Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail for October 21st, 2014

He said it . . .
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.” – Gore Vidal, author (1925-2012)

Present: Jerry, Kashmira, Amit, Pat, Millie, Andy B, Bob, Judith and returning writer, Mike Rackey.

Amit and Kashmira read from Chapters 7 & 8. Jerry suggested to use the word, “carriage” subsequent to “victoria” which is a carriage. People liked the description of the gatekeeper as having “the coloring of dust”. Pat liked the dialogue between the servants. Andy said POV changes seem to “have a mind of its own”. There was a discussion on scent of humidity. Pat said that humidity holds scent, but does not have scent of its own. Kashmira said that Bombay is an ocean city and particularly in monsoon season holds many smells because of increased humidity.

On the subject of flashbacks, Jerry felt that large blocks of italics are hard on the eyes. He suggested that the flashbacks could be in regular print if labeled for time and place, followed by the flashback. Bob felt that large block of flashbacks tend to stop the action of the story. Pat liked the ending of Chap. 8 with the father dusting picture frames. Bob liked the beginning of Chap 7 with train ride. He wanted more description of feeling of the trip.

Bob read poems: “January Thaw” and “February”. Judith said that she felt the first poem was an observation and that the second was more lyrical. Jerry and Pat questioned the term “sustaining darkness” in the “Februrary” poem, wanting to know the meaning. Bob said that it just dropped in and he didn’t see reason to change it. Andy suggested that “round-faced Buddha” in the “January” poem was redundant. Maybe use “red-faced Buddha”, etc. Mike said the February poem was more “fun”. Everyone liked the poems.

Judith read from “My Mother”, chap 20 and 21. Pat liked chap. 21 that dealt with the trip to Ecuador. Kashmira remarked that Charlie sometimes referred to his father as “dad” and other times “Daniel”. Should be more consistent.

Mike read from his poem “Morning Tea”. Pat said that making and drinking tea was emotionally calming. Everyone asked about the term caches which Mike pronounced as cake. He said that the tea in the poem is a traditional Chinese tea in which the plants are pressed into blocks, buried, and left to ferment, so they pick up nutrients in soil, etc. Pat suggested that he include the description of the process into the poem.

Jerry read from “The Least of These”, a James Earl Christmas story. Everyone liked the story. Judith suggested that it would make a good “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movie. It is part of a third collection of James Early Christmas stories.

Who’s up next . . .
October 28: Rebecca Rettenmund (new chapter 3, Lookout), Alicia Connolly Lohr (Coastie Girl, chapter 2), and Judah (chapter 1, December).

November 4: Judith McNeil (chapters, My Mother Savior of Men), Andy Brown (chapter, Man Before the Fall), Andy Pfeiffer (chapters, The Void), Mike Rickey (poems), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), and Bob Kralapp (???).

November 11: Liam Wilbur (chapter, Prisoner of the Gods) and Jen Wilcher (???).

November 18: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Andy Brown (chapter, Man Before the Fall), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Pat Edwards (???), Millie Mader (chapter 59, Life on Hold), and Judith McNeil (???).

All hail the editors . . .
Ruth Imhoff is our most honorable editor for Writers Mail this month. Next month, it’s Judith McNeil. Who will it be in December? You?

Titling a book is not easy . . .
How The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, as a book title, came to be, an excerpt from Andre Bernard’s 1994 book Now all we need is a Title:

In 1949, William L. Shirir, who had had a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent and broadcaster in Europe and Asia, was finishing a novel at his editor’s house. When asked if he knew what he would write next, Shirer replied, “For once in my life, I not only know what I’m going to write, I even know the title. It’s going to be called the The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” His editor responded, “Bill, please God, don’t ask us to publish a book called The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” So Schirir began looking around for a new publisher, without much luck. Finally, an editor at Simon & Schuster decided to take a chance and paid Schirir an advance of $10,000. “As it turned out,” remembered Schirir, “that was $10,000 for 10 years of work . . .” [The book came out in 1960.] After 10 years of research, he was broke. “And I expected to stay broke,” Schirir recalled. “Simon & Schuster said their salesmen didn’t think they could sell the book, and the first print order was quite small. One of the editors told me, ‘You’d better think of making your money somewhere else.’ ”

The book has since become one of the best-selling books of all time in both hardcover and paperback and has been translated into almost every language of the world.

The adverb gets it day . . .
“No part of speech has had to put up with so much adversity as the adverb,” says Wall Street Journal writer Jacob Gershman in his October 8 story about why adverbs flourish in the American courts and legislatures. “The grammatical equivalent of cheap cologne or trans fat, the adverb is supposed to be used sparingly, if at all, to modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. As Stephen King succinctly put it: ‘The adverb is not your friend.’

“Not everybody, however, looks askance at the part of speech. Indeed, there is at least one place where the adverb not only flourishes but wields power – the American legal system.”

Gershman’s is a darn good story, one that we writers should read. Here’s the link to it:

Great word . . .

From Wordsmith Anu Garg:

kibitzer
PRONUNCIATION: (KIB-it-suhr)
MEANING: noun: An onlooker who offers unwanted advice or criticism, for example at a card game.

ETYMOLOGY: From Yiddish kibitsen, from German kiebitzen (to look on at cards), from Kiebitz (busybody, literally pewit or lapwing, a shorebird with a bad reputation as a meddler). Earliest documented use: 1927.

USAGE:
“Don’t listen to the Internet kibitzers. Arthur Chu is playing the game right.”
– Ken Jennings; Arthur Chu Is Playing Jeopardy! the Right Way; Slate (New York); Feb 10, 2014.