A Guild's Response to COVID-19

Post date: May 14, 2020 9:10:10 PM

As the pandemic known as COVID-19 continues to rack up the number of infected and fatalities, the Hannibal Writers Guild is responding by temporarily moving our meetings online. Even thought the state of Missouri has been opening back businesses, we will continue to have online meetings until the situation stabilizes.

You may have already attended our first virtual meeting with David Alan Lucas and his talk on creating a layered villain. We have our next online meeting lined up for June with guild president Dana Lockhart, who will be presenting "The Writer's Free Toolkit." At that point, we will re-assess the situation to see if we'll be able to meet in person again.

As we develop our online meetings, it opens up the possibility of using them in the future. In the event of hazardous driving conditions or sudden venue closure, we can move meetings online. Not only that, but we can do virtual write-ins and open mics!

We're still exploring our options as far as platforms for online meetings, but at the moment we're seriously considering Youtube Live. We know that some of our members don't use facebook, so using Facebook Live would be a bit unfair. I personally don't care much for Zoom. If you have any input on streaming platforms, feel free to reach out to hannibalwrites(at)gmail(dot)org and let us know! Are there other ways you'd like to utilize online meetings? We're open to your feedback!

Stay safe out there, Hannibal Writers. Wash your hands, maintain a distance of 6 ft, and use masks and gloves where possible. The sooner the virus is put to bed, the sooner we can meet up again!

Write on!

-Dana Lockhart