Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
January 21, 2016

The first word . . .

Oh, for a good title, one more time . . . “I have always had trouble coming up with a title. My favorite was The Choirboys because it was provocative. People wondered why the hell a book about cops would be so titled. My biggest mistake was The Blooding. People have reported that they resisted buying the book because they thought it was about slasher murders, when actually the title refers to the massive blood testing that was done during the first use of genetic fingerprinting in a British murder inquiry.”– Joseph Wambaugh (1937- ), best-selling writer of police procedurals and police nonfiction

Who’s up next . . .

January 26: Holly Bonnicksen-Jones (chapter 7, Rainlover) and Carol Hornung (scene, Jan).

February 2: Lisa McDougal (chapter 48, Tebow Family Secret), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Eva Mays (???), Judith McNeil (???), Millie Mader (two poems), and Kashmira Sheth (???).

February 9: ?

February 16: Bob Kralapp (???), Kashmira Sheth (chapters, Nina Soni), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Randy Slagel (short story, part 1 rewrite, “Watered-Down Witch”), and Jerry Peterson (chapters 27-30, Killing Ham).

New editor on the way . . .

One more week to go for Amit Trivedi’s editorship of Writer’s Mail, then Pat Edwards moves in for the month of February. If you have good stuff for our e-newsletter, send it now to Amit and next month to Pat.

Shel’s “Rain Forest” gets a response . . .

We posted TWS alum Shel Ellestad’s short story from a decade ago about fellow TWS writers coming to visit him in Mexico when the winter up here was fierce. It brought this response from another alum, Joan Gray:

Thanks so much for uncovering the story from long ago and sending it to us. What a joy to read it. So many memories of us reading our work week after week and attempting to improve. Which I think we did.

And such laughter at ourselves when our sentences weren’t, and our non-sentences were! Without Jerry leading us and Barnes & Noble hosting us, many of us would not have had a place to try our hand at this new animal called writing.

So, thanks, Shel, for finding your lovely story that featured us, your fellow students, and thanks, Jerry, for sending it to us.

Happy 2016, continued good fortune and many smiles.

I miss all of you

Joan

If you didn’t get to read She’s story, it’s still up on our Yahoo group page. Go to first-and-third, 2016, and the meeting file for 1-19. You will find the story in the submissions folder.

Great word . . .

From Word Spy Paul McFedreis:

kitchen pass  Meaning: (noun) Permission from one’s spouse to attend an event or go on an outing.

Examples“Wolfgang Kern, 40, joined the free‑play [chess] tournament Saturday afternoon for a few quick games. He and his wife recently had their first child, so getting out of their Allen home for chess tournaments isn’t possible if they are daylong affairs. ‘I have to get the kitchen pass from my wife to go play, but it’s fun.’”– Tiara M. Ellis, No‑frills tournament just cuts to the chess, The Dallas Morning News, January 25, 2004

“My wife’s favorite hors d’oeuvre is ceviche made from triggerfish, so it’s usually easier for me to get a ‘kitchen pass’ for my next fishing trip if I return home with a couple of trigger fillets in the cooler.”– George McKinney, On the Reef, Pensacola News Journal (Pensacola, FL), October 23, 2003

Earliest“Upper‑Crust executives in the San Francisco Bay area go to Bohemian Grove for their retreat. The Silicon Valley technology crowd’s idea of relaxation is the Consumer Electronics Show. And the executives of the real estate‑ and construction‑related industries that support high technology in the valley get their kicks courtesy of the Kitchen Pass Club.

“Last week, for example, members of the club were diving in the Red Sea, just the latest in a string of adventures that dates back more than a dozen years and has included race‑car driving, off‑road motorcycling, fishing and a rodeo, as well as diving.

“These are businessmen who grew up in the area when it was still known as the Santa Clara Valley. Their world is less that of lone‑wolf entrepreneurs than of social groups engaging in old‑fashioned macho hobbies. Many of them are the kind who express politically incorrect attitudes that no longer surface in the boardrooms of their trend‑setting clients. Indeed, the Kitchen Pass name, a groaner for outsiders and even some club members nowadays, came from the idea that each member of the all‑male club needed permission from his wife to go.”– Michael S. Malone, The Driving, Diving Boys of Silicon Valley, The New York Times, October 11, 1992

Notes. I’m not sure about the earliest usage of this phrase. The 1992 Times cite talks about the Kitchen Pass Club, but the article also mentions that the club was formed in the late 1970s. It doesn’t say, however, whether the club used that name from the beginning or switched to it later on.

The final word . . .

“I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.” – David Bowie