A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT . . .
FINALLY . . . A Sample of Excellence
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you know that your
e-mag is awesome! Great work!"
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Volume 3
Issue 2
January 17, 2005
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R e a d i n g W r i t e r
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Welcome to The VERB! I have two additions to my office. One is a water bell fountain. The other is a precious kitten who abhors the first addition. He hunkers down beside the bowl, ears flat, and waits for a floating bell to near. When it's within his reach, he gives it a good whack. This not only flips the bell, it stops the lovely sound of wind chimes. So I have to push myself away from my desk to restore the bell to its proper position. Little kitty watches patiently. After I've taken my seat again, he hunkers down beside the bowl, ears flat, and awaits the next floating bell. So much for achieving inner harmony! Are you or someone you know in the military? Check out OPERATION HOMECOMING. The National Endowment for the Arts, in coordination with all four branches of the Armed Forces and the Department of Defense, is sponsoring writing workshops for returning troops and their families. Need info on historic figures and their accomplishments? Visit the Biographical Dictionary. It contains more than 28,000 bios of men and women who have shaped our world. Need to know what a dock hand does? Go to the Dictionary Of Occupational Titles, and get the lowdown on any job. Need to make that nerd character sound believable? Consult the Computer Dictionary. Finally, your temporary Freedom from Toil is here. But if you're watching your caloric intake, stay away from the food section. Now, without further ado ... let the action begin!
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MAGDALENA BALL
My writing desk is, unfortunately, neither a guide to my writer's soul nor full of those cute writerly types of things designed to inspire me. There isn't room for affirmations, slogans, a pretty coffee cup (though an empty one sits on the speaker nearby) or cute pens. Instead my desk is a revamped gored out antique (we call it a "so-called antique" since it is probably a fake) with a glass bookshelf hovering (a little precariously) over the desk, full of books (not the only bookshelf in the house I'm afraid) and in front of me squeezed together fairly tightly are my writing PC, a small printer, a laptop (from the day job), my Filofax open to today and full of scribbled "to dos," an open copy of the book I'm currently reviewing (Peter Carey's Wrong About Japan, thankfully small enough to sit neatly between the Filofax and the keyboards) and the telephone. There isn't room for anything else, though I am occasionally given half eaten apples, pieces of Lego, CDs taken out of their cases or other toys to accommodate and I usually manage to find a nook for them until I have time to restore them to their rightful place. I have no chair. Sitting down would be like waving a red flag to my 2 year old daughter, who is actually napping in front of me at the moment. I tend to be quite mobile while I work, ready to dash off to the potty at a moment's notice (got to be quick), play a quick game of dollhouse or assist with some problem. The CD player and all computing equipment is housed in the body of the "so-called antique" workstation, which is actually in the corner of my living room. If I had to work in quiet isolation without interruption, I'd never get anything done! Right next to the desk are music CDs which tend to be on when Miffy isn't taking priority. It sounds pretty cluttered, but it isn't that bad, and is reasonably effective, allowing me a corner of the world to work in without calling too much attention to itself, and at a height which keeps the machinery safe from 3 sets of curious hands. I'm not a kitschy type of person. I don't like fuzzy little toy things (and there are enough of those in my kid's rooms), so I try to limit my own work space to the essentials. The real kitsch and inspiration is either in my head or written down somewhere.
Magdalena
runs The
Compulsive Reader
web site. Her publication credits include university
journals like Imago, Drexel Online, and Thylazine,
popular fiction venues like Skive Magazine and Perigree,
and review publications like Midwest Book Reviews and Relix
Magazine. Her nonfiction book, The Art of Assessment: How
to Review Anything is available
here.
Her first novel, Sleep Before Evening, is currently
under consideration. |
MAKING A SCENE
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SAY WHAT? Commonly Misused Words
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Moral means "relating
to principles of right and wrong in behavior; ethical." Morale means "the
mental and emotional state of an individual or group." |
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By the mid 20s, the Teletype was the standard of electronic written communication. They supplied the country's newspapers with regular summaries of news, feature stories, weather forecasts and bulletins. Although the general flow and organization of the news was centrally controlled, individual newspapers could contribute their own stories using the keyboard. Its sound alone became the trademark of breaking news. Later on, most all radio announcers would broadcast the news with the loud clanking sound of the teletype in the background. But with this new technology came the monotony of identical news scripts. This was a necessary evil in those days due to the lack of time that existed between when the story finished printing and when the anchor had to go on the air. Known as "rip 'n' read," stories (printed in upper-case letters on yellow roll paper at 110 baud) came into the newsroom on the bulky teletype, an anchor would standby, then rip the story off the roll and rush to read it to the listeners. If time were available, however, anchors were expected to rewrite wire copy, either to correct errors from the original copy or to emphasize elements that would be relevant to the local audience. And by rewriting in his own voice, as all writers know, the anchor made the news more personal. This allowed for smoother transitions from one story to the next and guaranteed no other newscast would sound the same. The old teletypes are now ghosts in newsrooms. These days, producers, writers, anchors, tape editors and executives instantly receive breaking news from their computers.
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PART
TWO
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If you're right-handed, place
your lamp behind your left shoulder. If you're left-handed, place it
behind your right. This way, your hand won't overshadow your words as you
write or read.LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT . . .
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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Born:
June 14, 1811
"I could not control the story, the Lord himself wrote it."
~ Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. ~ She was the seventh child of Roxana and Lyman Beecher, a famous Congregationalist minister. Her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, became a renowned preacher and leader of the abolitionist movement. ~ Harriet was first a student and then a teacher at Hartford Female Seminary, a school founded by her sister Catharine. Together, they later wrote a children's geography book. ~ In 1834 Harriet won a contest of the Western Monthly Magazine. She became a regular contributor of stories and essays. ~ In 1836 Harriet married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary. The early years of their marriage were marked by poverty. ~ Over the next fourteen years Harriet gave birth to seven children. She helped to support her family financially by writing for local and religious periodicals. ~ Her short story collection, The Mayflower, appeared in 1843. ~ Soon afterward, Harriet began writing a novel that focused on the issue of slavery. She gave it the title, Uncle Tom's Cabin. ~ First published in weekly installments in the journal National Era, Harriet's novel created such a controversy that when she met President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have greeted her with the words: "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" ~ Following publication, she became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe. ~ Uncle Tom's Cabin was a best seller in the United States, England, Europe, Asia, and translated into over 60 languages. ~ During her life, Harriet wrote poems, travel books, biographical sketches, children's books and adult novels. But none of her later works approached the literary merit or the social impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. ~ Harriet's mental faculties failed in 1888, two years after the death of her husband. She died in Hartford, Connecticut and is buried alongside her husband and son Henry in the cemetery connected to the Andover Theological Seminary.
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Interjections
are meaningless little words
used to show a wide array of emotions, anything from pleasure to
hesitancy. They're fairly common in English speech, so it's only
natural they would pop up in print.
Unfortunately, they don't read as well as they sound. Too many insertions in the dialogue quickly distract readers from what's being said.
Example: Cleaned up:
Example: Cleaned up:
Example: Cleaned up:
Uncertain about a piece of your writing? |
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If you died
today, would loved ones know where |
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PREVIOUS SURVEY
I wrote less. - 71%
"I wrote a lot less, in fact, nothing! After a fall down the attic steps, my writing and Christmas shopping was sorely curtailed! But I usually get at least two holiday stories while the mood is on." - Dorothy Baughman "I was forced to write less. Company sleeping in my office." - Barbara Tinsley "Wrote less, ate more."- Connie Ferrone "Actually, I wrote more. Sounds unusual, I suppose, but I took three days off from work and had more time." - Celeste Thurston "I was stuck at the airport during the holiday, so my "writing verve" registered extremely low. I wrote several fuming emails, mind you, but none the descent reader would care to see." - Hugh Copeland |
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Subject:
CHALKBOARD submission CATCH THE SUN by Ian Roberts
There were days when the captain’s ache was alleviated by the vision of a clipper easing her way down Southampton Water. Through his telescope he could watch the seamen aloft in the shrouds as sails were hoisted readying the vessel for the breezes of the English Channel, then the open Atlantic. Sailors on smaller ships and inshore craft would raise their caps in awe of such vessels, the fastest and most beautiful sailing ships ever built. Tobias Ecclesiastes Denmark would recall clippers he had sailed aboard or captained, ships with names such as Marathon, Destiny and Antelope, slicing through tempestuous seas at twenty knots, flying every scrap of canvas in contempt of storms that saw lesser ships reduce sail in surrender. The captain would remember rounding Cape Horn on the Urquhart, through winter seas higher than houses, when his crew thought him mad, his orders shouted through a bullhorn to combat the shrieking wind and untamed ocean. There were no finer moments in his life than the raptures of pushing the Urquhart through the insanity of a gale, in ecstasy at the mountainous oceans and the inspiration of his bellowed declamation of the greatest dramatic lines ever written. Yes, some had thought him mad, and he had laughed at the fear in their eyes until they had laughed with him, relishing the terrifying elements, while others became paralysed by their captain’s apparent lunacy and the incalculable tonnage of heaving water bearing down on them. There had been no better seaman than Tobias Denmark. Only the Four Sisters had spoiled him. He kept a case of it beside his desk, to prove to himself he could resist it and was fit to captain a ship once more. And resist it he did–but not always … At first, Tobias Denmark coped quite well. He was hopeful of a new ship in the near future and enjoyed his visits to the theatre. The splendid meals supplied by the new cook gave him much to anticipate, and Salome provided for his physical needs, as her late mother had done before her premature death. But Denmark was a man of strong passions, and as the weeks turned into months without word of a ship not even his joy in the theatre or the delights of Salome’s body could quell the burning frustration within him. He longed for the sea and the thrill of commanding a clipper under full sail in a wilderness of foaming ocean and to see again the pure light of a tropical sunrise, with the wind at his back as his ship caught the trade winds and hurtled like some relentless beast for mile upon mile along the endless sea lanes. And when a year passed with nothing from the postman except bills, Denmark began to turn more often to his Four Sisters …
© 200 5 Ian Roberts
Ian, born in the North of England,
has been a high school teacher, a
security guard, a van driver, a kitchen designer, a factory
worker, a trainee accountant and always a lover of words, language
and writing. His
first novel is in the hands of an agent. |
Here's a chance to show off your
writing!
I have a color printer, and seem to always be running out of ink. Any tips for conserving ink? It's easy to go broke buying ink cartridges for your color ink jet printer. Especially unnatural is the cost of that color cartridge. You don't need to print color often, which adds to the insanity. Worse yet the thing will dry out in a few months. It's the true definition of a conspiracy. Let there be joy! I have good news for you. The printer setup properties can be set to print black only, or grayscale, too. Either setting can save you money, although the grayscale will do the best at conserving cash. Possibly your printer doesn't show both settings. To change your printer's color properties in Windows, click Start, Settings, then Printers. You will see your printer listed. Right click on it and choose Printing Preferences. On your system you may choose Properties instead of Printing Preferences. Look for the tab labeled Color. Here you'll find options to set the printer into grayscale or black ink mode. If you want to keep open the option to print in color, store a good color cartridge in a sealed sandwich bag so it doesn't dry out. You will probably have to keep a color cartridge in the printer or risk the printer going into error, but it can be a dried out or empty cartridge.
Submit your question to COMPUTER GUY! |
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ARE YOU BLOCKED OR BORED?
Rampant within the writing community is the notion of writer's block. So much has been written about this malady, writers might understandably feel they aren't really a writer until they've suffered from it. But what if no writer has ever been truly blocked? What if those empty, dried-up moments are simply the result of sheer boredom? Take the quiz below to measure your current creative energy.
1. The prologue you've been working on for the past five weeks still reads like a book report. What do you do? a) Create a scene with pure action. 2. Your lead character works in a field that is foreign to you. What do you do? a) Interview someone who works in that field. 3. By the third chapter, your loveable character Sarah has morphed into grumpy ol' Ethel. What do you do? a) Create a profile, giving her physical features,
likes, dislikes, habits, fears and a name. 4. After you re-read the shouting match between your hero and heroine, you think the dialogue sounds contrived. What do you do? a) Reevaluate the reason you have them arguing in the first place. 5. You have no idea how to get a character, who has no money, from point A to point B. What do you do? a) Incorporate a financial source early in the story.
If you chose the A answers, you are so hot you're bursting off the charts! Ouch! May we soon see your finished project on the bookshelves. If you chose the B answers, you are lukewarm. Struggling, but at least not giving up. Remember, many excellent scenes are created while doing something else. If you chose the C answers, you are lacking a single spark. Set your work aside for a while and let your brain ponder. Is this story really the one you want to tell at this point in your life? Find the answer to this, and perhaps you'll find the cure to your writer's block.
© Elizabeth Guy |
FINALLY . . . A Sample of Excellence
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"The witnesses for the state … have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson's skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men cannot be trusted around women, black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men …" --
Harper Lee
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© 2005 ReadingWriters. All rights reserved. This ezine is a labor of love. We neither accept advertisements nor charge subscription fees. It may not be reproduced without permission. All correspondence should be sent to Elizabeth Guy. |