The Catholic Writers Guild

Dear members of CWG (or those thinking about becoming members)

How would you like the opportunity to make some terrific online friends, get your name associated with a professional organization to fellow writers, editors, publishers and news sources, and do something worthwhile for Catholic literature?  What if I told you it would only take a couple of ours a week or less of your time?

The Catholic Writers Guild needs volunteers–and needs them badly!  The many programs we offer–some with national scope!–are being run by a few dedicated individuals.  We have come to the point where we cannot grow, however, because these people are maxed, and we’re not getting folks to step up to leadership positions as well as people to help consistently with the behind-the-scenes gruntwork.

Please, look over the following needs, pray over them, and if you can help, contact me at committeecoordinator(at)catholicwritersguild.com.

Public Relations: URGENT NEED!

1. Assistant to PR Coordinator.  No experience needed, though PR/marketing experience helpful.  This person would assist Maureen Martin in coordinating the PR activities for the Guild, including the conferences, awards, retreats, etc.  During heavy weeks, could be as much as 2-3 hours a week, but this would only be now and again.

2.  Database workers:  Knowledge of Excel helpful as are Internet research skills.  We want to build a huge, searchable contact database of newspapers, blogs, podcasts, etc. in order to be able to send out press releases and announcements quickly and efficiently.  This is a steady project of perhaps an hour a week.

3.  Marketing writers.  Write press releases and announcements, create flyers.  Knowing how to add photos to a document and convert to PDF helpful.  Perhaps an hour or two a month.

4.  Social media workers.  Knowledge of Twitter, Facebook, etc. helpful.  We have one person who is taking the Twitter account, but it’d be helpful to have a few people who would post news, not only about the Guild but its members and their books.  A couple of minutes a day (even a post a day would give us awesome traffic.)

Inside the CWG–the Guild newsletter

1.  Staff writers, especially for the saints column.  This would take perhaps an hour a month and gives you writing credit.

2. Editors.  Knowledge of PHP/HTML helpful.  To read over the newsletter draft and check for typos, etc.  Takes an hour a month, and you’d share the responsibility with her other editors.  (or serve as back-up)

CWG membership

Welcome committee.  It would be great to have a couple of people who would greet new members and help them to understand the forums, make them aware of the chats and FB page, etc., and basically make them feel welcome.  We’d also like these people to drop by the forums once a week and comment now and again.  Steady work of 20-60 minutes a week, more during heavy membership times (like during and after conferences.)

Seal of Approval

FREE BOOKS FOR READERS!  Read, evaluate, fill out a simple form.  Depending on your reading speed and how many books you volunteer to evaluate, this is a several hours a quarter.  Of reading.  Catholic fiction and non-fiction.  Did we mention free books?

CWG Story Contest

Pre-screening judges.  Looks like this will be getting off the ground at last!  We are going to need people to rate short stories (possibly to novella length) to go to the final panel of judges.  This will be reading-intensive for about a month; then it’s done for the year.

CWG Crit Groups:

We have restarted the critique groups, and in addition to the fantasy/SF group Tauris Tuus, we may have a non-fiction group starting.  However, I know there are children’s book authors, thriller writers, heavy theology writers…  If you would like to coordinate a group, we can give you the tools.

We have two other projects–the Live Conference in August, and the Catholic Arts and Letters ward–that are going to need a lot of help.  I’ll devote another blog to those.