It’s never too late to start writing or publishing! The Published Writers of Rossmoor offers the companionship of like-minded individuals, and welcomes both aspiring and published writers: anyone interested in learning more about writing. The members of PWR are novelists and poets, historians and memoirists with these in common - a word processor and a dream. Our community is here to help you grow as a writer and provide advice on publishing and promoting your work: from workshops to critique groups, we’re here for you. Meetings are held on the first Saturday of each month (except July) at 10am in the Fairway Room in the Creekside Building. Guests are always welcome.
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Welcome to the
Published Writers
of Rossmoor
PWR News
Folks are often surprised to learn that The Published Writers of Rossmoor club's official name is The Published and Aspiring Writers of Rossmoor, meaning that membership and participation in club activities are not limited to published writers. The club's mission is to help writers of all stripes--fiction, nonfiction, novelists, poets, memoirists, short story writers, children's book writers, journalists, etc.--established and novice alike--with the process of writing, publishing, and promoting their works. To that end, members assist and support one another. The club schedules writers and industry speakers to share expertise on various topics at meetings on the first Saturday of each month, from 10am - Noon, in the Fairway Room at the Creekside clubhouse. Non-member visitors are always welcome to attend these sessions for a $5 fee.
PWR's upcoming event schedule includes:
Sat, December 7: PWR's "Dark and Stormy" writing contest, the club's annual foray into especially bad writing where abysmal prose is rewarded! Come join in the fun at PWR's Holiday Get-Together and win prizes for crafting the absolute worst opening lines to a terrible novel.
Sat, January 4, 2025: An Authors' Panel of three acclaimed mystery writers, PWR members Rae James, James L'Etoile and Diane Emley, leading a discussion on Creating Drama in one's writing.
Recent 2024 speakers have included:
A compiler of an anthology of baseball stories, an author of several traditionally-published mystery series, a chronicler of long-distance bicycle riding, the writer/photographer of a coffee table book, an author of nonfiction historical sagas, a publisher of memoir photo books and an expert in the self-publishing industry. These speakers addressed the interests and concerns of accomplished authors as well as writers working on their first projects, and those simply considering writing as a pursuit.In summary, don't wait to be a published writer before joining the Published and Aspiring Writers of Rossmoor.
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PWR December Meeting
The Published Writers of Rossmoor's annual "Dark and Stormy Night" Writing Competition will take place at the club's Holiday Meeting and Get-Together, Saturday, December 7, from 10AM-Noon in the Fairway Room at the Creekside Clubhouse. Visitors are always welcome at PWR meetings for a $5 charge and are invited and encouraged to take part in the festivities by trying their hand at crafting some truly awful prose. Refreshments will be served and prizes of questionable value will be awarded to the most egregious entries.
PWR's "Dark and Stormy Night" Writing Competition is modeled after San Jose State University's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which "honors" author Edward Bulwer-Lytton's opening lines to his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford. Bulwer-Lytton, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, had a distinguished and prolific career as a novelist and poet but is perhaps best -known for his unfortunate choice of words in introducing us to Paul Clifford. “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." Though the work was well received when published, its opening has come to symbolize melodramatic, overwrought prose.
The PWR contest is open to all and will honor those submissions judged most excruciating to the reader's ear. Submissions will be limited to one to three lines (and certainly no longer than a paragraph). They will represent the opening sentences to an imaginary (or perhaps real) novel of undetermined quality. For example, the Grand Prize winner of SJSU's 2024 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest reads: "She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck."
The Bulwer-Lytton 2024 Grand Panjandrum's Special Award went to: "Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose." The 2024 winner in the Historical Fiction category: “On an otherwise fine spring morning, Helga Tottentanz learned in an exceptionally hard way that, whatever they might’ve told you in hospitality school up in Cologne, as a serving wench in Mainz’s finest inn in 451 A.D., you don’t greet a battle-weary and obviously stressed general named Attila, fresh from crossing the Carpathians at the cost of ten thousand or so men, with an overly cheery “Hi, Hun.”
Contestants in the PWR competition will be asked to read their entries aloud at the December 7 event as they vie to elicit the most ridicule and scorn with their wretched prose. Note: The club is obligated to remind sensitive sorts that, in the unforgettable words of a long-forgotten sage: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words flung (figuratively, of course, as words are concepts, not projectiles) with malice can cause grievous psychological harm, unless of course they miss their Mark, or Gloria or Francis, to name only a few."
Featured Authors are members of the Published Writers of Rossmoor group.
A different author will be featured periodically.
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