We bring to CWG our individual talents. Put together, we display an abundance of rich, beautiful gifts. The many committee needs this month are opportunities for those gifts to shine!
Blog: Job opening for Blog Chairperson
This opportunity is for a leader familiar with WordPress who can oversee everything going on in the Blog, check the posts, and report to the Board about updates. This person interacts with writers and has lots of helpers including a submissions editor, copyeditors and proofreaders. Contact: Ellen Gable Hrkach or Nancy Ward.
Status of the CWG Blog:
- Karen Boyce is back to blogging intermittently after taking a break to care for her mom.
- Dennis McGeehan is starting a monthly series on freelance writing.
- Karina Fabian is starting a series based on her writing workshops.
- Kathryn Cunningham is doing an excellent job as submissions editor, keeping the daily schedule going.
- Secret agents Barb Grady Szyszkiewicz and Joe Wetterling have volunteered to catch us when we err and point it out to us.
- Judy Klein volunteered to copyedit.
- Theresa Frailey, daughter of AK Frailey, is coming on as an intern-proofreader. She may also be doing a series (intermittent) on Young Adult literature from a young adult point of view.
- Bloggers, please post your drafts at least three days before publication date to keep these new volunteers busy!
CALA (Catholic Arts and Letters Award): Job opening for CALA Chairperson. The person we need for this prestigious assignment can begin now and be well prepared for the next award in 2016. This Chair works with writers, judges, and winners of this literary award. Contact Ellen Gable Hrkach
Catholic Book News: Ellen Gable Hrkach. Ellen reports that “The February issue is scheduled for Feb. 23 with three books. I’m showcasing three books per issue in order to catch up on the backlog of books that need to be featured this year. March’s issue is created and just needs cover images and proofreading.” It would only take a short conversion for Ellen to train a volunteer who likes to select book reviews and put them together for the website.
Catholic Writers Conference Live: Ann Margaret Lewis and Ellen Gable Hrkach. Set aside July 22-24 on your schedule for this premier event. Call for speakers coming soon!
CWCO: Laura Lowder and Karina Fabian. CWCO is canceled for 2015, since we are exploring webinar software. We’ll try again for 2016.
Educational Committee: Dennis P. McGeehan, Any suggestions for Dennis? He’s busy posting publishing markets to our Facebook group.
Facebook: Karina Fabian. Karina reports, “Our FB group is going well. We are touring Ron O’Gorman’s book, FATAL RHYTHM. In the future, I’ll alternate between a fiction and a nonfiction title. Maybe change name from Book Bomb to Book Blast.”
Membership: Michael R. Shelton; Ellen Gable Hrkach, With new dues structure in place, invoices are sent to those not on autopsy and membership info updated as members pay.
Public Relations: Stuart Lynn Sexton. Stuart can use a co-chair who loves social media
Retreat: (Seasonal) Ann Margaret Lewis and Margaret Realy. Sam Rocha and Ken O’Gorek are our speakers for the retreat this fall, “Your Word is my Delight,” October 25-29 2015. stfrancis.ws/retreats.html, DeWitt, Michigan
Seal of Approval: Chairperson needed who likes to work with a team evaluating books. Interim Chair: Ellen Gable Hrkach. This quarter we were filled to capacity (10 books) by the opening day, which was a surprise. Will have awarding by March 31. Second quarter submissions open April 1.
Zenit: Dennis P. McGeehan has a new volunteer, Jeannie Ewing.
Critique Groups: In addition to our official committees, we have two critique groups. The CWG Non-fiction Critique Group is co-facilitated by Connie Rossini and Nancy Ward and has tone opening. Don Mulcare facilitates the CWG Fiction Critique Group. Contact these facilitators for guidelines.
Nancy Ward
Nancy Ward, convert, journalist, author, and speaker, writes from Texas about Catholicism, conversion and Christian community at NancyHCWard.com, JOYAlive.net, and other websites and magazines. Through her Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story workshops, retreats and DVD, she shares her conversion story in Catholic parishes and at conferences, equipping others to share their stories. She contributed to the award-winning The Catholic Mom's Prayer Companion, facilitates two Catholic Writers Guild critique groups, serves on the Guild’s Board, and speaks at national writers conferences.
Darn it, Nancy, I forget how to post and I’ve been thinking about a topic for many days that it seems to me would be very appropriate for Catholic writers. I’ll just mention it here and maybe it will quit bugging me (you know how ideas are to writers, like an itch!).
I got Marion Montgomery’s text on Flannery O’Conner and other issues in literary criticism and he has a section (I’d site, in a real post) on words. Simply words. He says they are a sign of transcendence even in the natural world. He says they are supernatural. They are a sign of Truth even in the material world.
His actual words on that are inspiring, unlike my summary (Marion Montgomery is a poet, part of a movement in the South at the time that combined agrarianism, poetry, non-fiction essay work, and fiction. I suppose it dovetailed with Dorothy Day and if I had another lifetime I’d learn it all!)
But you get the point! Words, for one thing, do not evolve. Even PBS in a recent special on evolution added the comment that they wished us viewers to note that it is extremely unlikely that human intelligence evolved, which is just about the same things as speaking of language. They are relating the mathematics of it, the available time versus the rate of change of language we have observed since we learned to observe, and it is impossible to say that the structure we have inherited evolved over the time available. This is of course true of all life as well, there has not been enough time for even the most basic living cells to have evolved, as the electron microscope has revealed. Evolution has lost, but we’re awfully slow to come around.
And, so. Words are magic. Think of it! We say a word. It enters another mind. Weightless, it makes a little groove there, that’s how brains work. And something changes. A person stops drinking, or starts. A person stops sinning, goes to church, confesses, stops beating his wife and learns to love his children. Because someone put a word in his mind that gave him hope again. Words, somehow the transmission of supernatural grace in our dark world. And we writers shape and mold these words every day. Words, a bridge between the immaterial and the material. Montgomery says it so much better, and as a Catholic he makes the connection even to prayer, and that’s when I stopped reading and cried. The book will have to go back to the library before I can finish it, if this keeps up. (Why Flannery O’Connor Stayed Home, Marion Montgomery, out of print, darn it, but available through interlibrary loan).
I have begun to memorize the last gospel at mass, St. John, in which he calls Christ the Word again and again. I am thinking there might be a test on it. Traditional mass, that is.
Thanks for sharing this. I hope you will continue to write on this blog. Contact Kathryn Cunningham for information on how to submit blogs here.