Wednesday, October 21, 2009

August 8th Meeting Minutes (Posted Late - Sorry)

7:36 pm – Chuck Kent opened the meeting by introducing the guest speaker, Ernie Witham.

Ernie Witham is the author of A Year in the Life of a ‘Working’ Writer, A Memoir to the Best of the Recollection of Ernie Witham. This is his second book. His first book is Ernie’s World. In addition to his books, Ernie has had twelve of his stories published in the Chicken Soup book series and teaches at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference.

Ernie says he goes shopping for humor. He pointed out that you just have to look around to see the humor in everyday life. He reads everything – signs, ads, magazines, brochures. He also finds humor on vacation, in telemarketers, with family and even at Cotsco!

The advice that people usually give is “Write what you know”, Ernie says. He finds it’s easier to find the humor in writing about things you don’t know. He also confided in the group that sometimes he baits a situation for the humor.

On the topic of publishing, Ernie said people don’t want to take chances in the publishing world. The option of self publishing makes it hard to get your book into bookstores which sometimes forces you to sell your book over the internet.

Ernie co-published his new book (as well as his first book) with John Daniel, who edits, secures an ISBN number bar code, registers the book with the library of congress, sends out review copies, gets the book into distributors catalogs and does press releases; some of the things writers sometimes does not want to do.

Ernie wrapped up the talk by reading a few excerpts from A Year in the Life of a ‘Working’ Writer. His book is on sale through Borders Books at $14.95 plus tax.

The meeting ended at 8:45 pm and a book sale and signing followed.

Watch this half-hour video of Ernies talk discribed above:

Ernie Witham Writer from dolphingal805 on Vimeo.

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