescheduled

Due to weather (good snow) this week's meeting has been rescheduled by a quorum (hat tip to Jon) decision to next Wednesday, December 21 at 6:30. The current plan is for everyone to bring a "good book with a li'l somthin'-somthin' written in the front about why the book is great..." Cafe Felix @ Metro is the place.