Writer’s Mail
February 16, 2010 by Pat E.
“First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/ missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age – say, 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire.” – Lorrie Moore
Writing Friends…
Contests!
The Grandmaster Challenge
You could win a COOL-ER™ ereader!
Do you have what it takes to write your own Five Ancestors adventure? Jeff Stone has started a brand new story from Grandmaster’s point of view but he wants you to finish it! http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/fiveancestors/
Scholarship to Writers Conference
The Swivet is maintained by Colleen Lindsay, publishing consultant, professional nerd and a literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management. Win a scholarship to the Backspace Writers Conference & Agent-Author Seminar in NYC! http://theswivet.blogspot.com/
This same blogs yields a very funny YouTube video Cathy found for us. It takes the point-of-view of the agent, but I feel like this often during critiques…. http://theswivet.blogspot.com/search/label/hilarity%20ensues
Tuesday at the Barnes & Noble
Clayton – Chapter 10 – Challenges for this chapter included introducing more details about Miker’s Grandmother and the Hotel. Jerry thinks Grandma should run the car off the road. Pat wonders, ‘Where’s the fish?’ Jerry wonders where the challenge is for Miker – he’s the lead. Alicia didn’t buy the scene with the cop. Give the cop something to react too. Why didn’t he use the taser first? That wasn’t clear to Kane. Pat wanted to know why the cop was there in the first place. Amber didn’t think Miker would be singing a nursery rhyme in the shower. Jerry thinks Miker would be in and out of the shower in a hurry, and maybe go exploring after. Are the parents out there somewhere? Millie took it that they were deceased. Jerry suggested the seed of the parents be planted early. Judith thought the cop could have some kind of a flashback. Kane wants to know what could happen if Rick gets tasered?
Amber – Chapter 9 – Kim wants to know why Wyvern is capitalized – Amber blames Pat. Jerry thought something should happen to Moira because nothing does. Aren’t there bugs and dirt? The Wyvern came off as up-tight and enigmatic to Shel and others. The hole has to be talked about some more. Alicia was disappointed the chapter was so short – this was what she had been waiting for and it was over in three pages.
Kim – James Hyde and the city of Summer – Millie wants to know if we will find out where James came from? Pat wants to know if the common colloquialisms are used on purpose? She wonders if the language is too modern. Alicia wondered what time period this takes place? Kane found the first paragraph read as metaphor, but it’s not to one of the characters. Alicia wondered if a character was human, humanoid, magical, it’s unclear what she is. Clayton thought it was unfair a guy was killed while taking a pee. Jerry wants to know if the being is a renegade and thinks we need to know that early on. Kane was wondering how the woods felt about being aflame. Clayton didn’t know if a certain character was one of a kind or if there are more of them. Jerry was wondering why a character would wait for a week after a supposed meeting?
Alicia – Chapter 32 – Pat thinks we can jump right into the two camps out front and salt the rest of the other points in. Amber was wondering what kind of reactions might be taking place. Jerry thinks the people outside will be making as much noise as they want. Clayton wondered if guns were allowed in the courtroom. Kim didn’t think there needed to be a break for a new chapter, but Pat liked the chapter break. Millie likes short chapters too. Alicia thinks she might cut a lot of it.
Jerry – Chapter 22 – January 1950. Judith wanted to know if the preacher was a spirit? But Kane pointed out that Early sees a “man.” The teaberry gum is associated with the character, but it threw Judith. Clayton thought the smells of his life could flash before his nose like the images before his eyes. Shel wonders if the spirit has to be a preacher. Alicia thought the pacing really made it real. At the very end the music was brought to him, and he didn’t recognize it before, so he must not have been alone.
Who’s Up Next. . .
March 2: Kim Simmons (chapters 4-5, James Hyde), Clayton Gill (chapter 11, Fishing Derby), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 34, Lawyer Lincoln), John Schneller (???), Cathy Riddle (???), and Shel Ellestad (???).
March 16: Clayton Gill (chapter 12, Fishing Derby), Amber Boudreau (chapter 10, YA novel), Kim Simmons (chapters 6-7, James Hyde), Jen Wilcher (???), Millie Mader (chapter 17, Life on Hold), and Jerry Peterson (???).
Writing challenge set . . .
Five weeks to Fifth Tuesday – March 30 at Booked for Murder – so race to your keyboard and write your 400-word piece for the writing challenge: “A Night at the Bookstore.”
What happens after the last person to leave turns out the lights and locks the door?
Deadline is March 22. Email your piece to Jerry Peterson. Four hundred words is the max. You can go shorter.
Our Writers’ Blogs
Check out the blogs linked over on the right. Several of our writers have interesting blogs. Here are two posts from Jerry Peterson’s blog: http://jerrypetersonbooks.com/blog/
Dead Stick, it wouldn’t get published today
I picked up a “first in a new mystery series” at our church’s book table. In January and February, we mound three tables with books we’ve read that maybe others would like to read. Take ’em, they’re free. Read ’em. Bring ’em back if you wish or keep them.
The book I took home was Megan Mallory Rust’s Dead Stick. Her first novel. 1998.
Rust is an Alaskan who knows the aviation community, particular the medivac services.
The novel caught my attention because I’m a pilot.
Plus, a good publisher – Berkley Prime Crime – had brought it out.
Today, Berkley wouldn’t do that, nor would any other publisher I know without first having a darn sharp editor clean up the manuscript.
I slogged through the opening chapters waiting, waiting for the story to, umm, take off.
Here’s the quick summary. Taylor Morgan, a senior pilot for LifeLine Air Ambulance, checks out a new co-pilot, Erica Wolverton, in a Beechcraft King Air. That’s a twin turbine-engine aircraft. The two women hit it off.
On Wolverton’s first medivac flight, her King Air crashes on the side of an Alaskan mountain, killing all onboard.
Taylor flies out to the accident scene with a mountain rescue crew and a team of state trooper investigators, who turn out to be only modestly intelligent. Taylor sees evidence of sabotage, leading her to believe that some unknown person wanted to kill someone onboard the flight.
The police don’t see it that way. Neither does a National Transportation Safety Board investigator. So Taylor decides to solve the case on her own, and twice she comes close to being killed by the murderer.
The cliches in this book caused me to cringe: A lump shot up Taylor’s throat . . . Butterflies still fluttered in her stomach . . . a life-threatening problem . . . The driveway from the nearest asphalt street to her cabin was two hundred feet of bad news . . . she felt displaying any feelings made her seem unfit to work in the rough-and-tumble world of flying on the Last Frontier.
And my favorite: She stared at the photo on the desk and wondered what to do next. Then it dawned on her.
I added the italics.
A lot of the speech tags also had me ducking under my desk: “Are you all right?” squawked Pops . . . “Don’t move,” cautioned one of the other men . . . “Oh, shit!” she screamed . . . Two pages later, whoever she is yowls the same words . . . “Well, uhhh,” she stammered. . . . “Get away from me,” the distraught man bellowed . . . “Wasn’t that guy a slime?” he pronounced . . .“I thought you’d already gone to the car, Dave,” Cam replied apologetically.
Enough already?
Well, how about a mangled metaphor?
Taylor presses a button to open the hangar doors: The heavy, wide slabs began to slide apart, groaning like the keyboards of a mammoth accordion.
Sorry, an accordion’s keyboards don’t groan.
Back to the cliches. Rust has her killer drain the brake fluid out of Taylor’s car so she will crash in traffic, a variation on the old cut-the-brake-line bit. But Rust then turns the chapter into one wild ride as Taylor fights for control of her car. She eventually runs it off into a ditch where her car mows down a lot of brush and slams into a culvert.
A couple chapters later, Rust tops the panic of that ride. She has the killer force Taylor to fly his Super Cub out over Cook Inlet. He’s in the backseat, going to have her land on the far side of the inlet where he intends to kill her and bury her body in the forest. Taylor has to save herself, so she barrel rolls the aircraft and pops open the door as she does. The killer’s gun falls out and he almost goes out, too. While in inverted flight – the aircraft is upside down – and the killer is fighting to stay inside the cabin, the engine quits.
The terror builds.
And builds to an ever high pitch after the plane crashes into the water of the inlet.
That chapter and the next chapter are superbly written, and that’s why Berkley bought the book.
If only the rest of Rust’s novel had been written as well.
She followed Dead Stick with Red Line in 1999 and Coffin Corner in 2000.
The last book ended the series and apparently ended Rust’s writing career.
She doesn’t have a website.
She’s not on Facebook.
She’s not on Berkley’s website.
Nor does any bookseller’s website list a bio for her.
Vanished.
Hey, that’s a good title for a book.
How the man who created the Spenser private eye series wrote
With 60 novels published – 37 of them Spenser books – Robert B. Parker wrote a lot. That’s for certain.
He used the BOC method – Butt On Chair.
Typically, he wrote 10 pages a day.
Some days more.
Parker did not outline.
He did not plan.
He just sat down at his keyboard and wrote. Never knew what would happen next in the story he was working on.
Said Parker, he found out how the story would end only in the writing of it, thus making the book an adventure for himself and the character.
And for the reader, too.
Parker did not revise. When he’d finish a manuscript, he’d hand it to his wife for proofreading, then off to the publisher it would go.
Working this way, Parker wrote four novels a year.
—- Jerry Peterson.
Words, words, words
Words every “word-person” needs to know:
ses·qui·pe·da·lian
Pronunciation: \ˌses-kwə-pə-ˈdāl-yən\ Function: adjective; Etymology: Latin sesquipedalis, literally, a foot and a half long, from sesqui- + ped-, pes foot; Date: 1656
1 : having many syllables : long <sesquipedalian terms>
2 : given to or characterized by the use of long words <a sesquipedalian television commentator>
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
ne·ol·o·gism
Pronunciation: \nē-ˈä-lə-ˌji-zəm\ Function: noun; Etymology: French néologisme, from ne- + log- + -isme –ism; Date: 1803
1 : a new word, usage, or expression
2 : a meaningless word coined by a psychotic
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Log`o`daed´a`ly
| n. | 1. | Verbal legerdemain; a playing with words. |
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
My Favorite Word
I’ve always been a fan of “blatherskite” and “badinage.” What are your favorite words? Check out this website, where you can submit your favorite word and read some other interesting submissions:
http://www.myfavoriteword.com/tell-us-about-your-favorite-word/
Everyone has a favorite word. What’s yours?
Zephyr? Gossamer? Love? Chocolate? Wisteria? Dividend? Freedom? Sleep?
Here’s your chance to tell the world about your favorite word.
It might be your favorite because it has a beautiful sound.
James Joyce thought “cuspidor” was the most beautiful English word.
(Go figure. Maybe he was joking.)
It might be your favorite because of what it means, or where you first heard it, or for no particular reason at all.
Peace, freedom, autumn, flannel, cumulus, kerosene, Cincinnati, beagle, bagel, bungalow, cabinet, onomatopoeia, pep, busker, doodle, fleece, purr, zoom, book, soil, rain, zucchini, amoeba, parallel, snooze, trapeze, myrmidon ….
You get the idea.
We’ll even bend the category a little and accept phrases of two or three words, such as Dorothy Parker’s favorite, Check enclosed. Or, for you Donnie Darko fans, Cellar door. And who can forget that classic tribute to common sense, Close cover before striking?
So send it to us, along with an explanation of why it’s your favorite in a maximum of 150 words. We’ll post the best of your entries on this site over the next few months, and the best of the best will be included, along with the favorites of notable writers, actors, musicians, playwrights, politicians and other public figures, in My Favorite Word, a forthcoming book.
You can either use our online form or email us at myword@myfavoriteword.com.
There was something compelling about her; probably her huge… vocabulary…
Research has shown that past the 4th grade, the number of words a person knows depends primarily on how much time they spend reading (Hayes & Ahrens, 1988; Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Nagy & Herman, 1987; Stanovich, 1986). In fact, by the time they reach adulthood, people who make a habit of reading have a vocabulary that is about four times the size of those who rarely or never read. This disparity starts early and grows throughout life.” Sebastian Wren, Ph.D. http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html
You think you got what it takes?
Take the vocabulary test at http://www.insightin.com/test/about.shtml. I scored an 8200. It’s tricky!
Most commonly used written words
According to http://www.world-english.org/about.htm the top ten words are all prepositions plus “is,” and “you.”
Most commonly used spoken words
According to Dr. Walter Beaupre http://www.uri.edu/comm_service/cued_speech/tablecon.html the 99 most common spoken words are pretty banal as well (banal is not on the list). What’s most fascinating is the list of common sentences and phrases for translators to practice what the site calls, “pure gold.”
“That was good.” “That was very good.” “This-is good.” “This-is very good!” “Good for you!” “This-is very good for you.” “Take some more.” “It’s good for you!””Have some more.” “have-another one.” “Come back here!” “I’ve just got back.” “I just got home from work.” “I’ve been-at work.” “What did you do?” Do you see those people?” “Who are they/” “Time to get-up now.” “Where-are they from?” “You can come with-us-if you like.” “It’s-all-over now.” “We saw them last year.” “No more for now.” “That-is the last one you can have.” “Do you know her/” II think so.” “I think-I’ll go this year.” “Who is-it/” “Where-is-it/” “Which-is-it/” “What-is-it?” “When-is-it/” “Because-I say so!” “Come back to see us-often.” “You got-up-after I went to work.” “I think you will.” “You say that very well!” “What-is your name?” “His name-is_____.” “It’s for your-own good.” “You were just great!” “Time to come-in.” “Time to do your work.” “Come down from there!” “You and-I will be there.” “He got-out just-in time.” “You can do it.” “It’s been good to know you.” “Great to have you with-us.” “What-is that-all-about?” “Take some with you.” “What would you like?” “Do you know what you would like?” “Come-in, or go out.” “What-a great man he is!” “About what-time will you be home?” “You were in the way.” “We will be back.” “I’ll be back-at one.” “Some people think so.” “Do it your-own way.” “Another time will do.” “Do it just because-I say so.” “I’ll do it-after you go.” “Mostr-of them will be back this year.” “Take your time.” “I know you can do it.” “What-time-is-it?” “Think-about that.” “What more can-I do for you?” “This-is the way we do it.” “Get well soon.” “What-in the world can we do?” “Take-it from me.”
The Last Word
“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.” – James Earl Jones
Tuesdays with Story 
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