Minutes - June 2009 NETWO Meeting

Members of the Northeast Texas Writers’ Organization met June 11, at the Western Sizzlin in Mount Pleasant, Texas. Ted Rankin presided. Seventeen members were present.

Old Business:

There was a small profit made on the 2009 Spring Writers’ Conference.

New Business:

Jim and Earlene check on the Purley Gates for a future conference; received a good review.
April 23^rd and 24^th are set for the 2010 Spring Conference which will be held again at Camp Shiloh on Lake Bob Sandlin near Pittsburg, Texas. Jim and Earlene suggested better mattresses for next year. A $300 deposit is needed and 25 people are the minimum requirement to use the dorms.
The election of officers is as follows:
Jim Callan nominated Skip Hughes for president. Skip nominated to re-elect Ted Rankin. A secret ballot was held. Ted Rankin was elected. Skip Hughes was re-elected by acclamation for Vice President requested by Bryan Freeman and seconded by Galand Nuchols. Pat Hamilton stepped down as Treasurer. Skip nominated Bryan Freeman for Treasurer by acclamation; it was seconded by those present. The office of secretary will be held by Michele Chitsey and Jean Pamplin. Floy Smith will continue to be in charge of the NETWO newsletter. Jim Callan is the Director of Conferences.
There will be an Officer meeting July 9^th at 4:30 before the regular monthly meeting.
Skip Hughes wanted ideas for helping with the attendance at the monthly meetings. Julia Besanson-Alford suggested sending the monthly newsletter to different colleges and to encourage local libraries to sponsor a section for Texas writers. Jim Callan brought up the idea to use the local newspaper, radio, and TV free advertisement slots.

Maryann Miller shared thoughts on how to use Virtual Book Promotion on the internet. This form of advertisement for a book can reach all around the world. An author’s web site or blog should be professional looking and it can be done economically. Blogs are very necessary and should be updated at least three times a week. The more the blog spot is updated, the more interest is shown. It’s important to remember when blogging—shorter is better, usually 500 words is long enough.

Book Blog Tours costs around $200 for three weeks. The author promoting his/her book appears on other authors’ blogs spots.

When a writer chooses to use the internet for promoting new books or new projects, it becomes important to have a set schedule to keep up with how much time to spend on the computer.

Maryann stressed that marketing is not about selling your product; it’s about building relationships. People want people to trust.

Business Meeting Adjourned.

Readers for the night were Bryan Freeman, Skip Hughes and Karen Watt. Curtis Sharp won the door prize.

Respectfully submitted, Michele Chitsey

BITS & PIECES

Gay Ingram has an article accepted by Coffeehouse For Writers.com. You can check out “The Art of Gardening Words” at http://www.coffeehouseforwriters.com/

fictionfix/0907%Ingram.html.

Maryann Miller has posted her article about Jory Sherman’s paintings at

http://www.winnsborotoday.com.

The article is titled, “Painting in the Dark.”

Some of Jory’s work is currently on exhibit at the Winnsboro Art Center.

NEW MEMBER

Karen Watt

Continued from the June Newsletter

Second part of Georgia Henson’s NOTES ON HOW TO WRITE as taken out of the book MAGIC STEPS TO WRITING By

CHARLES SASSER

Charles Sasser has lived the life of a writer and has shared that with us in this book. I thought these excerpts were important and I hope you enjoyed them. Charles gave us permission to use this in our newsletter.

Georgia

A writer should always keep in mind the relationship between the author, the book, and the book’s intended audience. It’s part of the craft of writing. Readers need to know that it is the protagonist wants, what prevents him from getting it and how he or she overcomes obstacles in striving to get it.

Writers control thoughts with words. Writers are pressed to guard their pens at all times out of fear of saying something that someone else might find offensive. We are to use the language of the people though or we lose something. A writer should write true, to reflect his slice of life the way it really is, not the way some would have it.

Most of what I have learned about writing I learned the hard way. By doing! A story entails conflict. Conflict means characters involved in action with a beginning, middle, and an end in which the conflict is resolved. Ask the question, does the story have enough substance to support a book length work, or would it be better told in a shorter medium.

Plot, like scenes within a plot, involves three factors: a situation, a complication, a resolution of that complication. Always think conflict.

Dialogue must sound “real” while at the same time it can only be an approximation, condensations of the way people talk. First, dialogue should be brief. Second, dialogue should never be just to be, it should move the story and keep it focused. Third, don’t let it be light. Avoid repetitiveness of true conversation. Fourth, use it to reveal the speaking characters, both directly and indirectly through his manner of speech. Five, dialogue should allow the reader to read between the lines to understand the conversation as much through direction, action and gestures, as in what is actually spoken. Make every word count. Do the necessary rewrites.

Over the years, from my own writing and from teaching and critiquing other writers, I have discovered beginning writers, unsure of their craft, consistently make the same mistakes. I have isolated the ten most common of these and now list them in order of importance.

One---Overwriting, or what I call expository

diarrhea or “step by step” writing, in which a character’s every action is so faithfully recorded that it is as though he were being videotaped.

Two---Poor dialogue written too “realistically” and without focus.

Three---Obscure writing, hard to understand because you fail to say exactly what you mean.

Four---Anti-climatic sentences and paragraphs. Place the most important part at the end of the sentence or the paragraph. “John died on Thursday after the rattlesnake bit him.” Huh-uh. Make it read, “The rattlesnake bit John, and he died on Thursday.” John’s dying is the most important part of the sentence.

Five---Misdirected antecedents. “Feeling disheartened, the hospital called John on Thursday. The hospital feels disheartened?

Six---Poor leads that do not grab. Think of such reader grabbers as: “Lee was in the ladies room when the bomb went off.” (Dutch Shea Jr., by John Gregory Dunne); or “Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them.” (Before the Fact, by Francis Iles).

Seven---Abruptly changing focus, as from one character or scene to the next.

Eight---Soap boxing. “Think pieces” in which the writer lectures the reader rather than sticking to facts and the story.

Nine---Misspellings and grammatical mistakes in the submitted manuscript.

Ten—Failure to rewrite---or, conversely, too many rewritings in which the heart of the story is simply stabbed to death and loses its life.

Getting the facts and getting the facts right are essential to the credibility of your work and to your own personal integrity. Successful writers know that publishing requires two different mind sets: The first is the actual writing, the second, is the business of writing. Research, marketing and promoting, both mind sets must be handled with equal facility if you ever expect to move out of the tool shed in the woods.

Discipline: “Work every day,” Ernest Hemingway counseled. “No matter what happened the day or night before, get up and bite the nail.”

Inspiration: We must believe that at least some of the inner voices playing around inside our writer heads might interest other people. We mustn’t be trembling and apologetic about our work. We must depend upon a though inner core to drive us and not listen to those who would steal our dreams.

Goals: There are very few Stephen Kings, John Grishams or Anne Rices. That level of commercial success in writing is rare—but it is not impossible. You have to believe that. You have to at least reach for the moon. You never get anything you don’t reach for. You reach every destination by merely taking one step at a time.

Ideas: “And so,” Gore Vidal wrote, “from one sentence came the next sentence. Then you weave the sentences together, and the sentences have their own kinetic energy. It’s like Baron Frankenstein’s electrical machine; suddenly the clay monster of language gets filled with life and sits up…”

Craft: “There are techniques and skills to be learned for writing as in any other profession or trade,” said Louis L’Amour. These skills and techniques, learned, flesh out the other four principles and provide the would-be writer the means to eliminate “would-be” and become a writer.

In this book I have discussed the quality I believe necessary for the new or aspiring writer to find success through the printed page. t

Charles Sasser’s book Magic Steps to Writing Success is an original publication of AWOC.COM, P.O. Box 2819, Denton, TX 76202 and can be ordered through them.

CRITIQUE SESSIONS

BY JORY SHERMAN

In August, NETWO will sponsor two critique sessions. Award-winning author Jory Sherman, who has published over 300 books and over 500 short stories, will critique pieces read by the authors. The sessions will be held August 6 and August 27 in the Winnsboro Center for the Arts (corner of Highway 11 and Market Street) from 7:00 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. Five writers will be critiqued each night. Those five will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. To submit your name for a critique, you must send an e-mail to NETWO, through its website, stating your name, and the name of the piece you will read. The selection can be a short story, a chapter of a book, or a short essay. The reading of the piece should be no more than seven minutes, leaving time for the constructive criticism by Jory. If more than five people submit entries for the August 6 session, they will be carried over to the August 27 session. Submission of entries is not restricted to NETWO members. Submitters are asked to have prepared the piece and read it before coming to these sessions, so that the read will present the selection at its best.

Other writers are encouraged to come and listen to the critiques. There is much to be learned when an experienced and talented author makes constructive criticism of a piece of writing. While NETWO is sponsoring these sessions, attendance is open to all writers whether or not associated with another group. There is no charge for these sessions.

If there are any questions, please include them in an e-mail to NETWO at www.netwo.org. ?

The 6^th Annual Gival Press

Short Story Award

Deadline: August 8, 2009 (postmarked)

Guidelines: Submissions of a previously unpublished short story must be approxi-mately 5,000 to 15,000 words of high literary quality, typed, double-spaced on one side of the paper only, with word count in the upper left hand side of the first page, along with the title. The author’s name should not appear on the numbered pages of the ms which should be clipped together. Author should keep a copy as it will not be returned.

Author Identification: Submit name, address, telephone number, email address on a separate page, along with the title of the short story submitted.

A short bio should also be included.

Reading fee: $25.00 by check or money order for each short story submitted. Payable to Gival Press, LLC.

Mail to: Robert L. Giron, Editor

Gival Press Short Story Award

Gival Press, LLC

P. O. Box 3812

Arlington, VA 22203

Prize: $1,000 and the winning story will be

published on the Gival Press website and in

a future anthology of short stories. ?