First Day -ish

It’s week one and I’m increasingly excited to be here! My first impressions of Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts, and Mineral Point in general, are ones of awe. The natural, tree-filled setting combined with the integrated hand craftsmanship and unique personalities make this a Welcome Home kind of place.

I’ve been writing down goals and impressions, along with pertinent information in a small notebook in the effort to stay focused and on task. I’ve also created a folder on the upstairs Mac.

On Wednesday, I met with Don Hay and Courtney  Henson (I met Carla Lind earlier) to go over the internship contract and discuss my duties. Don and Courtney recommended that I set some goals along with dates to accomplish those goals.

I’ve set a date of November 19 (Monday) to have the database of regional freelance writers completed. Of course, this can always be added to, but I thought 30 writers, their specialties and contact info was a good number. I’ve got 10 so far.

I’ve found some good sources for freelance writers/writing:

FreelanceWriting.com and Chicago Women in Publishing, or cwip.org

 I’ve contacted (or rather, she contacted me) Heather Murn and we are going to discuss the Winter Writers Series and Residencies this Saturday.

I’ve looked over two press releases for last year’s Winter Writers Series and started a draft for this years press release, contingent on its approval by Heather, Courtney, Don and others.

Some of my time has been spent looking at the Shake Rag Alley website and noting information that I couldn’t find, or could be updated. And, of course, some of my time was spent drafting this progress report!

Any and all feedback is welcome. So many things will be firsts for me and if I don’t get it here, I’m not sure where I will be exposed to it. This is a great place to be and I’m happy to be here. Sincerely, Phoebe Baker