Tuesdays with Story

Tuesdays with Story
WRITER’S MAIL for December 17, 2011

Good Words from Way Back
“One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel.” –John Gardner (1933-1982), an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor, not to be confused the British author who was the first of the James Bond spy novelists after Ian Fleming. Our Gardner wrote the novel Grendel, which retells the Beowulf legend from the monster’s point of view. This quote comes from The Story Merchant at http://donmarquis.com/. Thanks, Jerry!

December 13 Meeting: Driven to Drink
Meeting at Sundance, a hard-driving gang of Second-and-Fourth writers dodged holiday distractions to get to the meat of their stories.

Liam Wilbur led off with Fog-gotten, Chapter 3, combining parts of previous chapters. Our hero has awakened in a different century, a bit the worse for wear. The group liked the pace, flow, and humor. Most suggestions were word alterations and fairly minor. “Cubicle” carried the burden of referents and needed to be changed to a different term to describe a division of a hut. The Welsh may be clearer in italics.

Holly Bonnicksen-Jones presented a rewrite of the break-up scene in Coming Up for Air. The discussion was long. The group could see where she was developing the emotional hollowed-out center of the narrator’s affect, but there were continuity problems. The point and counter-point between the male who is leaving with anger and the narrators’ refusal to engage, even in this extreme circumstance, illustrated her self-defeating character. The work is mostly open and inner dialogue, so not easy to get just right. Applause for the subtlety of the portrait and the intricate plotting

Jack Freiburger returned with a revised first chapter of Return to Bray Head. Most suggestions were for word changes and phrasing to take some ripples out of the flow as the narrator and the reader climb to the top of the granite bluff where Sean will begin his story about Lester, which is actually Sean’s story, but he’s a dim sort and never does quite figure that out. The rewrite was to introduce the “golden fleece” at the beginning of the story, which caused Jack to deliver one of his boring long lectures on deep parallelism in Modernist literature. While he droned on, most of the gang walked over to the Great Dane, being driven to drink and chicken wings by the evening’s proceedings.

Thanks for the reading recap, Jack!

Who’s Up Next?
December 20: Judith McNeil (more of “The Waldorf Hysteria”), Aaron Boehm (story ideas), Millie Mader (Chapter 31, Life on Hold), Lisa McDougal (?), Pat Edwards (poems), and John Schneller (chapter, Final Stronghold). Note: This First-and-Third meeting takes place at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library. Who’s bringing the cookies?

December 27: To get on the reading list, contact Carol at chornung88@aol.com. This Second-and-Fourth meeting again takes place at Sundance, upstairs!

January 3: Rebecca Rettenmund (Chapter 3, The Cheese Logue), Liam Wilbur (Chapter 6, Scott & Rory), Kim Simmons (?), Amber Boudreau (?), Lisa McDougal (?), and Jerry Peterson (Chapter 20, Thou Shalt Not Murder). Note: First-and-Third returns to Barnes & Noble Westside.

January 10: To get on the reading list, contact Carol Hornung at chornung88@aol.com. This Second-and-Fourth meeting again takes place at Sundance, upstairs!

January 17: To get on the reading list, contact Jerry Peterson at petersonjerry@att.net. This First-and-Third meeting again takes place at Barnes & Noble Westside.

January 24: Terry Hoffman (more of The Great Tome). To get on the reading list, contact Carol. Check again for location of this Second-and-Fourth meeting.

January 31: Fifth Tuesday at Booked for Murder. Note: See below.

“Hearts Dissected” at Upcoming Fifth Tuesday

Booked for Murder, our favorite locally-owned bookshop, again is the venue for our pre-Valentine’s Day Fifth Tuesday gathering on January 31, starting at 7:00 p.m. Owner Sara Barnes and First-and-Third Group are hosting the event.

Your Fifth Tuesday writing challenge: Write a short short story, poem, film scene or essay with a two-word title. One of the words must be either “heart” or “hearts,” as in “Hearts Aflame,” “Hearts Relocated,” “Heartless Hearts.” You’ve got 500 words for a hearty helping of creativity. It doesn’t have to be a steamy tear-jerker. It could be surgery for dummies.

The best 500-word hunk o’heart, as judged by UW screen-writing instructor Chris DeSmet, wins a free critique of the first 50 pages of other work by the winner, plus dinner on the town with Chris.

This writing challenge has a $5.00 entry fee, payable to Clayton Gill, who can collect at a First-and-Third meeting January 3 or January 17 or first-thing at Fifth Tuesday on January 31. Submit your heart’s delight (up to 500 words) to Jerry Peterson by January 27.

You’re Invited: Post-Christmas Party January 7
Join Jerry and Marge for the TWS Post-Christmas Party and Potluck on Saturday, January 7 (starting at 1:00 p.m.). Marge’s Victorian mansion — 920 Glen in Janesville – shows off all its holiday splendor.

Let Clayton know if you can help with car-pooling or if you need a ride.
Please let Jerry know if you plan to come.
You can bring a dish to pass, a bottle to share, and a board, card, or other game you’d like the group to play.

Writer’s Mail: Duty Roster
We need editors for Writer’s Mail. Not everyone can look at every e-mail or Yahoo! Update, so the Writer’s Mail provides a weekly meeting point for all TWS members. Also, newsletter editing is great practice for writing.

January – Liam Wilbur leads us into the New Year!
February – Love to write, learn to edit.
March – To better writing by editing Writer’s Mail.
April – Shower us with your unique perspective.
May – Spring springs the editor in you.

Join up with an e-mail to Clayton.

Celebrity Boasting, Toasting, Roasting, etc.
Terry Hoffman offers this excellent online resource. For those who have a question about using a celeb’s name in their book, here’s a blog with legal info: http://petemorin.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/right-of-publicity-and-artistic-free-speech/

Thanks, Terry!

Snappy Ambulance Chaser: Millie’s Book Review
Millie Mader turned to John Grisham’s new legal-genre novel The Litigators, dove into the “page turner,” and turned out this account.

The hero of The Litigators, David Zinc, stumbles into our lives in a most unorthodox manner. For starters, John Grisham has set this latest novel in Chicago. Our protagonist is a Harvard Law graduate, earning a six-figure salary in the most prestigious law firm in the “windy city.” Arriving for work on a fateful morning, David realizes how much he hates his boring job, with its twelve to sixteen hour days and lack of actual legal practice. He has never even been in the courtroom. David works for the firm of Rogan and Roth, which occupies floors sixty to one hundred and employs six hundred lawyers in the renowned Trust Tower. David has grown to see the tower as a “glistening phallic monument.”

Arriving at 7:30 a.m., David feels what he calls a “snap”– a sort of mental crack-up — enveloping him. His feet don’t work and he is sweating profusely. He feels totally spaced-out. The “zombies” he presses past look like pall-bearers, dressed in expensive, black overcoats. Their faces are as devoid of expression. David recognizes fellow employees. But none greet each other. They merely nod. David hasn’t had time to become friends with co-workers. He wants to start a family, but usually falls asleep after work, too tired for even his lovely and long suffering wife

The snap seizes him. He turns, presses the down button for one of the elevators, and lunges into it. He flops on his butt in a corner. David Zinc knows he will never return to Rogan and Roth. Six years have been five too many.

Out of the building, David tries to collect his thoughts. He is appalled and horrified, but self-satisfied at what he has done. Maybe breakfast will clear his senses. He heads for a blinking neon sign, enters, and requests breakfast. But he’s entered a bar with a personable bar tender who mixes David a bloody Mary. One leads to another, then another. David is not, ordinarily, a drinking man. In the afternoon, he staggers out, weaves down the street, and crashes into the “boutique” law firm of Finley and Figg. Boutique is a misnomer, David discovers later, designed to mislead. The firm is ruled by the odd couple of Oscar Finley and Wally Figg — two ambulance chasers, barely keeping their business afloat.

Oscar is the senior, in his sixties, hoping for retirement and a divorce. Wally revels in the sound of sirens, always chasing the big pay-off. They need David on the day he stumbles through their door. It was through a mishap of similar circumstance that they had acquired Rochelle, their questionable receptionist. Their paralegal had just run out the door.

We follow this foursome through a page-turner of exploits to the precipice of bankruptcy. Hopeful of a big win, Wally presses the firm to join a massive class action suit. It is basically without merit, and requires long hours of court time and personal sacrifice. The end result is disaster.

However, David finds himself learning law all over again in the streets and back alleys. He pursues a humanitarian and winnable legal case. Through David’s skillful machinations – and Grisham’s colorful, irreverent characters – we experience the thrill of pre-trial combat. Even when the script grows serious, the ambulance chasers will elicit chuckles.

The Last Word: Think You Cannot Write a Film Review?
Think again! The text below comes verbatim from the news at Yahoo.com on Tuesday, December 13, 2011:

Review: ‘Dragon Tattoo’ kicks proverbial butt

By DAVID GERMAIN | AP

Hollywood has commandeered Sweden’s big literary export, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” without compromising the story’s Scandinavian roots or its top-of-the-world, Seasonal Affective Disorder sense of barrenness, even hopelessness.

It could have been transplanted Stateside for American audiences, but thankfully, what happens in Sweden stays in Sweden in David Fincher’s stark but enthralling adaptation of the first novel in late author Stig Larsson’s trilogy….

For the next Writers Mail – maybe even your own take on the original novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, please send your stuff to Clayton. Thank you!