2009 NETWO Spring Conference

April 24 & 25, Camp Shiloh

Plans are finalized for the 2009 Writers’ Roundup, faculty announced, and brochures mailed. At the January meeting, NETWO members voted to keep the fees the same as last year. If you register by April 8: $55 for NETWO members, $65 for non-members; $35 for students. After April 8, $75 for members and $85 for non-members, $45 for students. The conference registration fee includes the Friday night reception and Saturday lunch. A one night stay in the dorms is $18 and $30 for two nights. The Friday Workshop is $20 (if attending) and the Saturday night banquet is $12 (if attending). You may register on-line at: www.netwo.org.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON WORKSHOP

Registered attendees for the Writers’ Roundup may register to take an intensive three-hour workshop led by Lori Wilde on Friday with these goals:

· Learn the nuts and bolts of creating compelling characters

· Stimulate creativity

· Have fun while developing new writing skills

CREATING COMPELLING CHARACTERS

Lori Wilde (author) has sold 47 novels to Harlequin, Time Warner, St. Martin’s Press and HarperCollins. Her novels have been trans-lated into 17 languages and her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Complete Woman and Simple magazines. Lori Wilde knows how to develop compelling characters.

You’ll cover

Building the Bones
Through the Character’s Eyes
Fleshing Out Your Character
The Character Arc
Characters in Action
Heroes
Villains
Secondary Characters
The Way Characters Speak
Characters and Themes
Character Transformation

There is a limited number of places available for this workshop which will be allocated on a “first come, first served” basis. Date of your registration will determine your spot in the queue. @

DON’T FORGET--FEBRUARY 14 IS THE DEADLINE FOR THE SHORT STORY CONTEST. IF YOU NEED A REMINDER ABOUT ANY OF THE RULES, CHECK WWW.NETWO.ORG.

SKIP’S JANUARY POETRY WORKSHOP WAS A SMASH HIT!

In an atmosphere of lively discussion and exercises in writing, those attending studied the basics of writing poetry, from limericks to accentual verse. Participants included NETWO President Ted Rankin, Rusty and Holly White, Marcia Davis-Seale, Jeremy Dougan, and K. C. Crowden, daughter of Bryan Freeman. K. C, was the one who first suggested the idea for the workshop, third in a series that seems likely to continue. t

DUES PAYMENT TIME

Membership dues are payable now. If you haven’t already sent in your 2009 dues, please mail them to

NETWO

P. O. Box 411,

Winfield, TX 75493.

Even better, bring them to the February meeting on the 12^th.

For the $20 annual dues, (or $25 for couples), you get many benefits. There are the discounts on the spring conference, and often on other workshops during the year. You receive this newsletter twelve times a year, with information on the club, interviews of members, news of contests and other activities of interest to writers, tips on writing and selling what you write and often a short story, poem, or book review.

Membership in NETWO also gives you the opportunity to have your writing critiqued by other writers. This can help you improve your craft. Plus, members often can help with where to submit a piece, or how to improve the materials to be submitted. And when you need information on something that appears in your story, the widespread backgrounds of the membership can often supply that knowledge, or at least point you in the right direction.

All for $20. What a bargain! Send it today, or bring it to the February meeting. @

*ITEMS FROM JANUARY MEETING NOT COVERED ELSEWHERE*

Jim Callan reported on the plans for the Spring Conference. There are a number of tasks involved in getting the conference set up and volunteers are needed. Please contact Jim if you can volunteer.

The February meeting will be a regular meeting starting at the new time. It will, however, include a special Valentine’s Day treat. Skip also says you get a discount if you eat before 5:00 p.m.

NETWO WORD FUN

By Liz Sanders

Unusual Plurals!

Spell the following words correctly in their plural forms.

1. cactus

2. nucleus

3. focus

4. phenomenon

5. criterion

6. moose

7. son-in-law

8. medium

9. crisis

10. index

(Answer key is on Page 5)

Read a L’Amour Book Lately?

By Jean Pamplin

Louis L’Amour fans walk to the beat of a different drummer. They defy classification as far as gender, age and nationality but claim commonality in their quest for adventure. When busy schedules keep them tied to an armchair, they ride the stuffed beast as well as any L’Amour character ever rode a horse. What does it take to be a L’Amour addict?

Sue Stevens started volunteering at the Franklin County Library in 1987 and is now the Assistant Librarian. She was raised in the same house in the Hagansport area as were her father and grandfather before her. When asked to name a local L’Amour fan, she promptly answered, “Who isn’t? Haven’t you seen our L’Amour section? There’s not a book in there that’s not ragged. And people don’t care. As long as they aren’t missing a page they will check them out. Mr. (Floyd) Causey, he’s sick now, but he used to read nothing but L’Amour and read them over and over rather than read a new author.”

Stevens herself likes L’Amour books. “In fact,” Stevens lowered her voice so as not to openly expose author Zane Grey. “I think he’s better than Zane Grey and I read everything Zane Grey wrote when I was a kid. I haven’t read all his books, but I love Louis L’Amour. He’s a very good writer, has to be good, as popular as he is. Good writers are read a lot. Have you read L’Amour’s Haunted Mesa? Now that was a weird book, but I loved it.”

“L’Amour, himself, was a prolific reader. The youngest of seven, he remembers reading a five-volume Collier’s History of the World from his father’s lap. This self-education resulted in a rather boring school life, which he gave up at age fifteen for a working education.

A stint in West Texas skinning drought-killed cattle under the tutelage of a seventy-nine-year old wrangler raised by Apaches was in L’Amour’s words, “the most miserable job, but I learned a lot…He (the old wrangler) was the first to teach me about tracking and using herbs.”

L’Amour also invested time baling hay in New Mexico across the road from Billy the Kid’s grave, joined a circus in Phoenix, spent time as a boxer, hoboed to Galveston where he hired on as a merchant seaman. He traveled in China, bicycled across India, and spent twenty years awash in travel adventures in the Merchant Marines, intermittently writing along the way.

His first big sale was Hondo (1953), originally published as a short story, then a novel. “John Wayne made a movie of it, and suddenly, everyone wanted Westerns,” said L’Amour. At the time, the western genre meant low class paperbacks. But L’Amour said “to hell with it,” and decided to write “damn good Westerns.” He made them accurate and important.

L’Amour fan Jerry Smith is glad he did. Once a Lone Star Steel worker, Smith remembers, “There were days working there you didn’t know if you’d be coming home.” Now retired from Texas utilities South Side Mines he has turned back to ironwork. Between fence building, sandblasting, painting, window tinting, stump grinding and an occasional fishing trip, Smith still finds time to read L’Amour books every night. “He makes you feel like you’re right there with him. I read a few other westerns and quit. There just ain’t another writer like L’Amour. I have all his books except two I can’t find. I read his books over and over.”

Sandra McCord at the Book Nook on East 9^th in Mt. Pleasant sells books at half price or takes in trades. “I don’t have a lot of rules, but I only trade L’Amour books for L’Amour books. When I did it the other way, I ended up with all sorts of western books and no L’Amour. Even though he has been gone a long time, people still like him and his books are regular sellers.”

Book manager Polly Dugdale at Hastings’ store on South Jefferson says they have lots of L’Amour buyers. “He sells better than any other western writer whether it’s hard back, paper, or audio.” Dugdale adds, “Most L’Amour fans are collectors. They never get rid of a book. They are now releasing his short stories in hard cover and I have people waiting for the books to come in.”

The Mt. Pleasant Library has 144 Louis L’Amour books on the shelf including a copy of The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour that came out in 2003. “He is a classic writer and never goes out of style,” said Librarian Lori Rigney.

Another able western writer in the area is Jory Sherman from Pittsburg. “L’Amour was a good friend of mine for twenty years,” said Sherman. “He wrote very simply and was popular because he tapped into the sensibility of the Americans, that great myth of the West.”

Sherman and L’Amour crossed paths frequently. “He was an interesting guy. He had a great publicist, Stuart Applebaum, who even had L’Amour meet with the drivers who put the books on the stand. Everybody wanted another L’Amour. After he died, publishers groomed young writers to take his place, but there is not another L’Amour. He was unique.” Sherman noted, “a cottage industry unto himself.”

Keeping a rigorous schedule until his death at 81 (1988), Louis L’Amour lamented, “I’m just now getting to be a good writer.” Although L’Amour liked all the books he wrote, believing there were bits and pieces in each that were good, he felt The Walking Drum, a twelfth century adventure, was the most fun to write.

At the center of The Walking Drum is the character Kerbouchard which almost encompasses L’Amour himself. This hero warrior, lover and scholar challenged the fates and in so doing believed he lived wisely. A daring seeker of knowledge and fortune, the hero lamented over the many that lived void of purpose and goal urging them, “to ask: Where am I going? What am I becoming?” then wisely encouraged, “the first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination.”

L’Amour believed quotes were “better understood as part of a story’s progression and of character development. “I suppose, “ he said, “it is virtually impossible to entirely free the character from the creator.” And so the author is indeed the hero and thus the reader lives in his stead. And L’Amour fans continue to be born. t

Critiquing a Poem

By George A. Allen

If you are critiquing a poem, remember that a poet has a God-given right to use words in any sequence that he chooses. Their place in a sentence may be proper English, but many times a place is created, or perhaps the word is legislated to be there. The way in which he uses words may not be for lack of skill. It could very well be to keep a thought alive, which may be a deep inner feeling. He cannot consider the appropriateness of the word, just the usefulness.

A poet has a responsibility to generate poetic beauty, lyrical mystery, or something in between. But, he is not constrained to define the beauty, nor solve the mystery. Each of these elements is left to the reader to admire, scoff at, solve, or oppose.

Some poems are mentally generated for a mental atmosphere. If you attempt to take it out of its setting, you will lose the beauty of the words, or the mystical mystery of the surroundings. Turn off every function of the brain except the imagination. Let your imagination go where it pleases, let it capture its own places and thoughts as you sit back and enjoy it.

Each poem is a unique experience for a poet. When the mind’s eye leads him away from home, he is off limits for a visit. Do not expect he will be there for you anytime you want to talk. Oft times he is not there for himself. A writer often extends his visitation to a real or make-believe place when he is midway between two extremes of his imagination.

You never know where you will find a writer, but you can be sure he is somewhere between the extremes of his imagination. This is his workshop where he creates, assembles, and refines thoughts and

ideas. @

CONTEST – POETRY

The Writers’ Journal poetry contest with an April 30 deadline awards prizes of $50/$25/$15. The reading fee is $3.00. Winners List will be published in the Nov/Dec issue.

Guidelines are:

· Serious verse only

· Each poem may be no longer than 25 lines.

· Entries must be double-spaced on 8-1/2 x 11 white paper.

· Each entry must be submitted in duplicate. Name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address, if available, should appear in upper left corner of one sheet. No name or address on duplicate. No staples.

· Photocopies accepted---poems will not be returned.

· Only previously unpublished poems will be accepted.

· Copyrights to poems remain with authors. WRITERS’ Journal requires only one-time publishing rights to winning entries.

Address all entries to:

Poetry contest

Val-Tech Media

P.O. Box 394

Perham, MN 56573

Make checks or money orders payable to:

WRITERS’ Journal. t

Answer Key to Word Fun:

1. cacti 6. moose

2. nuclei 7. sons-in-law

3. foci 8. media

4. phenomena 9. crises

5. criteria 10. Indices or indexes