Tuesdays with Story

Tuesdays With Story
WRITER’S MAIL for December 7, 2012

Good Words from Way Back

“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), American short story writer and novelist, author of Twice-Told Tales, The Scarlet Letter, and The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne also said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

December 5 Meeting: Reading with Cookies!

Five First-and-Thirders gathered around the tables at the Alicia Ashman Library last Wednesday night for readings from five members. Amber Boudreau prepared our report and noted there were two – “count ’em, two” — types of cookies. Reading with cookies… delicious!

Amber read from her brand new Chapter Five of Noble. Pat Edwards wondered why, when two characters throw up their arms as they face each other, one of characters does not take the opportunity to “cop a feel.” Jerry Peterson noted that a truck from the 1950s would not have been equipped with seatbelts originally. Also, near the end of the chapter, Jerry was looking for a bit of conflict between the main protagonist and her mother. Millie Mader pointed out one passage in particular that she found poetic. Also, there was a recommendation to check hyphenation. .

Pat Edwards presented the next few pages of her PowerPoint project. Amber said she loved the format, especially the technique of moving elements around. The group delved into the question of observer memory and how people remember themselves in their memories: Do they see themselves fully or just a part of their physical being? Judith McNeil and others admired Pat’s creative work.

Judith shared her rewrite of “The Man With the Broken Heart.” Pat was glad to have the whole thing to read through again and wondered how to describe the work. Was the style “journalistic,” “stream-of-consciousness,” or possibly “MTV-esque”? Although she did not understand the main character’s sense of frustration, Pat liked the character of “wife number two.” Jerry wondered why the main character decided to go to New York when his boss tells him to get out of town.

Jerry offered Part I of his short story, “The Santa Train,” which Judith thought was very well described. Pat had a question about why others always referred to the main character as “Mister” instead of “Reverend” or “Preacher.” Jerry explained that the character doesn’t go in for titles, but acknowledged that he never gives Mister a chance to explain that. Pat saw the story revolving around one character even though he seemed to be the least interesting of all the characters with whom he comes into contact.

Thank you, Amber!

Who’s Up Next?

December 11 with Second-and-Fourth group meeting at Jack Freiburger’s Hickory Knoll Farm: Jack Freiburger (poem, “Avibus”), Michelle Nightoak (chapter, memoir), Terry Hoffman (chapter 17, The Great Tome), and Katelin Cummins (?). Room for more, so if you’d like to submit and read, then please contact Carol Hornung.

December 18 with First-and-Third group meeting at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library: Lisa McDougal (chapter 9, Follow the Yellow), Susanna Fortunato (part 1, Before & After), Amber Boudreau (chapter, Noble), Millie Mader (chapter 40, Life on Hold), Aaron Boehm (film script/part 2, “Whole Again”), and Jerry Peterson (short story/part 2, “The Santa Train”).

December 25: No meeting for Second-and-Fourth group.

January 1: No meeting for First-and-Third group.

January 15: Clayton Gill (chapter 17, Fishing Derby), Susanne Fortunato (?), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter 14, The Cheese Logue), Aaron Boehm (film script/part 3, “Whole Again”), Bob Kralapp (?), and Michelle Nightoak (chapter, memoir).

To read or reschedule reading:

• First-and-Third Tuesdays, contact Jerry Peterson
• Second-and-Fourth Tuesdays, contact Carol Hornung

At Least the Third Annual TWS Post-Christmas Party

Jerry and Marge Peterson will for the third year – or is this the fourth? – host the Tuesday with Story post-Christmas potluck and party on Saturday, January 5, at their home in Janesville. Plan to arrive before 1:30 p.m. because, Jerry warns, “Promptly at 1:30 we feast.”

A feast it truly is! “Potluck” might be the food-gathering technique, but “Cornucopia of Christmas” is the outcome. Please do these things now:

• Email Jerry to (1) tell him you are coming, (2) note what you intend to bring for the banquet table, and (3) who you are bringing as a guest. Yes, spouses and friends are welcome.
• Look for fellow TWS writers with whom you can carpool.
• Set aside a game (card game, board game, etc.) to bring that we might play.

The Petersons live at 920 Glen Street, Janesville, which is about 45 minutes’ drive from Barnes & Noble West in Madison.

Fifth Tuesday: First, Assume the World Will End, Then…

Our upcoming Fifth Tuesday takes place January 29, hosted by First-and-Third group, which will announce the venue and other details soon. Meanwhile, you can get to work on the Fifth Tuesday Challenge.

Here’s the premise for your flash fiction, essay, poem, song lyrics, PowerPoint presentation, etc.: You (or your character or characters) absolutely believe the world is going to end on December 21, the winter solstice of 2012. So, you prepare for The End. But come December 22, it seems you’re still around and so is the world. What happens next?

Please send your End-o’-World Challenge text (250-word maximum) to Jerry Peterson by Friday, January 25.

We enjoyed a terrific Fifth Tuesday on October 30, thanks to Second-and-Fourth group, hosted by Rebecca Rettenmund’s mother Victoria Horn. Thanks again, Rebecca and Victoria!

Short Story Contest: December 17 Deadline!

Alicia Connolly-Lohr alerts us to the 13th annual Writer’s Digest Short Story Competition:

• Entry fee of $20 per entry
• 1,500-word maximum
• $3,000 cash prize
• National exposure
• Paid trip to Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City

For details, visit Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition

Thanks Alicia!

Amazon’s 2013 Breakthrough Novel Contest

Both Carol Hornung and Alicia Connolly-Lohr call attention to Amazon’s sixth annual Breakthrough Novel Contest. Amazon says the single grand prize winner “will be chosen by Amazon customers and receive a publishing contract with Amazon Publishing, with a $50,000 advance.

Amazon adds that finalists will be chosen in five categories: General fiction, mystery/thriller, romance, science fiction/fantasy/horror, and young adult fiction. The four finalists who do not win the grand prize still win big — $15,000 each plus s a publishing contract with Amazon Publishing.

For details: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1764187&highlight=
Many thanks to both Alicia and Carol!

Bransford on “Good” and “Bad” Writing

Jerry Peterson found young adult fiction author and blogger Nathan Bransford taking up the subject of “good” and “bad” writing in a recent post:

One thing about my Fifty Shades of Grey post that inspired some mild controversy was my insistence that it’s not that badly written.

What’s interesting about talking about “good” writing and “bad” writing is that when people use those terms, different people often mean different things.

When I talk about “good” writing and “bad” writing, I mean the prose. Is it readable on a sentence-to-sentence level? Is there a flow? Is there a voice? Do I get tripped up by a lack of specificity in description or are the details evocative? Is the hand of the author too apparent or am I able to lose myself in the world of the book?

This is all mainly accomplished on the sentence level. It’s not about character or plot or plausibility or whether the book is compelling or not and not at all about whether I like the book, it’s whether the author can write a paragraph.

I would posit (with partial confidence) that the way I mean “good” or “bad” writing is more common within the publishing industry and with literary-minded folk.

Outside of publishing, when people talk about “good” writing or “bad” writing they aren’t talking about sentences, they usually mean a broader look at the book as a whole. Whether the plot is plausible or not, whether characters are compelling, whether relationships are believable, whether the book as a whole is engrossing.

Read the entire post at http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/11/what-people-talk-about-when-they-talk.html

Great Words from the Word Spy

Word Spy Paul McFedries offers these great words:

Guerrilla gardening (guh.RIL.uh GAR.duh.ning) n. — The surreptitious or unauthorized planting of flowers, shrubs, vegetables, and other flora in a public space.– n. guerrilla gardener. – n. guerrilla garden.

Example citation:

Sam Tylicki calls himself a “guerrilla gardener.” His weapons? Shovels, watering cans and vegetable plants. His target? A small section of a vacant city-owned lot at 5406 Fleet Ave. His problem? He didn’t get permission from the city to use the property, so Tylicki is trespassing. That means the city can kick him out, along with his green peppers, collard greens and other vegetables. But getting permission is against the philosophy of guerrilla gardening, an international environmental movement whose followers “reclaim” public space by planting fruits, vegetables and flowers. — Olivera Perkins, “‘Guerrilla gardener’ battles City Hall,” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 22, 2001

Earliest citation:

An architect was saying just last night at Hack Schoolman’s house that he liked vines, and how tall did I think a kudzu vine might grow?

“Right over the face of a forest,” I said, and he said good. He is thinking of planting some to grow over the Rayburn House Office Building. Well, the heart sank, of course, because here was the architect of that building. I presumed, and imagine being expected to be polite right through supper.

But no, he was not that architect, but instead feels, as all right-thinking people do, it is singularly ugly. For his part, he said, he is taking up guerrilla gardening, planting vines and trees without permission, to cover, conceal, camouflage the Rayburns of the world. – Henry Mitchell, “Any Day,” The Washington Post, September 30, 1977

Notes:

The original guerrilla gardeners were probably the gypsies, who would use out-of-the-way locations near the side of a road or path to plant potatoes and other vegetables. They would then continue on their nomadic way and return later to harvest the crop.

Today’s guerrilla gardeners are an activist bunch who view their politicized plants as symbols for reconnecting with the land in the face of urban blight and as a way of green-thumbing their collective noses at The Man. The planting-as-protest began in the 1970s with a New York group called the Green Guerrillas. These urban horticulturalists started off crudely by lobbing seed grenades (Christmas tree ornaments filled with soil and wildflower seeds) into abandoned, debris-filled lots, but eventually converted hundreds of these lots into flower and vegetable-filled community gardens. The movement has since spread around the world (one slogan: “Resistance Is Fertile”) and now operates under the more general rubric of guerrilla gardening.

Note, too, that those who grow marijuana plants on public lands are also sometimes called guerrilla gardeners. (Although, back to the protest angle again, some activists somehow managed to plant a few marijuana seeds near the British parliament in the annual May Day protest of 2000. By July, the plants had sprouted and were apparently growing quite nicely. Police confiscated the crop immediately.)

I should also mention the possibility of a third sense of the phrase taking root: To remove plants from public lands for use in one’s private garden. This sense is being cultivated by a book published in 2001 called Guerrilla Gardening: How to Create Gorgeous Gardens for Free.

Thanks to Jerry Peterson!

Writer’s Mail: Duty Roster

Special thanks toKatelin Cummins as a first-time Writer’s Mail editor during November. We appreciate her wonderful work throughout a very distracting month. Well done!

Please take inspiration from Katelin’s volunteer effort: Edit Writer’s Mail for a month by joining the schedule below.

• December – Clayton, editing the newsletter, but still looking at the Mayan calendar!
• January – Pat Edwards bringing Writer’s Mail into the New Year.
• February – Lead the pack during the wolf days of winter.
• March – Beware the “Slides of March” by editing Writer’s Mail

Join up with an e-mail to Clayton and throw in some content for the next issue of Writer’s Mail. Thank you!

The Last Word: “True Heroes Tend to Be Anonymous”

“In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness (sic) often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.” – Daniel J Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004)

Thanks again to Jerry!

Send your Writer’s Mail contributions to Clayton. Thank you!