3. March 2009 by Geoff.

Why would anyone scam an unemployed person? For the unemployment benefits or the contents of a depleted bank account, playing on the last discard of an empty hand?

As I scan the growing pile of junk mail cluttering an overburdened inbox, it’s clear that at least they understand I no longer need Viagra, or penile enlargement, although the Valium is tempting. Even fraudulent Nigerian bankers have given up on me.

 Instead, a new crop offer hope and change in the form of refinancing, loan modification, and a deal not to miss - making a fortune typing or with Google surveys. The most optimistic amongst the swarm, offer a powerhouse investment opportunity, presumably using that stimulus check now available to me, shouted in capital letters and obscure spam filter defeating symbols.

More worrying is the semi-credible offers that link my first name, email address and street address in a carefully crafted seduction to accept a new lower mortgage repayment.

I wish I could use these same offers to heat the house, burning them in the wood stove as I do the junk that comes courtesy of the US postal system. Instead, they consume power and bandwidth and on one sad occasion, four days of effort wiping and completely re-installing my PC’s operating system.

The time is approaching rapidly when I must leave my email address to expire, lapse or whatever happens when we move on to a new one. For nearly 10 years, it has been an everyday part of my life, like sleeping and breakfast, growing with me, and me with it.  Embracing more friends, more subscriptions, and more customer service files until I have no idea what may happen if I simply ignore it.

Somehow, I just cannot abandon it to the masses.

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1. December 2008 by Geoff.

One of the key pieces of advice that bubbles to the surface of my consciousness time and time again is, “to write well, you have to read well.”
That means reading the chosen piece twice. Once for shear enjoyment and then a second time to analyze the authors technique and craft points.
It also means, reading what you want to write - be it technology articles, poetry, literary fiction, historical non-fiction, travel writing, short stories, or mysteries in all their glorious sub-genres.
It’s a tall order and that is why sometimes, picking a genre or theme and sticking with it is so important for new writers.
Focus and practice, not every four weeks, but every day develops a flow and a rhythm and there is no better way to do this than writing a short blog on a subject that interests or entertains you.
The blog can be set to private for you alone or shared with only those you nominate, at least until you’re ready to face the world or have it face you.
If anyone would like help or advice in setting up there own blog drop me a line.

In the meantime, I can recommend reading Andrew McAleer’s “The 101 HABITS of highly successful novelists” available on Amazon.

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19. November 2007 by Geoff.

Checkout the December 2007 copy of The Writer.
Page 14 has a breakthrough story about Betty Grant Henshaw, who wrote an account of growing up in the Oklahoma Hills during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression era.
At 60 years of age she decided to try her hand at writing, took writing classes, joined a writing group and wrote stories about her life.
Then, recognizing that they did not hang together, she drew up an outline (something she said that she should have done at the beginning) and created a book length novel. She spent the next 10 years attending writing conferences, talking to agents and sending out samples of her work, only to receive rejections.
The breakthrough came when a writer friend recognized that her work told the history of the era and suggested she submit it to a university press.

Texas Tech University presses jumped at the chance to publish her memoir and provided editing support and cover design. The book ‘Children of the Dust: An Okie Family Story’ is a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.

In a similar vain, page 30 has a six-page step-by-step article by Moira Allen on “How to Write a Family History”, which includes interesting sidebars on the ‘crazy-quilt memoir’ (an alternative to the usual chronological approach), and using birthday letters and tales from the family newsletter as source material.

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18. November 2007 by Geoff.

I think of foreshadowing as similar to planting a clue or misdirection (red herring) in a mystery story – you don’t want to be to overt when you do it. Foreshadowing is the subtle positioning of information that usually serves two (or more) purposes.
The first purpose is to provide information relevant at the part of the story that is being told.
The second purpose is to explain something that happens later, for which an explanation at that point in the story would significantly disrupt it.

Here is a simple example from my Finger of Suspicion story.

Early on, I wrote “Kelly fingers, their nails chewed to the quick,”…

The first purpose was to tell the reader about Kelly – anxious, a nail biter, not in a position to be concerned with her looks.

This is then compared (though not specifically) with the long painted fingernails of the kidnapped heiress and finally revealed as the reason Kelly retains her digit (and perhaps her life).

Franklin explains foreshadowing on page 150 of ‘Writing for Story’ as “the technique by which the writer unobtrusively inserts details early in the story that will allow him [or her] to conduct his [or her] dramatic scenes without the necessity of explaining the background details.”

Franklin says that the principle was codified by Anton Chekov as Chekov’s Law, which specifies, “if the opening of a story mentions a shotgun hanging over the mantel, then that shotgun must be fired before the story ends.”

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17. November 2007 by Geoff.

I just realized that flashforward (think of it as the opposite of flashback) is not the same as foreshadowing. I would like to expand on this using information from the book I also mentioned in the last post.

According to Jon Franklin in his book ‘Writing for Story’ “flashforward is a woebegotten technique that usually goes something like:

Joe chose to go to the prom with Alice instead of Sue. In the future that choice would come back again and again to haunt him. But now he was much more attracted to Ann.”

Franklin says “the flashforward is most of all intrusive, because it has the effect of the writer’s telling a secret, sotto voce, into the reader’s ear. Like any other intrusion by the writer, the flashforward reminds the reader that the story is an illusion and thereby destroys the sense that the story is real.”

He goes on to say that a professional writer may use flashforward perhaps three times in a lifetime and he suggest that as such editors and critics automatically assume the writer who uses flashforward is an amateur. If he wasn’t he or she would have foreshadowed instead.

So if that’s flashforward how does foreshadowing work, at least according to a Pulitzer prizewinner?

Of course it’s more complicated, but I’ll sort out some of Franklin’s words and post again later.

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14. November 2007 by Geoff.

As I mentioned there are numerous sources of guidance for the beginning writer. In my mind one stands out above others and that is:

Writing for Story
Jon Franklin

More details at Amazon - reviews are “wow this is great” to “anyone who needs this must be a bad writer”.

Guess I know where I stand.

Stay tuned for others that have a permanent place in my growing collection.

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13. November 2007 by Geoff.

A jumble of books on the craft of writing competes for space on my crowded bookshelves. One book never finds a resting place there.

It is possibly the best book on writing non-fiction or fiction that I have ever read and has become a go to reference work due to its simplicity of structure and working examples.

I read it cover to cover and now dip in to it for specific topics.

The book makes use of two Pulitzer Prize-winning articles written by the author, who explains in detail every aspect of their construction and execution in easy to understand terms. The author also describes his process for focusing on the key points of the story and achieving a result with which the reader can resonate.

The appendixes contain a dissection of each article with no less than 292 annotations defining the reason or purpose of each word, phrase or thought in the articles.

The small paperback book is truly a remarkable aid to understanding the craft of writing for story.

So what is this book - I’ll reveal that in my next post.

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23. October 2007 by Geoff.

Networking usually involves face-time. Since this has to be done in real time it’s not always convenient. In fact my experience is that the networking event is often shorter than the time taken to make the journey.

So is it possible to network anonymously, using only a keyboard and derive some tangible benefits?

I logged on to the LongRidge Writers Group Lunchbox forum, expecting a moderated session, not realizing that there was none scheduled today.
I ‘met’ a friendly group of eight or so writers using pseudonyms, or more accurately, chat room handles, such as cajunbelle and speckledorf.

They said their “hi”, “hellos”, and asked questions like, “are you a student, are you new, are you on BIP or novel and, who’s your instructor?”

It some ways it may have been testing out my bona fides. I passed this first level, because I am student. The chat jumped topics as you would expect with five or six people typing and pressing ‘Enter’ simultaneously. We covered blogging, websites, Nanowrimo, cats, mothers, wives as I sat patiently waiting until 1:30pm for the 1pm session to start – but of course it didn’t, because this was it.

Poked by ‘reece’ I jumped into action, asking a few of questions that I might use in a one on one setting, but soliciting input from everyone. Some information was useful, all encouraging as befits my ‘new’ status.

Of course, in a true networking sense, the aim is to find somebody who knows somebody who can help with whatever your particular quest entails. This is not the case with chat rooms, since they are essentially anonymous and, because there is little restriction to chat room access, the conversation is guarded.

In fact when I asked questions such as “which publications are open to first time writers?” “does anyone have a list of magazine guidelines?” and other “help me break in” (or out) questions, I was simply told to read magazines and write pieces of work that was so good it could not be turned down. If anyone had a favorite target magazine or editor, they were not about to divulge it.

I can not argue with the advice and one chat room person did give me the name of their blog - http://storycrafters.blogspot.com/ - so that is definitely a start.

I’ll definitely go back and see it what happens next.

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29. October 2006 by Geoff.

Much has happened since October 2006.

1. An invite to send the first pages of thirty pages of Harry Flash to Bleak House Books. (I didn’t more later.)
2. Six months of trips back and forth to the UK, doing what I could both during the illness and after the passing of someone I cared for deeply, blew my writing spirit and taught me the value of family.
3. Naturalization, fingerprints, interviews and soon an oath of allegiance.
4. More articles for Lincoln Journal in first four months of 2007 than in last six of 2006. I expect that to slow now they have a new editor, but hey, it was sure fun having all those deadlines and expanding the scope of writing.
5. Meeting and learning from great authors including Peter Abrahams and NPR’s Bill Littlefield.
6. A new focus - on publishing beyond newsletters and local newspapers?

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18. October 2006 by Geoff.

Here’s a link to one the posts I later developed for public consumption at the WriteStuff group

AEIB (An Englishman In Boston): A trick question?

I will publish the full piece later.

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