Newsletter April Bulletin: MEETING 2-4 ANITA KORNFELD Bestselling novelist Anita Kornfeld will be our speaker for the April 3 meeting. Her topic will be the Three C's: characterization, conflict and conclusions. She will also talk about creating stories with meaning, and talking on paper. Anita, author of "In a Bluebird's Eye" and "Vintage," has also had many short stories and articles published. An accomplished author, she is also an engaging speaker who is willing to share with others what she knows. She has been a lecturer at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and was an enrichment lecturer for nine years with Royal Viking Lines. She is now working on editing her third novel. SPEAKERS REVIEW MARCIE STILLERMAN, JACK STILLERMAN, KATHRYN JORDAN, SHERRY HALPERIAN In spite of a speaker cancellation, Program Chairman Cyndi Muscatel managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat and present a panel of writers for the program. The theme was one dear to the heart of all writers, "How to Get Published." Marcie Stillerman spoke on publishing in the children's literature market. She says it is a kinder, gentler market and is unagented. Sixty million children between three and fifteen years represent the potential market. Children's magazines have a combined circulation of forty million copies. It is a highly specialized and changing market. The Institute of Children's Literature (services@writersbookstore.com or 1-800-443-6078 or Amazon) has a directory of hundreds of publishers, their requirements and much more information. The keys to getting published are, know your craft, know your market, decide on the age you are targeting and read books written for that age. Take a course in writing for children. Jack Stillerman spoke on self-publishing or Publish On Demand. The choices, he said, are Ex Libris, IUniverse, Infinity and Author House. IUniverse does not provide an ISBN. Most companies have three optional packages in which they offer difference services depending on the amount you pay--IUniverse has four. They will accept manuscripts done on WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. You need a platform, the entire program to publicize your book, book fairs, reviews, etc. POD will provide this for you if you are willing to pay for it. It is an evolving market. With no frills you can expect to see your manuscript in the form of a book in about 30 days for as low as $300. The POD publishers are basically printers and they will add to your basic price with additional printing options. Kathryn Jordan's book HOT WATER, Berkeley, is scheduled for January. After writing four books which did not sell, Kathryn decided to write a commercial book. It took eight months to write and was accepted in three weeks. Her advice is to trim. Get rid of everything that is not the story. Go to workshops. Learn to target the right market for your material. Get books on marketing while you are writing. She says if she had known more about the marketing targets, it would have influenced her during the writing phase. She suggests reading Publicize Your Book, by Jacqueline Deval. Title is important. Some books are sold on their title alone, for example: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. To get an agent, she says, go to conferences and one last tip, write a good book. Sherry Halperian. While writing a murder mystery, Sherry began making notes on the various men she met on dates and that became Rescue Me, He's Wearing A Moose Hat... and 40 Other Dates After 50, Avalon, coming in November. She met an acquisition editor who asked her to give a five minute pitch over the phone. The acquisition editor pitched it to other editors, then called, and she had a contract. They wanted 70%, 30% for her. She didn't have an agent so she called an entertainment lawyer. She got 100% of audio, TV and stage rights and 30% foreign rights. They requested an author's questionnaire which includes a 300 word description of the book. She wrote a 300 word summary of the book for catalogue copy (every publication sends out a catalogue to book stores about their upcoming books). Her book will go to two more editors after this one, for on-line editing, one on spelling and another on grammar. Her advice: watch out for confidence destroying critiques in critique groups and when you sell the book, stand up for what you want. CONTESTS ANYONE? The Journal, the literary magazine of The Ohio State University, would like to announce the second annual Journal Short Story Contest. The winner receives $1000 and publication of the winning story in The Journal's Autumn/Winter 2005 issue. Please submit only previous unpublished fiction up to 7500 words. Deadline for postmark of manuscripts is April 30th. A reading fee of $10 must accompany each manuscript (please make checks payable to The Journal). Manuscripts should be submitted anonymously with the title of the work and all contact information listed on a separate cover letter. Manuscripts will not be returned. Submit to: Short Story Contest The Journal Department of English The Ohio State University 164 West 17th Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210 APRIL 16, FRANCES STEVENS PARK PSWG WILL HAVE A BOOTH AT THE FAIR The Guild's New Discussion Area (See printed bulletin for URL and details.) Our private office now contains: (1) a project for promoting Guild member websites and books, (2) links to dozens of paying markets, and (3) how to create a website in 5 minutes. What we are: The Original Palm Springs Writers Guild is a nonprofit organization formed to support a variety of writers in and around the Coachella Valley. We meet on the first Sunday of the month, at 2 PM, in the Mizell Senior Center in Palm Springs, Ramon Road and Sunrise Way, for fun, fellowship and speakers. We work to hone our craft in Critique Groups, which meet more frequently. Please join us at the next meeting. Officers - click here Notice: Please send comments, proposals, suggestions for the Bulletin to John Harrell or Billy Lobo. BO(a)ReD JOHN HARRELL With the unanimous approval of the new By-Laws at the regular March meeting, this Board's focus shifted to the fast track of Nominations and Elections for the next Board. Special thanks to the NOMINATING COMMITTEE: Cyndi Muscatel, Harold Kaplan and Mary Barrer for their diligence and speed. The slate is listed elsewhere in this Bulletin and will be formally presented to the membership at the April meeting. The deadline for the Writing Contest has been set for July 1st. The Entry form and comments by Jim Duggins, Chair for the Contest, are included with this Bulletin. Jim intends to broaden the field of entries and we are adding categories. We see the Contest as a good way to get exposure for the Guild and encourage participation by more segments of the community, especially younger writers. Members of the Guild are being mailed a large blue and white card at the same time the Bulletin is mailed. This card, prepared by consultants for UCR Palm Desert, is a survey regarding the school's plan to offer a degree in Creative Writing at their local campus. We agreed to affix the labels to protect our mailing list. Please give the survey your attention. THAT MAY IS NOW DESIGNATED AS THE ANNUAL MEETING AND WE WILL HAVE ELECTIONS FOR A NEW BOARD THAT WILL BE INSTALLED IN JUNE ^ posted by Webmaster @ 3/30/2005 05:00:00 PM Pacific Time March Bulletin: Meeting 2-4 Lynne Friedman Lynne Friedman, freelance writer, educator and book author will speak about how science and technology themes are finding their way from the front page to the printed page. National surveys show more American adults follow science and technology news than business and sports news. Friedman will present methods to weave science topics into fiction and expand science-based nonfiction into new markets. Grants, conferences and other resources available to writers will also be discussed. Panel Discussion March 2 from 6 PM to 7:30 PM Palm Desert Library Community Room Kathryn Jordan, Cyndy Muscatel, Estelle Shanley, Jack Stillerman and Marcie Stillerman will speak about the different aspects of getting published. All published writers, each participant has a unique view of the process. A question and answer session will follow the panel's presentation. March 6th Meeting By-Law Amendment Approval Leslie Schwartz Speaker Reviews Leslie Schwartz ended a two day seminar by sharing with Guild members how she came to write her best selling book, ANGELS CREST (Doubleday, 2004). It was written, she said, between books. It is loosely based on an incident that actually occurred in which a child wandered off from his father and was not found until it was dead. At first the story did not come together, she said. She worked for some time on the structure of the story—a format to allow points of view for various characters as they related to this one tragic incident. Because she was pregnant, had remarried and her father-in-law had just died, the theme of the story became both grief and rejoicing. It helped her deal with her own grief. Life growing within her as well as the loss of a cherished life created the impetuous and fertility for the story. As she worked with the manuscript, the idea of fate and free will began to emerge; the sense that if you had done one small thing differently, your life would have turned out differently. In one second life can change. When does free will end and fate take over she asked through the book. The structure she used was to create a fictitious town and people it with seven people making each of them Point of View characters. Some characters are changed profoundly because of the inciting incident in the story, some are not. She said she created ANGELS CREST by writing one hour a day. She modified that by saying, as she walked for five miles in the morning she was planning what she would write. This she said was made easier because she had established at the beginning the structure of the story, a pattern of alternating chapters which explored the lives of these characters. ANGELS CREST was done with a pattern of seven Points of View, presented in three cycles. Seven plus seven plus seven. Her previous book, JUMPING THE GREEN (Simon & Schuster, 1999) was done with alternating chapters for two characters. (COLD MOUNTAIN, is an example.) Again she stressed that structure is the all important skeleton on which the story is told. In the seminar she listed some possible structures, chronological (can have flashbacks), around an event, (birthday, death, wedding), alternating points of view, as in ANGELS CREST (allows for texture and scope), around a season, a journey (HUCKLEBERRY FINN). Her process is to print out what she had written the day before, correct and revise. This takes you back into the world in which you were working, she explains. She is in a critique group. In editing, she said, if two people tell you something, you should listen and change it. She likes a very hard critique. Leslie Schwartz teaches fiction at UCLA Extension and is available for mentoring one-on-one for writers. She can be reached at lschwartz62@earthlink.net Joanne Hardy I met Leslie Schwartz by accident at the Writer's Conference in Palm Springs last Memorial Day weekend. While walking down the hall looking for a class I glanced through a door and on a blackboard I saw in big letters: STRUCTURE and underneath: CHARACTER IS PLOT. I took a seat immediately and soon was mesmerized by her technique of teaching the craft of structure. When the guild decided to ask her down to Palm Springs and give a seminar I couldn't have been happier. Her day-and-a-half workshop held February 5th and 6th at Mizel Senor Center titled Structuring the Story was fascinating and informative. There were about fifty attendees including students from local high schools and COD College who were offered a free pass to the seminar. Her seminar was divided into five sections: structure, character development, conflict/resolution, dialogue, and POV. About structure: "There is no story without structure," Leslie said. She likened structuring a story to building a house, blueprints needed to hold it together. She believes structure will set you free to get your creative juices flowing without worrying where you're going. Structure is the framework for the plot, not part of the plot. "But remember," she said, "our words are not inscribed in stone—if our blueprint to tell the story is not working we can change our structure." However . . . some folks start a story not knowing where they are going or how to get there . . . and that's OK too. Somewhere along the way your structure will show its face. About character development: She believes that character (not plot) is story. Analyze each character: what does your character want? What stands in the character's way of getting it? What will the character do to get it? What's your character's deep secret? And . . . how does the character really change? Some people sketch out their characters in minute detail, others let them evolve as the story progresses. Letting them evolve might bring about more surprises. "As we develop our characters," Leslie said, "We always learn something about ourselves." About conflict/resolution: The inherent conflict of your main character(s) should dominate the story, drive the action, and should be implied on every page of the book. She thinks it's best if you have in your head what the primary conflict is for your main character before you start writing. Other characters will bring their own conflicts and minor plot points. Internal conflict, whether the character hates his father or has a secret desire to model women's clothes, should be made clear fairly early on. Whichever way, detail is what makes a great story. She doesn't believe things should be tied up in a neat package—let some resolutions dangle, let the readers imagine the outcome. She said, "I think the trick is to straddle the fence between resolving the main conflict and leaving others or parts of the main open—let your readers participate in the fate of your characters." About dialogue: "Find an authentic voice for your character," Leslie said, "keep it consistent and use dialogue as another way to further plot and to reveal character." The two most important things about dialogue are (1) the words and attitudes remain consistent and (2) that the dialogue evokes, whether directly or indirectly, the theme of the novel or the situation at hand. About POV: She pointed out that it's not the point of view that determines whether a book is good, it's the writing. POV should be a personal choice, a voice you feel comfortable in. "A lot of people use first person for first novels," Leslie said, "sometimes hating themselves later for reveling too much of themselves." She believes third person, more easily allows you to write exposition without sounding preachy. Third person can also have different points of view where first person must only be through the narrator's eyes and ears. Leslie's a good teacher. Her ready smile and sly grins made listening easy. I went away from Leslie's seminar knowing I'd learned. That I'd reviewed. For most of us the tools were there all along, but maybe we'd forgotten or misplaced them. "Writing is not an exact science," Leslie reminded us, "there is no clear-cut formula. Writing is so nebulous and indefinable, it's hard to say how much can be taught. But one thing is certain," she said, "you really only learn to write by writing, writing every day." Steve Scott Contests Anyone? Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival short fiction Contest Deadline: March 11. Reading fee: $10 for one story. Prize: $200/125/100/75. Short fiction. Sponsor: Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival, RR 2, Box 355A, Latrobe, PA 15650. Details: 724-834-7474, info@artsandheritage.com, http://www.artsandheritage.com/. 49th Parallel Poetry Award Deadline: March 15. Reading fee: $15 for first story, $10 each additional prose piece. Prize: $1000. Short fiction, creative nonfiction. Sponsor: Bellingham Review, Mail Stop 9053, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225. Details: 360-650-4863, bhreview@cc.wwu.edu, http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~bhreview/49thparallel.htm. Tom Howard/John H. Reid Short Story Contest Deadline: March 31, 2005. Reading fee: $10. Short Story. Length: 8,000 words max. Prize: $1000. http://www.winningwriters.com/tomstory.htm Common Ground Review Poetry Contest Deadline: Feb. 28. Reading fee: $10. Prize: $100/50/25. Ind. poems. Sponsor: Common Ground Review, 21 Primrose Street, West Springfield, MA 01089. Details: cgreview@cox.net, http://cgreview.org/PoetryContest.htm. The Guild's New Discussion Area (See printed bulletin for URL and details.) Our private office now includes: (1) dozens of paying markets, (2) info on the upcoming PS Book Festival, (3) how to create a website in 5 minutes for free with no programming knowledge, and (4) even some recipes! Annual Palm Springs Book Fair---April 16 (Frances Stevens Park). PSWG will have a booth at the fair. Members who are published authors and wish to sell their books should contact Marci Stillerman as soon as possible. Space will be limited. Tele# 346-7956; e-mail marciess@aol.com What we are: The Original Palm Springs Writers Guild is a nonprofit organization formed to support a variety of writers in and around the Coachella Valley. We meet on the first Sunday of the month, at 2 PM, in the Mizell Senior Center in Palm Springs, Ramon Road and Sunrise Way, for fun, fellowship and speakers. We work to hone our craft in Critique Groups, which meet more frequently. Please join us at the next meeting. Officers - click here Notice: Please send comments, proposals, suggestions for the Bulletin to John Harrell or Billy Lobo. BO(a)ReD JOHN HARRELL The Board meeting on February 21st was event filled, as witnessed by the content of this Bulletin and the activities upcoming in the next few weeks and months. Audrey Moe and Marci Stillerman are hard at work on the Guild's participation in the PS Book Fair - see notice. Jim Duggins worked with the board to generate a policy for the next Fiction Contest. More about that in the next issue. Martin Goldberg resigned as Treasurer for personal reasons and Harold Kaplan agreed to be appointed to finish his term. We will never be able to say than you to Harold enough. The website continues to mature and Alan Baird is the man responsible. The text of the By-Laws amendment is posted, if you did not get a copy at the February meeting. This amendment will be presented for approval at the March meeting, so please review and contact me if you have questions. Thanks to Cynthia Slater, Gordon Gumpertz and Robert Hurlbert for their comments. UCRiverside may soon offer a MFA degree in Creative Writing at the Palm Desert campus. As part of their investigation of the offering they have asked to survey our membership. Since we do NOT share the mailing list, we will "address"the survey provided by them and ask that you respond. This is an exciting opportunity for the younger(er) writers in the desert. Thank you for cooperating. Reminder that the Southern California Writers Conference - SCWC/PS - will be returning his year. Check out the website and we will have an update as soon as possible. See you on March 6th I wanted to let the members of the guild know that this month's The Writer magazine has a rather large spread on getting an agent... it has interviews with a bunch of agents and then, I believe, it lists agents who are looking for new material/writers. Thought you might like to spread the word around. -Leslie Schwartz Saturday April 16 9AM-6PM Frances Stevens Park A GREAT OPPORTUNITY to showcase the work of Guild members. THE GUILD IS HOSTING A BOOTH AT THE PALM SPRINGS BOOK FESTIVAL Saturday, April 16th, 9-6, at Frances Stevens Park. Published books will be offered for sale according to the following guidelines - 1. You must be a current member of the Guild. 2. You must have a copy of the book at March 6 Guild meeting. 3. The book must be professionally bound. 4 If space restraints apply, most recent copyright will prevail. 5. Guild committee handles all arrangements - DO NOT CONTACT PEPPERTREE BOOKS INDEPENDENTLY If your book is accepted by the Committee, you will be given information on parking, setup, schedules, etc. THE FESTIVAL will present celebrity speakers and panels - a few of the confirmed are Kitty Kelly, John Dean, Sen. George McGovern, Susan McDougal, Paul Krassner, Bill Press, Deana Martin, Richard Reeves, Robert Scheer - as well as display booths for a galaxy of writers, publishers and agents. VOLUNTEER The organizers will need help on the day of the Festival. Great way to support writing and writers in the desert. Contact Guild Chair for details. Audrey Moe, audrey@moeFamily.net ^ posted by Webmaster @ 3/02/2005 06:00:00 PM Pacific Time Powered by Blogger. |
