Jen FitzGerald

One of my personal events is to attend my writers group holiday party. This is a time of visiting. We've gone to a no speaker policy since it's a time to visit and have fun. Having to listen to a speaker when you want to visit is unfair to the speaker.

We do have plenty to keep us busy, though, aside from the visiting. We officially announce our election results. The results are usually a foregone conclusion since we've only ever had one person run for any board position in the nine years I've been a member.

We also hand out some awards. At each meeting, members log the number of pages edited and revised since the previous meeting. Then the president (me this year) tallies up the totals and we recognize the published and pre-published members who have recorded the most written and revised pages for the year. They each receive a certificate and a $25 VISA gift card.

In addition, we present someone with the Yellow Rose Award. This is for someone whose gone above and beyond and given that bit of extra effort towards the good of the chapter. They also receive a $25 gift card as well as some yellow roses, a certificate, and a special commemorative gift. This year, a rose ribbon pin.

A new program we started this year was to recognize members who sold books throughout the year. When at a meeting you announced a book sale (or two or three) you were at some point presented with a jumbo sized pencil with the book title, publisher and month written on it. Now, you didn't get to keep the pencil--it went into a pair of boots and was displayed at every meeting. It was cool to watch the number of pencils grow and we quickly had way more pencils than the boots could actually hold. Today, we'll hand out the pencils so those authors can have another (aside from the books themselves) physical manifestation of what they accomplished this year.


On that note, I gotta go get ready for the festivities.

Do you attend many holiday parties?