LITTLE-KNOWN
FACTS ABOUT . . .
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Volume
4,
Issue 5
July 2006
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www.readingwriters.com
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Welcome to The VERB! Just sold my first romance to Woman's World. It'll hit print in the September 12 issue. The story is based on my niece's first encounter with her special man. As soon as she told me about it, I knew it would make a good story. So I changed everything but the basic premise and sent it off. Took seven months to receive a reply, which would've been excruciating had this been my only story out there, but with the amount of submissions the editor receives, the long wait is understandable. Nothing like a contract in the mailbox to make the wait worthwhile. Pretty sweet. Our dining room table is covered with fireworks. Hubby and son are staunch participants of the Fourth of July. (This is why we don't plan out-of-town trips around this time of the year.) Friends and neighbors don't even bother to buy fireworks anymore. They either come over to our place or settle back on their porches and watch the show. I have drinks in the cooler and burgers, dogs and chicken ready for the grill. Strings of red, white and blue lights have been hung in the trees, table and chairs have been set up, tiki torches have been inserted into the nicely mowed lawn and the hose has been extended just in case we have a dud. Have I forgotten anything? Oh yeah, cats in the basement. Happy Fourth! Happy Summer! ~~~ FOR YOUR RESEARCH – Knowing When NOT To Submit Fifteen years ago, I wrote my first novel. In its final form, it contained 153,000 words. Ecstatic, I wasted no time querying every literary agent I could find. In a matter of months, I learned an alarming fact: nobody gave a flying flip. One agent had the nerve to jot a note in the margin of my query letter: 53,000 words too long. I was livid. How could she write such a blanket statement without reading the entire 153,000-word manuscript? I simmered and stewed about that for days, convinced the woman was a moron. I just knew her rejection was a sign from heaven above because not even the good Lord would want someone that incompetent representing my manuscript. That’s called denial. The great cushion. It serves to soften Life’s blows. It helps us rise above the pain and hold firm to our floating dream. But more important, it prevents us from dealing with the truth. Now I write and read tons of manuscripts, and I can readily admit that agent wasn't moronic after all. She didn’t need to read my manuscript to know it was too long. The math alone told her that. First novel + unknown author + 153,000 words = major editing. Can't you see the publishers lining up for that train wreck? If I had listened to this woman, I could've saved myself loads of time and tears. I was downright silly to presume I knew more about the writing industry than someone who had been working in it for years. Fact is, ALL first novels, barring the occasional phenomenon (one of which I might be reading at the moment), run too long. What’s the reason for this common occurrence? Freedom. Writing a first novel is the same as unleashing a toddler on the world. Instantly he transforms into a yard-ape. He runs here and there, up a tree, down a ditch, over a hill, across a valley, into the river and out. No boundaries. This newfound freedom is so delightfully propulsive, he roams and roams without the slightest clue where he’s going. Yippee! When we writers let loose our creativity for the first time, it leaps about our life just like that toddler. It climbs over old loves, old bosses, old friends. It skips toward our school days, our childhood, our pivotal experiences. It runs through our disappointments, our dreams, our fears and maybe even tosses in a few unresolved issues. Before long, we’re all over the place, bouncing from story to story, character to character, format to format without a clue where we’re going. Yippee! This is a fun and necessary part of the process. We are allowing our creative voice to warm up, to stretch its legs, to grow accustomed to expressing itself. As we mature, we'll learn to pace ourselves, to carve a smooth path, to focus on a single horizon. And that's when we should submit. But for now, let's embrace that inner yard-ape and record its play. IN A NUTSHELL
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| DAVID L. KUZMINSKI There's a refugee ceramic pig that my wife didn't have a place for in the house. A tissue box. Three spare hard drives (I'm also a professional programmer and support technician.). A couple of computer games that I rarely play. A set of audio books featuring books I've written. A canister of pork rinds, four hats, three broken paintball guns, a lunch carrier, a refugee plant my wife needed a spot for so it could get some sun from the window beside my desk, an old dictionary published in 1969, some certificates of appreciation and completion, a can with some pens and a pair of scissors, and a stack of bills and letters. Okay, there are only three bills and I'll pay those in the next day or two. As to the letters, those are mostly from writers offering me plenty of documentation for P&E's recommendations. Then there's one stock report. An optometrist's card from a recent checkup. A couple of free security envelopes from a business supply company I did business with, some spare parts and such from recent projects, and some cotton fillers from containers that I kept to put out for birds to use in making nests. In one pile, there's something like about two hundred notes for story, character, and plot ideas. Then lastly, there's a pile of used envelopes and stamps along with a magnifying glass for a stamp collection that I've worked on for a number of years. Maybe I'll find the time to put those in an album this year with the others I've already mounted. There's probably more on my desk, but I'm not going to unsettle anything just to discover what else I didn't mention.
Dave
is editor of Preditors
& Editors™ Also
known as Atk Butterfly, he has written a number of books, both
fiction and nonfiction, short stories and poetry. Visit his
website. |
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© 2006 Elizabeth Guy |
SAY WHAT? Commonly Misused Words
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Aisle
means a passage separating sections of seats or traffic. "She came from the Isle of Avalon." |
A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
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This planted the seed for a novel, but Peter didn't actually water it until six years later. In 1971, while freelancing for both television and newspapers, he began to work on his shark story. In the winters, he wrote in the back room of a furnace company in New Jersey. In the summers, he wrote in a tiny turkey coop in Connecticut. When he finally completed the novel, three years later, he had no idea what to call it. He’d managed to come up with several titles—The Stillness in the Water, A Silence in the Deep, Leviathan Rising, The Jaws of Death, The Jaws of Leviathan—but they all sounded weird and pretentious to him. Twenty minutes away from production, he sat in a New York restaurant with his editor mulling over the problem. “Look,” he finally said, “we can’t agree on a word we like, let alone a title. In fact, the only word we think means anything, that says anything is jaws. Call the book Jaws.” “What does it mean?” asked the editor. “I don’t know, but it’s short, it fits on a jacket and it may work.” “Okay, we’ll call the thing Jaws.” Within eight weeks, Peter Benchley’s cryptically-titled novel reached the second spot on the New York Times' bestseller list and earned over one million dollars. A swim in the ocean hasn’t been the same since.
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LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT . . .
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F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Born: September
24, 1896
"I had no idea of originating an American flapper when I first began to write. I simply took girls whom I knew very well and, because they interested me as unique human beings, I used them for my heroines."
~ Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. ~ He was the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of America's National Anthem. ~ His mother Mollie was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. ~ Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy; his first writing appeared in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. ~ Fitzgerald entered Princeton University in 1913. He wrote the scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and contributed to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. ~ Due to poor grades, Fitzgerald left school in 1917 and joined the army. Convinced he would die in the war, he decided to write a novel. It was rejected. ~ In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with an eighteen-year-old belle, Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. ~ After the war, Fitzgerald went to New York City to seek his fortune. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement. ~ Fitzgerald quit his job and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel. The revised version found a home at Scribners. ~ In the fall of 1919 Fitzgerald began submitting stories to all the big magazines. The Saturday Evening Post became his best market, and he was regarded as a “Post writer.” ~ The publication of This Side of Paradise made the twenty-four-year-old famous overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. ~ Seeking tranquility for his work, Fitzgerald took his bride to France. There, he wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall. ~ The novel received high critical praise, and the stage and movie rights brought additional income. It was adapted to the screen first in 1926, but the most famous version, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, hit theaters in 1974. ~ Fitzgerald was an alcoholic, but he wrote sober. ~ In April 1930 Zelda suffered her first breakdown. She spent the rest of her life as a resident or outpatient of sanitariums. ~ Fitzgerald went to Hollywood alone in the summer of 1937 with a six-month screenwriting contract. He fell in love with movie columnist Sheilah Graham. ~ After MGM dropped his option at the end of 1938, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer. He began his Hollywood novel The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1939 and had written more than half of it when he died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure.
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The VERB |
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Attributions
are little whispers designed to help readers "see" conversations.
They reveal who's talking, where he is and what else he may be doing while he's talking.
They're meant to be short and
sweet and practically invisible. So once is definitely enough.
EXAMPLE: CLEANED UP:
EXAMPLE: CLEANED UP:
EXAMPLE: CLEANED UP:
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Invest
in a web authoring program such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Their
excellent tutorials will walk you through each feature. You'll not only lower your operating costs, you’ll eliminate
reliance on a webmaster.|
In which season does your story take place? |
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PREVIOUS SURVEY
1-4 - 8%
“Two. Short story. No room for any more.” – Bruce Hightower “The story I’m working on right now has seven characters. I make sure they all speak because there’s nothing worse than a room full of people and only one or two talking.” – Marsha Simmons “I have more than eight characters in my current work. The "gang" of preteens numbers five boys, and there are assorted bad guys, parents, and others. I had to write a list to keep track of them all!” - Jan Weeks “I
had fifteen to begin with, but as the story fleshed out, so did
the characters. I’m finding more and more people tucked between the
pages with something to say.” – John Caruthers |
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Subject:
CHALKBOARD submission
NOBODY'S HERO Rick Ranière, standing in the bedroom doorway of this lavish hotel suite, looked like he'd woken up in Wonderland and nobody'd had the decency to leave behind a map.
Terrance left the Plaza suite. Someone else must have paid for this. Carolyn had barely turned around when Rick appeared in the bedroom doorway. She didn't move from the edge of the foyer. A black sleeveless t-shirt hung from his shoulders. Gray pants, only socks. His hair stood up like he'd run his hands through it a thousand times. Terrance was intimidating, not because of his size, but because he exuded confidence. Rick Ranière, standing in the bedroom doorway of this lavish hotel suite, looked like he'd woken up in Wonderland and nobody'd had the decency to leave behind a map. "I'm really sorry," Carolyn said. He cocked his head. "For interrupting. I forgot you'd be writing, or I never would have." He nodded slowly. "It was an impulse." She felt the babble coming to fill the silence. "I wanted to ask you something—and I just…came over." Rick raised his eyebrows. Carolyn wished Terrance had let her leave. "It's …" She forced the words out. "Is it about the money?" Rick's eyes roamed around the room, then back to her. She watched his lips pinch together, as he looked away again. Then back. "I told Terrance not to interrupt you," she said, and a slight smile crossed his face. She relaxed at his change of expression. He reached for the top of the doorframe, the lighter skin under his arms straining as his muscles contracted. The barbed wire that circled his upper arm shifted. She could probably stand here across the living room and look at him for a long time. He seemed to be stretching and thinking. Then he tilted his head. "You want to go for a walk?" "What?" He lowered his arms and shrugged. "I shouldn't have bothered—" "I heard there's a place around here you can get a five dollar hamburger." The corner of his mouth turned up. "That seem likely to you?" "They cost more than twenty in my hotel." "That's what I'm thinking. Somebody messing with the tourists." He disappeared into the bedroom and returned with his sneakers on. "I don't want you to stop for me." He waved her off. "I been in there all day. And I'm hungry." "There's room service," she said, and he flashed a quick grin at her. Carolyn cringed and waited for his comeback. He went into the bedroom again. "I don't want to disappoint you," he called. "But this idea that there could be a five dollar hamburger out there is getting to me." He came out, tugging on his hat. Not his Nailers hat. The Yankees hat. Her Yankees hat. "You know what I'm saying?" Rick asked. "One of those things you just can't get out your mind?" The bill on the cap tipped when he glanced from her face to her sneakers. She wondered if every time he mentioned beef products he was talking about something else. "I could probably be persuaded to reconsider," he said, when his eyes returned to hers. So could I. She put her hand on her hip. Rick made a sound that was either a cough—or the number 'eight'—and lifted his chin toward the front door. Carolyn escaped into the hallway with relief.
©
2006 Melanie Harvey |
Here's a chance to show off your
writing! |
WHAT
IS YOUR SPEED LIMIT? Do your writings cruise at your natural speed? Complete the scenes below to determine where your excellence lies.
1. You have pressing news for your boss. But when you step into his office, you find him gazing pensively out the window. What do you do?
a) Stand quietly, survey the room and wait to be noticed.
2. As you drive down the road, you hear an explosion. A fire rages in your rearview mirror. What do you do?
a) Compare the flames to the passion in your heart.
3. You take a ferry to a cozy island. The trip will take twenty minutes. How do you fill the time?
a) Analyze the water, the clouds, the ferry itself.
4. You’ve been attracted to your neighbor for some time. This morning, she/he finally waves from the drive. How do you respond?
a) Stop to take note of the surroundings on this momentous occasion.
5. You hear loud sounds from your uncle's garage. Peeking through a window, you see he’s hosting a cock fight. What do you do?
a) Assess the smell, sounds and bloody damage to the garage.
A - You like to crawl into your stories, convinced no scene can be fully appreciated without a good setup. Details excite you, and you don’t miss a thing. You possess the ability to turn a simple act into a profound experience. You excel in character-driven literary works. B - You like to walk into your stories. You're flexible, perfectly willing to slow down for a bit of description or speed up for a bit of action. Balance is your forte. You excel in all the classic genres. C - You like to jump into your stories, convinced the majority of content should be blown up, not explained. You have a limitless supply of nervous energy and little patience for extended narrative. You excel in brief action-packed works, such as comics. Writers, start your engines!
© 2006 Elizabeth Guy |
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I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation ... They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.
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John Steinbeck
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© 2006 ReadingWriters. All rights reserved. This ezine is a labor of love, and may not be reproduced without permission. All correspondence should be sent to Elizabeth Guy. |