Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
May 26, 2011
by Pat Edwards

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.” – Alice Walker

FIFTH TUESDAY!
This Tuesday, May 31, at the Grumpy Troll, Mount Horeb, from 7-9pm. Guests Alex Bledsoe and Candace Gallant will talk about getting into the publishing business! Enjoy awesome food and drink, and please bring a dollar or two to help cover our guests’ meals. Carpooling is still available for folks who need it!

Six word challenge – We could use a few more! Six words to describe anything – your autobiography, your story synopsis, a character … send your six words TODAY.

Tuesday Night at Barnes & Noble:
2ND & 4TH convened in the back and discussed fantasy, Maine, and other sundry things…

Kime Heller-Neal read chapter 2 from Feathered. Carol was curious as to why the community had books, but didn’t have a newspaper. Jack felt the narrator was a bit too omnipresent – how did she know so much about the city? There were definite character traits to the narration, too – why is it “unfortunate” that so many people gather in the square? Liam didn’t find the character very likable in that she ditched the girl trying to be her friend. Kim suggested making occasional references to the main character’s physical characteristics to remind us what she looks like.

Jack Freiburger presented one of the last chapters from his novel, Path to Bray’s Head.
Kim wondered, “are you going to kill everyone???” Jen thought the sentence referring to the Argos was awkward, but Cole and Liam thought it worked – seemed like something someone would think. Carol wanted more build up to the cold and hypothermia. Randy wanted to know what “bitter water” is. He also didn’t think Sean’s mind would wander as much during the actual crisis, but Kime disagreed, saying that waiting until a lull in the action wouldn’t work as they would be planning what to do next.

Randy Haselow wanted some overall help with the actual story and characters in Hona and the Dragon. Jack thought the plot worked very well at first. Good start to an ecological fairy tale with the dragon protecting the earth from man. Kim wanted to be in Hona’s head more often. Likes it when she takes control and moves forward. Rebecca likes Firebreath’s purpose. But what does he stand to gain by helping fight in the war? Carol wanted more about Hona and magic. Why is she special? And what does she have to lose?

Kim Simmons presented Chapter 47 of City in Winter. We had an extensive debate about whether it really is faster to fly or march over a desert (where nothing is really in the way of the marchers, like mountains or rivers)? Liam was very confused about the time shifting and who is the father of who. Carol thought Ramses was a great warrior when he entered the scene, but he turned into a college professor at the end, only worried about classes and the break coming up. And where did Jamie get that cigarette? Rebecca wondered about Ramses bragging about his conquest of Ryoko and Jamie not really reacting. In a way that’s a bit offensive, though we know Ryoko wouldn’t let anyone “take” her without a huge fight. Jen liked the banter between the characters.

Liam Wilbur read chapters 2/3 of The Fog-Gotten. Rebecca said not to make a reference to things being boring at the start of chapter 3, because they aren’t. Character might notice the surgery scars first, then move on to lesser injuries. She really liked some of the descriptions, too. Jen pointed out the narrator says “I’m going to skip over what happened next” and then proceeds to tell us what happened next. Carol really liked the doctor’s speech patterns and the way the girl speaks. She wanted some images or memories of what happened, but Jack disagreed, saying mythology suits the story well.

UP NEXT: May 31, 2011 – FIFTH TUESDAY!!!!!
June 7: Randy Haselow (chapter, Hona and the Dragon), Amanda Myers (???), Aaron Boehm (screenplay/part 8, Hell Cage), Kim Simmons (chapter 60-61, City of Summer), Pat Edwards (poems), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 12, Thou Shalt Not Murder).
June 14: Jack Freiburger (chapter, Path to Bray’ s Head)
June 21: Millie Mader, Liam Wilbur, Clayton Gill, Greg Spry
June 28: update in next newsletter
July 5: Judith McNeil, Kime Heller-Neal

The Seven Best Cities in the World for Writers
by Jamey Stegmaier

If you wanted to forgo your regular income for a few months and move somewhere in the world just to write, where should you go?

Not that I’m going to do that, but it’s a question I’ve been playing around with for a while. Today I decided to find the answer. I did a fair amount of online research to find these cities and then rank them, but I’m sure I’ve missed someplace important. I didn’t even consider places like New York or London; even though they’re hotbeds for writers and artists, it’s not cost effective to live there. Plus, there are so many distractions, and way too many novels written about living in New York and London. I found the cities on this list by looking at places that had established writing communities (even though writing is mostly a solitary task, commiserating with other writers can be motivating), reading/writing festivals and conferences, great settings/environments for writing, and low costs of living (key if you’re surviving off savings for a while).
7. South Queensferry, Scotland
6. Hay-on-Wye, Wales
5. Cartagena, Colombia
4. Northampton, Massachusetts

To see the top three read Jamey’s whole story at: http://jameystegmaier.com/2009/04/the-five-best-cities-in-the-world-for-writers

Literary Travels
Combine travel with inspirational visits to where your favorite author or poet lived. http://www.literarytraveler.com/tours.aspx

Jane Austen, A Beloved Friend in Chawton
This article was written by Helen Palmer

It took a life-threatening illness and months of enforced convalescence to finally arrive at the home of a much loved friend. I came to the red brick house on a winter day. Even though I’d grown up less than an hour’s drive away, it was the first time I’d been to Jane Austen’s house in the English county of Hampshire.
That was four years ago, and I’ve been back many times since, but I will always remember the fall of 2006. I had contracted dengue fever, a malaria-like illness, while working in India for the aid agency Oxfam. One minute I was travelling around the country, campaigning for better health care for India’s impoverished, the next I was hospitalized, a helpless invalid. After 10 days in the hospital, I was allowed to fly home to England and found myself confined to my childhood bedroom, a professional woman in my late 30s, dependent on the kindness of my parents.
The disease had attacked every system in my body and left in its wake a deep physical and mental fatigue. I was unable to get through a day without sleeping in the afternoon and often had difficulty carrying a thought from one end of a sentence to the other. Worst of all, I was too tired to read; I would look at a page and the words would jumble and swim before my eyes.
Then one afternoon as I lay resting in bed, I noticed a paperback copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion in my bookcase. I was suddenly reminded of a fragment of a movie I had tried to watch in my semi-conscious state on the long plane ride home from Delhi. The movie was called The Lake House, and had a confusing plot involving two people–Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves–who lived in separate realities two years apart and were trying to communicate. The novel Persuasion played a key role in the story, popping up at various points as a clue between the two. I had difficulty following the movie, but I remember it prompting the realization that I had never actually read Persuasion, which was a serious oversight.
I opened the book and began to read. On the first page I made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Elliott of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire. With a few deft strokes, Austen establishes his character as one of the vainest and most shallow men in English literature. His wife has died 13 years previously; he cares only for his daughter Elizabeth, not for her younger sister Anne, in spite of her ‘elegance of mind and sweetness of character’; and he has run up so many debts that the family will soon be forced to leave their home.
Read the whole article at

Do Writers Need Community?
Po Bronson
http://www.pobronson.com/do_writers_need_community.htm
I’m often asked, “Can writing schools really teach you to write?” I never thought that was the litmus test. Writing school helped me by surrounding me with people who aspired to the same ideals I did. I’d been a bond salesman – I didn’t know any other writers, and I’d never even met a writer. I didn’t even know any readers. If the other traders and salespeople read books, they never mentioned it. At school, for at least one night a week, I sat down beside people who thought nothing was more important than making a sentence sing … Who believed that having a story accepted by a small journal with a readership of a 1,000 librarians was just about the most prestigious accomplishment imaginable … Who had chosen, like me, to compromise their love lives and their work life to carve out time for being alone with their thoughts and a pencil … Who had received rejection letter after rejection letter, and who had been called “impractical” by their parents. I can’t emphasize enough the sway of being in a community of like-minded people. As New Orleans had its effect on Marc and Julia, my writing school helped support the choice I’d made. Because the hardest thing was not learning to write; the hardest thing was to never give up.
The publication of my first novel was my great chance to quit working and attempt to support myself by writing full-time. I imagined I might maintain an income writing for magazines. But I was going to finish my graduate degree around the same time. I would take the leap without my community, my 3-hour-a-week lifeline that had nourished me for seven years. What would I do all day? Who would I talk to? I was accustomed to waking up every morning and going to the office.
So with two other writer friends – Ethan Canin (who I’d met playing pick-up basketball) and Ethan Watters (who knew editors at magazines) – we rented a second-floor flat in a dusty Victorian on Market Street in a no-man’s land between the Castro and City Hall. This would be a place we wrote every day. It had six rooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen. The rent was intimidating, and we were on the hook for the whole nugget if we couldn’t find some creative types to occupy the other three rooms. So we threw a party. We made up a postcard invitation, but the address, 2148 Market Street, looked too lonely floating in the middle of the card. Who wanted to come to “2148 Market Street”? What was it? A restaurant? A bar?
“We need an enticing name,” one of the Ethans said.
“What about ‘The Grotto’?” said the other.
“You can’t steal Jim’s name!” I protested.
Jim was another writer who rented the basement room in my house as his writing space. He called it The Grotto.
“Jim’s on vacation. He’ll never know.”
“I’ll know!”
“What about ‘The Writers’ Grotto’?”
“That’s the same thing!”
“Not quite the same.”
So we stole Jim’s name, and everyone we knew came to the party, curious about what the Writers’ Grotto was. They came, they got drunk, they danced, they lit off fireworks, lit a tree on fire, climbed up to the roof, broke the toilet, ruined the carpet, and left, still unsure what the Writers’ Grotto was.
“Do you live here?”
“No. Just work.”
“Are you all writing a book together?”
“No. Just our own projects.”
“How much does rent cost?”
“Two to three hundred.”
“A month!?”
“Yeah.”
“You can fly to Cabo every month for that!”
Read the full post at http://www.creative-writing-now.com

The Last Word
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” ~Isaac Asimov