First things.

Thanks to everyone who came to the first meeting of WIP. It rocked... and there were five of us. Please try to make it to the next meeting! We are awesome, and you want to hang out with us. Trust me.

Here are the conclusions we've reached about meetings:

+ I'll introduce one new prompt at each meeting. We'll spend fifteen minutes working on the prompt during the meeting, and then take it home to work on it more. Give each prompt two weeks, so that at any given time you'll have two ideas to be working on. Do bring what you've done to meetings, so that we can workshop this material.

+ We'll be workshopping material each week. Given the number of people involved, and since we want to give pieces the attention they deserve, workshopping will be on a rotational basis. Details to come. However, it's certain that, in order to workshop your material, you must send it out to group members at least six hours before the meeting, preferably twenty-four. To do this, e-mail your piece to thisworkinprogress@gmail.com. This way, your piece will be distributed to the mailing list. Do this with both the material you're currently developing and the pieces that grow out of your responses to prompts.

+ We'll bring in writers to speak about the craft, the business, and other relevant, fascinating things in later weeks. Feel free to suggest potential speakers. Please note that, if we do host a speaker, you should be at least cursorily familiar with the speaker's work.

+ Prompts will include anything and everything. Send ideas along. If the prompt is not a specific sentence or passage to be incorporated into your work, it'll serve as a kind of springboard. For example, "Poe's 'Cask of Amontillado,' which could not have been so effective had it not been set in its particular time and place; write a scene which derives its movement and meaning from its setting."

+ Everything is currently in flux. At each meeting we'll try something new and see if it works. This means that your attendance is important! Please come to meetings; if you can't, contact a member in the group (before the meeting) to make your ideas heard.
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And now, concrete things.

The prompt from this week's meeting is:
"She was on her third cigarette, and it wasn't helping."

Write a scene that continues with this character. Feel free to change the gender and tense. Consider who she is, where she is, why she's smoking. Why isn't it helping? What has just happened prior to this first sentence? What's around her? Who's around her? Who/what isn't? Has she always smoked? Answer these questions through action and interaction, not narration.

Also, I'll bring in Poe's "Cask of Amontillado," possibly for use as a prompt, next week. Start thinking!