Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
September 22, 2016

 

Who’s up next . . .

October 4: Pat Edwards (???), Amber Boudreau (chapter 9, The Dragoneer), John Schneller (chapter 5, Final Stronghold), Eva Mays (chapter 4, Dhuoda), Bob Kralapp (???), and Mike Austin (chapter 15, Before I Leave).

October 11:

October 18:   Millie Mader (poem), Hannah Marshall (poems), Nora O’Reilly (chapter, Bill McCormick’s Bliss), and Judith McNeil (???).

 

Tuesday eve at the B&N . . .

Twelve first-and-thirders gathered around the table to critique three poems, a whole bunch of chapters, and two short stories. Here’s some of what was shared:

– Millie Mader (poem, “My Texas Garden”) . . . Regarding my poem, it was generally quite well received. A few changes were suggested, and I will work on them. Thanks for all who read my submission and commented.

– Cindi Dyke (chapters 3-4, North Road) . . .Hannah liked the main character’s vision at the end of chapter four where she sees her reflection in the mirror morph to a lifeless image. There was discussion about the dynamics between the sisters. Jerry thought the older sister is very self-absorbed, but she was intended to be characterized as controlling/manipulative to set up future conflict between them. Discussion was very helpful as I try to work that out. Thank you for sharing your insights 

–Kashmira Sheth…Kashmira submitted some pages of her book in verse. Generally, everyone liked the story and the new title, I am From Here, Too. There were on part of one of the poems that didn’t fit the poem well. Hannah pointed it out and John agreed.

– Jerry Peterson (short story, part 2, “Luther Click & The Lawman”) . . . Eva Mays picked off a typo, wretched which was supposed to be retched . . . Quill Rose threw up. She also said Rose should have reacted when the vulture raked him with its talons. “That had to hurt. He should have been bleeding.”

 

November’s Fifth Tuesday . . .

Nora O’Reilly is checking around for restaurants where we might meet.

For the writing challenge, the group settled on “You are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner when someone knocks at the door.” It also was agreed that the writers must use five words, but were stumped by what words those should be. “Let’s stew on that and come back with suggestions in two weeks,” John Schneller said. “And stew should be one of those words.”

 

Writing Meetup…

Need some accountability to sit down and get some writing done? I (Eva) have gotten into the habit of going to Tuvalu Coffeehouse & Gallery in Verona on Sundays, 1:30-4:30 to crank out some words. It’s got a great vibe, very conducive to writing masterpieces. Feel free to join! The address is 300 S. Main Street, Verona.

 

Wise words from the Facebook page of novelist Kate DiCamillo (Tales of Despereaux, Because of Winn Dixie, et al)

Twenty years ago, I was on an airplane flight that went through a storm and there was terrible turbulence–the worst I’ve ever experienced.
The plane dipped wildly up and down. The overhead bins popped open. Luggage fell out. People screamed.
The older woman sitting next to me asked if she could hold my hand.
“Sure,” I said.
And so we held hands.
The plane careened though the storm.
I felt oddly calm.
I was thirty-two years old.
I had started writing a few years before.
I had published nothing.
I was busy amassing an astonishing number of rejection slips.
And I was happy.
I had found what I wanted to do, and I wanted to keep doing it.
So what I thought, over and over, in the middle of all that wild turbulence was: “Shoot, there are so many stories I want to tell.”
At some point, I must have voiced this sentiment out loud, because the woman sitting next to me squeezed my hand and said, “I know. I know, darling. There’s still time.”
And happily, there was.
Still time.
I think about that lady often.
She blessed me; and these words are a belated blessing back to her.

 

Quotes for Writers on Reading (from writersrelief.com)

Love quotes for writers about reading and books? So do we! Reading is one of the best parts about being a writer (because what other career would allow you to curl up with a good book of poems or a favorite novel because you’re “working”?). We adore books, and we adore these quotes about books. Feel free to share these quotes for writers with your friends!

“I don’t think of literature as an end in itself. It’s just a way of communicating something.”
—Isabel Allende

“All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.”
—Steve Almond

“A real book is not one that’s read, but one that reads us.”
—W.H. Auden

“When I graduated from high school I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library 3 days a week for 10 years.”
—Ray Bradbury

“In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.”
—Elias Canetti

“The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.”
—Raymond Chandler

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
—G.K. Chesterton

“I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.”
—Roald Dahl

“The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul—BOOKS.”
—Emily Dickinson

“Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.”
—Thomas Hardy

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.”
—Ernest Hemingway

“Books worth reading are worth re-reading.”
—Holbrook Jackson

“If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.”
—Wally Lamb

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
—George R. R. Martin

“A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways—by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov’s crime.”
—Boris Pasternak

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
—Terry Pratchett

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”
—Philip Roth

“One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.”
—Mary B. W. Tabor

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
—Henry David Thoreau

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
—Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”
—Oscar Wilde

 

The editor . . .

Hannah Marshall is our Writers Mail editor for October. Send her the good things you’d like to share with your fellow writers.