I liked the last meeting of the group. Seven of us sat around at Borders' and wrote from the perspective of someone who shares an secretive trait about ourselves. My secret was my fandom of the Gilmore Girls, the wonderful Lauren Graham - Alexis Bledel TV show. Too bad that Bledel's movie version of "Tuck Everlasting" did not better at the box office. I this she is a cutie-pie and seems like a pretty normal kid, the kind you hope makes it big in the entertainment industry but who rarely does. We need more of her and less of Shakira and less of Britney and less of Christina. Okay, okay, okay, end or rant.

For next meeting we are supposed to write a story about a joke or a prank or some related issue. Our next meeting is on April Fools' Day, thus the topic. I am very leery about this. I am not a fan of the pracitcal joke and am no fan of April Fools' Day at all, so I doubt my own ability to write about this. I have a feeling my muse is not exactly a practical joker. Maybe my muse favors wordplay and puns and the like, but the practical joke? I do not think so.

So my mission from the group is to work on crits. I have looked at one story by Alison and written all over it, but I have not figured out how to get her my comments. I do not know if I am supposed to post these online in our Yahoo Group page or give them to her like I would a graded paper. I just do not know. That was from last time we met, and I did not get the paper back to her. I need to post an email query about how to do this. And I need to get on the ball myself and post a fwe of my own stories for the group to crit. I am a big fan of this group and it is working well on the social level, and I think we have developed enough of a laid back and casual and respectful attitude to do this well and criticize fairly and to take any criticism in the way intended. So now we need to get on the ball and start doing it.

I picked up another manuscripts to crit, this one from Michelle on Remember WENN, her area of fanfic. That is one of the neat things about this group, is that we all come from a variety of areas and areas of expertise. Fanfic is an area that I just barely knew was even out there, and now I am even kicking around the idea of doing a little bit of it myself. We will have to see. I am getting it into my head that there can be value in writing that is not specifically directed towards the end result. In my case I consider myself a novelist and my end result is a number of novels that I have written and have in process and want to write. I have never been a fan of short fiction, really either reading it or writing it, but I see its value as a training tool, and appreciate the group forcing me to engage in this kind of practice. Of course, now I am not too sure of the April Fools assignment, but that is just a personal quirk and hopefully the rest of the assignments coming up will be closer to my wheel-house. We shall see.

But still this is a good group and Alison and Amy and Kris and all of the others in the gorup and who are organizing and driving the group have been doing good jobs and been working hard to make this work. We have not gotten the most help from Borders' and now we are even kicking around the idea of moving the group to homes of group members of local area parks or library. It is maybe a good idea, although I do have to admit that Borders' cafe has some pretty good food. But if we end up moving I am sure that I will survive.