Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
September 3, 2014

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” – Vladimir Nabokov, novelist (1899-1977)

Notes from the First Week of September
Nine of us gather around the old oak tables at Barnes and Noble.

Millie reads from Chapter fifty-six of Life On Hold. Andy loved the cliffhanger at the end of the chapter, but he wants to know what one character is saying, we just read that he’s speaking. Amit suggests giving the character an action to be interrupted by the detectives coming in. Pat appreciates Millie finding the first name of a character from earlier in the story and asks if she knows of many journalists being lost in Cambodia. Millie knows there were. Jerry has a question about the phone call placed home from overseas. Kashmira wants to see some kind of physical reaction on the part of the main character at the beginning of the chapter.

Andy reads from the beginning of Chapter twenty-four of The Void. Judith had a question about who the chapter is about. Jerry wanted to know if the reader has to know where a character lived. Pat pointed out a redundancy and suggested telling us something odd about the house to give us some insight into the character. Pat doesn’t think we learn anything new about the character Andy intends for us to know more about. Millie wants to know how a character got so popular. Pat wants to know why this chapter is so pivotal, but most of us don’t like the character as much as Andy does. Kashmira thought the physical tags were a bit excessive in the scene Andy read.

Amber reads from Chapter Fourteen of Stone. They like the description of flying. Jerry thinks the chapter should really start four lines into it. Jerry also likes a particular point of the bird turning its head to see something. Pat wants to know how a human brain can function as the size of a bird brain. Kashmira thinks it has to do with consciousness. Also conservation of the mass could be explained by energy consumption. Andy’s not interested in the story, and wants more stuff to happen sooner. Kashmira wanted to see more flying and seeing the world and having thoughts about her own consciousness. Are there any other birds to be seen? Amit liked the synthesizing of similes and thinks there could be more to the end of chapter.

Kashmira and Amit read from chapter four of their novel. Millie asks how much time has passed since he saw his fiancé. Kashmira says they will be going back to rewrite things, but it’s been a few months. Jerry has a problem with the sun being up and then dawn breaking. Pat loved the imagery and texture of the chapter. Did the scenes of the chapter feel scattered? Pat felt the journey-ness of it. Judith and Millie liked it also. Jerry has a minor note about the geography of the story and the character changing direction.

Bob reads form the final part of his story Hole in the Wall. Millie didn’t understand the importance of the awnings. Pat thought there was going to be a shot fired and may be a little disappointed that there wasn’t. It was a bit disjointed for her and Bob says he’s still working on it. Pat thinks his stuff usually ends creepy and smoother. Andy didn’t pick up on one character’s OCD and wonders if he might punch it up. Jerry thinks he did a good job of upping the argument and wants one character to pull the trigger, even if there’s not a bullet in it. Pat thinks there are some great turns of phrase. Judith was disappointed that it was wrapped up so neat. Kashmira thought he conveyed a lot in just a few lines of dialogue. Could he end it in a sympathetic or pathetic note instead? We all kind of want something else. Kashmira wonders if it’s because it ends with another character speaking. Maybe we’re missing another character’s reaction.

Jerry reads from chapter twenty of his novella, Rubbed Out. Judith liked the history of one character’s family. Pat thought there could be a better verb in one instance. Andy wants to know what the flock is shouting as the preacher is being carted out. Pat wants to know why we don’t ever get to see Wads dance.

Indie Author Insider: Julie Ortolon
Very dyslexic, Julie Ortolon was unable to read or write until her mid-20s – but this inspiring storyteller faced those challenges head-on and became a bestselling author. Watch the video and get inspired! You Tube Julie Ortolon

Kindle Reading Apps
Did you know your readers don’t need a Kindle to read your book? Simply download one of the free Kindle reading apps–available for smartphones, tablets, and computers. Expand your audience. Encourage readers to download the app and widen your audience. Learn more

Who’s up next . . .
September 9: Deb Kellerman (children’s story, A Red Bear) and Ruth Imhoff (sharing from writing seminars at Gen Con). . . . Email Katelyn Cummins to get on the schedule.
September 16: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Andy Brown (chapter, Man Before the Fall), Cindi Dyke (chapter, North Road), Pat Edwards (???), Amber Boudreau (chapters, Stone), and Judith McNeil (chapter 16 My Mother, Savior of Men).
September 30: Fifth Tuesday
October 7: Amber Boudreau (chapters, Stone), Andy Pfeiffer (chapters, The Void), Millie Mader (chapter 58, Life on Hold), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Bob Kralapp (???), and Jerry Peterson (short story).

September’s Fifth Tuesday . . .
Yes, we will all gather at The Chocolaterian Café, 2004 Atwood Avenue, on September 30 for Fifth Tuesday. This is an order-off-the-menu gathering. Have you blocked the date off on your calendar?
You can start now on the writing challenge. Here it is: Write either a scene from a fictional memoir or an obituary for a fictional character, your choice. Length, no more than 250 words.

Newsletter editors . . .
Pat Edwards edits our Writers Mail this month. We need an editor for October. How about you? It’s easy! Ninety percent of the work is copy and paste. That’s Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V a few times. You barely use three fingers and gain the admiration of your fellow TWSers.

That or which . . .
Steven Pinker writes about grammar for The Guardian newspaper in England. In a recent column, he delved into 10 rules of grammar that are sometimes okay to break.
As to when to use that and when to use which, Pinker said this:
Many spurious rules start out as helpful hints intended to rescue indecisive writers from paralysis when faced with a choice provided by the richness of English. These guides for the perplexed also make the lives of copy editors easier, so they may get incorporated into style sheets. Before you know it, a rule of thumb morphs into a rule of grammar, and a perfectly innocuous (albeit second-choice) construction is demonised as incorrect. Nowhere is this transition better documented than with the phony but ubiquitous rule on when to use “which” and when to use “that”.
According to the traditional rule, the choice depends on which of two kinds of relative clause the word is introducing. A nonrestrictive relative clause is set off by commas, dashes or parentheses, as in “The pair of shoes, which cost five thousand dollars, was hideous.” A restrictive relative clause is essential to the meaning of the sentence, often because it pinpoints the referent of the noun from among a set of alternatives. If we were narrating a documentary about Imelda Marcos’s vast shoe collection and wanted to single out one of the pairs by how much she paid for it and then say something about that pair alone, we would write “The pair of shoes that cost £5,000 was hideous.” The choice between “that” and “which”, according to the rule, is simple: nonrestrictive relative clauses take “which”; restrictive relative clauses take “that”.
One part of the rule is correct: it’s odd to use “that” with a nonrestrictive relative clause, as in “The pair of shoes, that cost £5,000, was hideous.” So odd, in fact, that few people write that way, rule or no rule.
The other part of the rule is utterly incorrect. There is nothing wrong with using “which” to introduce a restrictive relative clause, as in “The pair of shoes which cost £5,000 was hideous.” Indeed, with some restrictive relatives, “which” is the only option, such as “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “The book in which I scribbled my notes is worthless.” Even when “which” isn’t mandatory, great writers have been using it for centuries, as in Shakespeare’s “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” and Franklin Roosevelt’s “a day which will live in infamy”.
So what’s a writer to do? The real decision is not whether to use “that” or “which” but whether to use a restrictive or a nonrestrictive relative clause. If a phrase that expresses a comment about a noun can be omitted without substantially changing the meaning, and if it would be pronounced after a slight pause and with its own intonation contour, then be sure to set it off with commas (or dashes or parentheses): “The Cambridge restaurant, which had failed to clean its grease trap, was infested with roaches.” Having done so, you don’t have to worry about whether to use “that” or “which”, because if you’re tempted to use “that” it means either that you are more than 200 years old or that your ear for the English language is so mistuned that the choice of “that” and “which” is the least of your worries.
If, on the other hand, a phrase provides information about a noun that is crucial to the point of the sentence (as in “Every Cambridge restaurant which failed to clean its grease trap was infested with roaches”, where omitting the italicised phrase would radically alter the meaning), and if it is pronounced within the same intonation contour as the noun, then don’t set it off with punctuation. As for the choice you now face between “which” and “that”: if you hate making decisions, you won’t go wrong if you use “that”.
* Here’s the link to Pinker’s full column should you wish to read about the other nine rules of grammar that are sometimes okay to be broken, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/15/steven-pinker-10-grammar-rules-break