2005 Dargon Writers' Summit

Visit our 2005 Summit Flickr page to see all the photos plus captions!

The 2005 Dargon Writers' Summit was held in Traverse City, Michigan at the end of May. Seven writers attended what turned out to be one of the most relaxed Summits we've had.

Traverse City is a small town in northwestern Michigan. It sits at the base of Grand Traverse Bay, but is only a short drive from the scenic shores of Lake Michigan. The area is known as a relaxing retreat, featuring rolling farmland, orchards, and a number of vineyards, in addition to the diversions offered by the various lakes and islands dotting the region.

Our host, veteran writer Victor Cardoso, had secured a couple lodges on the quiet shores of Lake Leelanau, and we spent most of our time there, either relaxing or holding our official working sessions.

After the usual formal election of officers for the year, we jumped into a brief review of the Black Idol story arc. At that time, all but one story in the first two thirds of the arc were ready to print, and the arc had grown about six times as big as what we'd originally written when it was kicked off at our 2003 Summit. We also discussed the stories we planned to work on after the Block Idol, and there's definitely plenty of material in the works! That was followed by a quick session where we reviewed all the verb tenses and their usage, and then a review of all our ongoing behind-the-scenes projects. In recent months we've attracted a lot of new readers and writers by advertising with Google, we've completely revamped our writers' rules, created a way for writers to share story ideas with one another, made progress on our non-profit status, and figured out the next big event that's going to happen in Dargon.

And that was just the first day! On the second day we discussed a bunch of tweaks to how we format stories, and relaxed a bit by playing a game where you had to guess the definitions of obscure medieval words. But the lion's share of our second day was devoted to how to better support our writers. Part of the equation was how to make writing for DargonZine more fun. Another part was for all of us to more visibly express the joy we get from writing together. And another part of the answer is in helping one another be more effective mentors for our new writers.

Of course, it wasn't all work, either, as you'll see when you look at the photos from this year's Summit. We got out and had a bit of touristy fun, but we also spent a lot of time in the lodge just relaxing, socializing, and chatting about writing and DargonZine.

At right are thumbnail versions of some of the pictures we took at the 2005 Summit. Clicking on an image on this page will bring up the full-sized picture with a detailed caption. The photos generally are a reasonably-sized 30-75k each.

If you find these images interesting, check out the pictures and description of our other Summits on our Dargon Writers' Summit page.