Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail for May 7, 2012
by Jen Wilcher

Notes 05-01-12
Pam and Andy, friends of Aaron, joined us for the evening.
Alicia shares chapter one of her new Lincoln novel. Millie said it sounds like it’s going to be a good story. Pat thought the language, tone, and meter sound good. Alicia explains a bit more about the backstory. Pat was looking for a reason to turn the page at the end though. There’s some question of what the story is—this entry might turn into a flashback chapter. Jerry has a question about the tall grass and people losing sight of their leaders once they sit down. Pat wonders what happened to the food. Greg was a little disappointed there wasn’t an actual confrontation with Blackhawk—Alicia made it up. Millie thought some of the sentence got a little long, but that was how Lincoln talked.

Greg read from chapters twenty-three through twenty-five. Millie thought the main character would surely be dead after the last chapter. Rebecca wondered if all of the aliens have long faces or just the one the main character is talking to. Pat thought it read very fast again. She wondered if we could still be calling them aliens, but Greg answers that later in the Chapter. Pat will also be upset if there’s fluorescent lighting that far in the future. Rebecca thought the character would be more upset with the loss of life. Is there a way to remind the reader about the force field she’s under? Pat wonders what’s happened to her implants. Pat liked the scene with Kevin, but thought the romance could be played up a bit. Jerry didn’t think the second reference to their location was needed. Alicia had some suggestions when it came to the legal parts.

Amber shares chapter five and six from her YA novel. Can the wyvern look satisfied when he comes up with the right word. Pat likes the protagonist. Jerry thought it was nice to see they become friends. Jen thought there were some superficial details that could go. Pam suggests adding es’s to the Yes’s. Jerry wants there to be a reason to turn the page. Could we end with the request for more chips. How about the ‘Why me?’ question. Should Moira ask where his mother is?

Rebecca reads another chapter of the Cheese Logue. Greg and Pat want to know how the guy got into the house in the first place. Pat thought this was very creepy, but she did a good job of covering a lot of time passing. There are some changes in POV, but those can be addressed later. Jerry liked the poem—it read very well. Greg didn’t understand the whole e-mail thing. Pat just figured he stole her password or something. Jen had a question about the date. Pat thought she had some good metaphors in the chapter.

Millie shares Chapter 35 of Life On Hold. People had some questions about how different flying was then from now. Pat thought it was nice that she was excited. Rebecca wanted to see more of her impressions of the terminal. Jerry notes that nothing bad happens in the Chapter—he wanted some conflict. Greg kept looking for something to move the story forward.

Who’s up next . . .
May 8: Carol Hornung (scene, Sapphire Lodge), Jack Freiburger (chapter, Jesus at the IHOP), Holly Bonnicksen-Jones (chapter, Coming Up for Air), Terry Hoffman (chapter, The Great Tome), and Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter, The Cheese Logue).
May 15: Greg Spry (chapter 26-28, Beyond Cloud Nine 9), Jaida Temperly (???), Millie Mader (chapter 35, Life on Hold), Pat Edwards (poems), Aaron Boehm (???), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 4, Rage).
May 22: Katelin Cummins (???).
May 29: Fifth Tuesday!
June 5: Greg Spry (chapter 29-31, Beyond Cloud Nine 9). Judith McNeil (more of “The Waldorf Hysteria”), Amber Boudreau (chapter 6, Noble), Lisa McDougal (chapter 3, Follow the Yellow/Ben and Krista), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 2, Lincoln, Black Hawk and the Thirty-Eight Hanged), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 5-6, Rage).

News from Spike . . .
Said TWS first-and-thirder Spike Pedersen in a recent Facebook post, he finished rewriting his novel, First Light. “It will be self-published very soon. Book cover and formatting and then hit SEND.” Spike has been away from the group for a while. He will be back later this month.

Fifth Tuesday . . .
It’s a-comin’, it’s a-comin’, May 29. Got it on your calendar?

Second-and-fourth group hosts. We will be at Terry and Jan Hoffman’s home south of Madison that evening. Make your reservation now with Carol Hornung. Also tell Carol what you are bringing for the feast table.

The writing challenge: Write a 250-word story from an object’s point of view. Says Carol, “Have fun with it! Maybe you are an acorn about to fall into a stream. A golf ball about to be smacked across campus and through the Dean’s window. The last leaf falling from a tree in autumn.”

When you have your piece done, email it to Carol.

Great phrase . . .
shtick lit . . . The word, definition, and wor story courtesy of Word Spy Paul McFedries.
noun. A writing genre in which the author undertakes an odd or stuntlike project with the intention of writing about the experience. Also: schtick lit, shtik lit.

Example Citations:
Now, in his third book, he spends two years eating, exercising and researching his way to becoming “the healthiest man in the world.”… A.J. Jacobs remains the current heavyweight champion of shtick lit.
– Douglas Bell, “The king of shtick lit strikes again,” The Globe and Mail, April 24, 2012

It’s not a bad idea – surely the Middle East could benefit from some ingenuity – even if the book is a prime example of the sub-genre that’s come to be known as “shtick lit.”
– Eryn Loeb, “Time to Get Out of Your Apartment,” The Jewish Daily Forward, November 17, 2010

Earliest Citation:
STEVE INSKEEP: I have in front of me a stack of books, which have this in common – many of them include in the title or subtitle the words My Year of or A Year of or “A Year Without Made in China”, “Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously”….
STEVE ALMOND:…Part of the reason that this genre, which I’m going to call, kind of informally schtick lit, has propagated so many books is because a few of them had been very successful.
– Steve Inskeep and Steve Almond, “A Year for ‘Year Of’ Books,” NPR, December 26, 2007

Notes: My definition hews closely to the just-so definition provided by the writer and academic Ben Yagoda in his book Memoir: A History: “[B]ooks perpetrated by people who undertook an unusual project with the express purpose of writing about it.”

Here’s an even earlier cite, although in this case the writer is talking about books that consist of a series of jokes or gags:
No offense, Dennis, babe, but don’t…you think it’s time standup comedians stopped hauling down big-bucks advances just for typing up their old routines? Jerry Seinfeld popularized this literary subgenre (lets call it shtick lit) with his 1993 bestseller Seinlanguage, a flimsy collection of bits.
– “Picks and Pans,” People, April 1, 1996

The top 5 social media blunders you shouldn’t make . . .
From writer/blogger/former literary agent Nathan Blansford: Social media is as much art as science, but there are some mistakes you just shouldn’t make. Here are five.

5. Don’t link your Facebook and Twitter accounts
Render unto Facebook that which is Facebook and render unto Twitter that which is Twitter. A good tweet is different than a good Facebook post, and vice versa. When you link your accounts and send tweets to Facebook, your Facebook friends will know you can’t be bothered to post and won’t interact with your posts.

4. Don’t spam your followers
Kanye West can go on long stream of consciousness Twitter benders without losing followers. You cannot.

3. Don’t include links in Facebook and Google+ captions
When you paste a link into a Facebook or Google+ status update, you’ll see a preview of what the link will look like when you post it. After you see that preview, delete the long link. You don’ need it anymore. Write clean captions without the http://www.blahblahblah.com gibberish.

Read the whole post here, http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/04/top-5-social-media-blunders-you.html