President's letter

After a grueling and often-contentious campaign to become the new president of the Central Coast Writers, I’d just like to say thanks to those of you who voted for me, as well as thanks to those of you who declined to write in anyone else. Just because I ran unopposed hardly makes it less of a race (at least in my mind).

My first order of business is to thank outgoing president Sarah Pruitt for all she did for the CCW during her tenure. She did a great job leading the pack locally, and she also represented us well at gatherings of our parent organization, the California Writers Club. Sarah, I’d also like to thank you personally for trusting me enough to be your vice president. Even though the office’s only real responsibility is to fill in during the president’s absence, I also did other typical VP duties (like representing you at the funerals for heads of state around the world). While you’d probably think these ceremonies would be extravagant, it turns out, none of them could top the Costco pizzas we serve each month—and you don’t even suffer jet lag when you attend our meetings!

Before I end this month’s madness, let me just say how excited I am about the state of our club and where we’re headed. After talking about trying to get back to pre-Covid days for the past few years, we are now actively working hard to bring you the first writers’ workshop in a long time. We’ll be announcing it in the next few weeks and offering members an opportunity to reserve a spot in this limited-space event.

We’re also discussing other ways to make the CCW an even better organization. Topics on the table include: Meeting with local bookstores and libraries to better assist writers in getting their books into these venues; exploring the idea of facilitating carpools to meetings so members who are unable to drive might still be able to attend; looking at our holiday party to decide if it still works for everyone (and by “everyone” I mean the 25 members or so who attended last year). Maybe it’s time to do something different—or at least something that represents a better use of the club’s money. We’ll see.

OK, so much for my inaugural info dump. I’ll end by congratulating Donna Drewes for becoming our VP, and my hearty thanks to Joyce Krieg and Gary Parker for their continued great work as secretary and treasurer, respectively.

If you have ideas on what else we can do to make this an even better organization (if that’s humanly possible!), please let me know. Like all cornfields, I’m all ears.

Thanks for listening.