Our 2009 Kick Off Meetup: Making an Impact Starts With Us. This is Our Moment.

This will be our first meetup of 2009! This meetup will ride the wave of momentum created by our planning meetup on December 28th in which we create a firm foundation and powerful context of what we are up to as writers, and how that will get expressed in 2009. This will be a large gathering of the people who attended our first and second meetup, as well as picking up some new people who come to our planning meetup. Writers who have written poetry and prose between the last meetup and now will be invited to share their work with the group as appropriate and for longer pieces which the group does not have the ability to appreciate in it's entirety, we will create structure so that we can give each other feedback and encouragement between meetups. Also, I'm standing in the possibility that we will be outgrowing our Starbucks location. What I was hoping was that we could meet at a Panera Bread since I think it's got the same friendly feel while being a much larger, possibly more accommodating location for a larger group, but there isn't one that's very close and in the Keyport/Matawan neighborhood. The closest Panera is in Old Bridge on Route 9, which I'm OK with as long as it's OK with the group. I want to avoid losing members due to logistics, so let's see if we can work it out for everyone! Here are some of the questions that we will be addressing in 2009: How do we become and maintain persistency and consistency as writers, and what do we do when we fall off the wagon? What does it take to get published? Why get published? What are the different ways to become known as a writer? Besides and including writing for profit, what are the benefits and advantages to developing the habit and the lifestyle of writing regularly? Why do we do it? Why is it important? What does it provide for our lives and the lives of the people who are important to us? I'm sure there will be more questions, but this is enough to get us started. Also, please keep your eyes open for an email coming around soon with other structures that I will be putting in place to create conversations between meetups so we can discuss what we're getting out of the meetups, share our work, and share resources. Thankfully, many of the meetup participants have already begun to do this, so my role as facilitator is to encourage and accelerate that process. Our online conversations are not meant to replace or upstage our in person meetings but rather to provide a forum where we can get to know each other and make our face to face time richer and more enjoyable. What's most exciting about this group is that I don't know where it's going. While I have a lot of ideas, it heartens me when others have their own which are often better than mine. It's been really great to see us start writing and sharing with each other since our last meetup. If you're not yet in the conversation, please join in! We want to hear from you! If you're already in our conversation, let's up the ante and raise the bar! How good can we stand it?