Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
December 7, 2014
“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.” — Joyce Carol Oates
At Barnes & Noble . . .
Dec. 2, 1st & 3rd
Cindi Dyke (North Road, Chapter 13) Pat Edwards thought that CC’s dialogue doesn’t sound like a man’s voice because he apologizes. Jerry also thought a man would have a nickname for his dog and call her Tess instead of Tessa. Kashmira pointed out that CC began his conversation with Kath saying that he couldn’t stay long, but he ended up staying which doesn’t make sense. Lisa thought the dialogue could contain a little more flirting between CC and Kath.
Jerry Peterson (chapters 4-5, “Rooster’s Story”) — “You had the brothers turn to a life of crime too soon,” Pat Edwards said, and other agreed. Homer and Harold Wright need to get $5,000 so they can bail their friend out of the hospital. All agreed the brothers have to probe sources other than getting a loan from the bank — they were refused a loan — before they consider stealing the money . . . and the decision has to pose a greater moral quandary for the elder brother, Homer.
Kashmira and Amit (chapter 9) More detail description (regarding milking the goat) would have made the scene more interesting. Tension created by the letter and its resolution is a bit ambiguous. Question was raised why would anyone read’s someone’s diary. Need to change word diary to Journal(?)
2nd&4th — no longer keeping reading notes
Who’s up next . . .
December 9: Ruth Imhoff (chapter, Interrupted Conquest), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter 6, Lookout), Judah LoVato (chapter, In A Moment There Is Time), Jen Wilcher (???), and Jack Freiburger (???).
December 16: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Cindi Dyke (chapter, North Road), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Mike Rickey (???), Pat Edwards (poems), Millie Mader (chapter 60, Life on Hold), and Judith McNeil (chapters, My Mother Savior of Men).
January 6: Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 9, Coastie Girl), Andy Brown (chapter, The Last Library), Pat Edwards (poems), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Bob Kralapp (???), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 5, Rooster’s Story).
Admin. Notes . . .
Dec. 23rd; 2nd & 4th meeting is cancelled.
Dec. 30th; Nothing will be scheduled for 5th Tuesday. 2nd & 4th sponsors the next one in March 2015
Katelin Cummins, current leader of our second-and-fourth group, will take a year off, starting next month, to work on completing her novel. Rebecca Rettenmund will step up as the group’s new leader.
We still need a January newsletter editor. Email Jerry.
Keri Smith’s Seven Steps to Getting Published
(originally published in 2005)
During my own research on publishing I would always become somewhat giddy with excitement when I would see a title like the one above. It was as if the author was about to reveal to me the one magic clue that I needed to crack the mystery, the one thing that would set my career in motion. I would usually envision it would be something really simple, something I could do in the span of a week. I think in the beginning I was more in love with the idea of getting published than I was with the process of getting there. This is not necessarily a bad thing, after all who wouldn’t be? It is an immensely exciting experience, I have rarely experienced the elation I felt after receiving an actual acceptance letter in the mail. But what I learned in the meantime was bigger than any publishing tip I had ever read, you really must LOVE THE WORK. While getting published is an exciting possible outcome of a creative endeavor, it should not used as a motive for creating. For a while now I have been approached by people asking me to offer some tips on getting published. After much procrastinating I have come to write some of my thoughts on the subject, elusive as it may be. But I thought it appropriate to also talk briefly about the process of creating, developing the ideas and bringing them out into the world.
As with any advice I can only tell you what worked for me, some people may have a different approach. I find now it really helps me to read about the process of creating, the process of submitting is extremely important to learn but fairly straightforward (you only need to do it a few times to get it)…
1. Let your idea have it’s own life. This sounds a little strange but what I mean by this is once you have the idea in your head don’t try to control it too much. Let it tell you what form it should take. It really helps at this point to go for a long walk and just LISTEN (it may be several long walks). Let the words and images evolve. With my most recent book it took over a year for me to know what form it would take. I had ideas for content and had begun writing but no overall format to tie it all together. I didn’t worry about it too much but just let it “be” for a while. One day while reading a book on “intuition in business”, a concept popped into my head. This concept was “play”, and it tied the whole book together and became my focus from that moment on.
Read the entire post at http://www.kerismith.com/popular-posts/seven-steps-to-getting-published/
Thanks to Pat Edwards!
2014 National Book Awards Announced
Last month the winners of the National Book Award Foundation announced the winners for this year’s honors. Below is the list of winning books and their authors with a short summary about each book. http://www.omnivoracious.com/2014/11/2014-national-book-award-winners.html
FICTION: Redeployment by Phil Klay
“Phil Klay’s Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.”
NONFICTION: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
“Writing with great narrative verve and a keen sense of irony, Osnos follows the moving stories of everyday people and reveals life in the new China to be a battleground between aspiration and authoritarianism, in which only one can prevail.”
Young People’s Literature: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
“Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.”
POETRY: Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck
“You enter the world of this spellbinding book through one of its many dreamlike portals, and each time you enter it’s the same place but it has been arranged differently.”
He said it . . .
“Every time a new technology comes along people think that it’s the end of the road for the English language and indeed sometimes for languages in general. It happened when printing arrived in the 15th century, people thought, “Oh disaster, there’s going to be heresies promulgated all over the world now.” When the telephone arrived in the 19th century, people thought, “Oh disaster, people won’t talk to each other on the streets anymore, they’ll stay at home and society will break down.” … And the Internet has come along now, so naturally people think that’s going to be a disaster as well. But the evidence is, for language, that every time a new technology arrives it expands the expressive richness of the language in a way that wasn’t there before.” – David Crystal (1941- ), British linguist, academic and author
Thanks to Jerry!
Tuesdays with Story 
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