Today, I Will Post Something Sane and Useful

I looked back on my posts since the start of the year and have discovered that I haven't posted a #fridayflash story since before Christmas  *hangs head in shame*  I also noticed a disturbing trend away from writerly topics. Recent posts have varied from the mundane (the weather and snow shovelling) to the bizarre (athletic supporters and flower bearing hamsters). I have also delved into the world of culinary pursuits, with posts about haggis and soylent green (note- tastes like chicken) and even the a post about my son's artistic endeavours that always seem a tad....er, phallic.

I thought it high time to get on track with a writerly topic...especially since we are attending the annual 'cheese cake' party this weekend and I'll HAVE to post about THAT.

The surviving members of our writing group recently attended a 'one-of' writing class at the university. It was called 'Writer's Bootcamp' and was taught by local author Chad Pelley. There was a ton of information to take in regarding publishing, agents, self-publishing, local contests and a lot of writing tips. I'm sure that Chad wouldn't mind if I paraphrased a bit from his page on getting published from "The Slushpile".

The first thing to know about unsolicited submissions to publishers: No publisher will read your full manuscript right off the bat. They don't have the time.

As a rule, what they want from you at first is a one-page cover letter about you (as a writer, NOT where you live and how many children you have, but your writing credits, etc), a brief summary on your book, and a ten-to-fifteen page sample from your manuscript. If they like this, they'll request the full manuscript.

Despite the nasty name, people DO get published from a slushpile. Many people. There are plenty of examples of wildly successful books having been plucked from the masses. This can't be stressed enough:
your submission package is more important than your manuscript. You get one chance to impress the reader into wanting to read you manuscript.*  Don't get lazy about the cover letter your book will speak for itself. Make the book summary an engaging read. The publishers who do accept submissions get hundreds of submissions every year, but, can only publish 10-20 books a year. The grim reality is that less than 10% of what get submitted to a publisher gets published.

The ultimate goal of a query letter to a publisher (or agent) is to get them to ask for you book.

Sound like a writer and keep focused and convincing.

* As a side note-- I had another night school instructor who had worked for a publisher reading submissions from the slushpile. How HE decided if a manuscript submission went on? He would flip through the pages looking for dialogue. If care was given to ensuring crisp, engaging dialogue then the same care was likely given to the rest of the book and it would be given further consideration. Something to think about.


All sounds like good advise to me. Now I've just gotta write the damn book. I'll be back this weekend with highlights from the cheesecake party. I know...it's not quite the same as being there. I'd send you all a piece through the mail, but those darn posties would probably sniff out the sample and it would be deemed 'undeliverable'. Do not fear. I'll be getting back to my usual silly posts. Topics being considered for the near future are--

• leather fashions for chinchillas
• Is alcohol REALLY a good sleep medicine?
• care and cleaning of your winter fez
• Daily living with guidance from Tarot cards
• fine dining in the Newfoundland out ports

A Little Malaise With That

I blinked, and then discovered a week had past. I've heard time passes faster the older we get, as if on some sort of a logarithmic curve. You know, one of those ghastly formulas that you've tried to forget about since school.

I've been searching for the proper word to describe the lethargy or apathy I'm feeling at the moment...decrepitude, angst, disquiet...none seem to fit and all are found in the online Thesaurus.com under a search of the word 'malaise'. For the moment I'll just refer to myself as a lazy sloth distracted.


ma·laise 

–noun
1. a condition of general bodily weakness or discomfort, often marking the onset of a disease.
2. a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness, lethargy, or discomfort.



Number one has some merit as V has been run down with the cold for about 10 days. I don't have the runny nose or headache (yet) but I did cough once or twice this morning. Though a drink of water cleared that up, so perhaps it was just a spider or some such thing stuck in my throat. I was at the doctor's office on Tuesday for recent blood test results. He isn't pushing the the pills (yet) to help lower my cholesterol but the day is close at hand. Speaking of hand, I'm glad I wasn't threatened with the 'rubber glove' treatment either.


Number two also has merit. I'm feeling a bit of discomfort from basketball on Tuesday night with the geezers. The change of evening (Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada) threw us and only four people showed up. So it was 2 vs. 2 for an hour. That's a lot of running and falling down stopping and those 58-63 year old men put me to shame. Again. Perhaps that has played on my psyche.

I'm feeling somewhat unfocused in my writing. There's no hope of a #fridayflash happening again this week. And the well of ideas for blog posts has seemed to have dried up. I have a story half-complete that I would like to submit to this year's Arts & Letters Awards that is held each year by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. This must be submitted by the end of November to be eligible. I'm pushing now to get this done by next week's writer's group meeting to get some feedback from the group. I can hear the whip cracking. For a long time I have had two different ideas for more 'long term' projects and I have set up files for these. As ideas pop into my head I jot them down on paper and toss them into the appropriate file. In the back of my mind I'm thinking that I may have to set aside short stories and perhaps even blogging for a while to devote some serious time to one of these projects. We'll see...in the meantime, I hope this malaise or melancholy or j'en sais pas will pass and things get 'back to normal'. I can picture everyone reading this saying to themselves, "Normal? What the hell is that?" During my search of the word 'malaise' I ran across a website (there are actually a lot of similar sites) that sells malaise traps and stuff to put in them (pictured). I'd give that a shot, but I don't want to spend 174 British Pounds for the trap and associated gear and the wind here would just blow it away. I'll just use my trusty fly swatter for now...

Rehash~What's Old is New?

I'm a bit pressed for time today (and honestly, my brain is really tired) so I think I will 'rehash' something from the Land's Edge archives from last year. There were a few comments in the last post about the night time harbour photo from Signal Hill in downtown St. John's. Those of you who have been following this blog since last fall or so may recall that I posted a few photos taken by a 'Harbour Cam' mounted on top of The Rooms, the provincial museum that sits up the hill from the harbour.

This is another view of the harbour, taken this morning by that camera, looking in a northeasterly direction. I have included a second photo from the camera taken about this time last year. It's the one with the cruise ship. You can see Signal Hill to the left of the 'narrows', the small opening into the harbour. If you look closely (or if you are of my vintage...put on your glasses) you can see Cabot Tower sitting on top of Signal Hill. It is best know for being the site where Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic wireless message from Cornwall, England in 1901.

You can link to the Harbour Cam at the CBC (Newfoundland) web site here for a view updated every five minutes. Go to the 'features' section in the middle and then the bottom right block is the link. I understand that only Canadian locations can view video clips on the CBC site, hopefully this does not apply to the Harbour Cam. Let me know if it's a problem to access it (though there's nothing I can do about it).

More rehash...this blog was meant as a means to connect with other writers in order to share information, and perhaps share a few laughs. I think I have gotten away from the writing basics, so I return to the class notes and present fine advice from the experts. One hand-out was from Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay by Lederer & Dowis and offered up some useful points.

• Cut the Verbal Clutter. Train yourself to write with fewer words. Your readers will love you for it. If you can make twenty-five words do the work of fifty, you have reduced by half the amount of material the reader must assimilate to get the intended message.


• Keep it Simple. Contrary to what some people seem to believe, simple writing is not the product of simple minds. A simple, unpretentious style has both grace and power. By not calling attention to itself it allows the reader to focus on the message.


• Don't Overstuff Your Sentences. As a general rule, a sentence should have no more than one main idea. We emphasize general because this rule, like so many others, is violated by some good writers.


• Train the Ear. Writing is at once a visual and aural medium. Although not all writing is intended to be read aloud, most good writing can be read aloud with no detrimental effect. It is important, therefore, for anyone who wants to write well to train the ear to recognize the good and bad aural qualities.
  
• Help the Reader. An often-repeated axiom is that communication is a two-way street. But clear communication is the responsibility of the writer, not the reader. The writer must therefore give the reader all possible help in understanding what is written.
  
• Watch Your Language. Words mean things. You can no more write well without using words well than a composer can create a symphony without understanding rhythm and harmony. Good writers know that connotations are often more important than definitions, and that the true meaning of a word or phrase is the effect it has on readers.
  
• Set Your Work in Concrete. If the purpose of writing is to convey ideas and information, then unnecessary or unintended abstraction defeats the purpose. The more concrete the writing, the more precise the message it conveys.

I know, pretty dry stuff...yet useful all the same. The first two, I think, are especially handy in the flash fiction arena where brevity is important.

The WIP is Slain, Eh?

It was a balmy 16 degrees C (62 degrees F for those of you who won't convert) on the Rock today. A mere 2 degrees away from my change in wardrobe from parka and snow pants to muscle shirts, Speedos and thongs (that would be the floppy shoe). It seemed very nice, viewing the outdoors from my fishbowl. At least the dog seemed to enjoy it. Please refer to attached photo demonstrating his unbridled glee. Or perhaps it was just gas.

After the mandatory 8.5 hours of work, I switched from my drafting pajamas to my velvet robe and fez I wear during my writing hell bliss. I went through the second draft of my first-person story bitter rant stunning essay entitled Canada and America: The Great Divide. It is done. Fin. Laid to rest.

This is my entry to Michael J. Solender for his upcoming 'All-Canadian' week at his blog Not From Here, Are You? Even as we speak, it is deftly navigating the vacuum of cyberspace much as Sidney Crosby has navigated the ice surface of Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.

The Time for Writing is...?

All writers have a different time of day they consider to be their most productive. For me, the weekdays are hectic between the F/T work and driving the boy from here to there. I have expanded my basketball torture experience to two nights a week with the other geezers. This has the approval of my doctor, as I received a verbal spanking on Friday for my cholesterol shooting up to high levels.

I focus best early in the morning and, if I can drag my lazy butt out of bed early before others get up, I can usually make progress on a WIP then. I outlined another flash story when I waited for an hour at my son's swimming lesson yesterday morning. The observation area over the pool is fairly busy with waiting parents, so I'm surprised I can be productive there. Perhaps the clear, chlorinated water has a hypnotic, focusing affect on me...

Sunday mornings are good as I can work in my office and listen to the Sunday morning radio show "Homebrew" that focuses on local Celtic/Folk music. It's a mix of traditional Newfoundland songs, many of which show their Irish/Scottish origins. If you are at all interested in listening to this, you can hear the broadcast online on Sundays 9am until 1pm our time. My mental math tells me that is 12:30pm until 4:30pm GMT for the Brits, or 7:30am until 11:30am for the North Americans in the Eastern Time Zone. Sorry, my mental math isn't that good to work out the Australian time. I'm sure that you folks can do the math.

The radio station is normally a "classic rock" station, but converts to tradition music only on Sunday mornings. You can find 97.5 K-Rock here. Once at their web site, click on the "Listen Live" button in the top right corner.

So what works for you? What time of day is good writing time? Music or silence? What sort of music do you work to?...enquiring minds want to know.

The Mind of a Writer

I notice that on days when I haven't a clue what to post, I dredge up the old class notes for pearls of wisdom from some mind far greater than my own. Tonight is no exception. I guess that the act of re-reading this and typing it out will help me remember it better. Perhaps it will be of some benefit to one or you. The following passage is from Oakley Hall- The Art and Craft of Novel Writing.

Henry James said that a writer must be one upon whom nothing is lost. What writers must not lose are, at the heart of it, vivid and revealing details. A writer must be an observer, and what he observes, and collects, are the details that show, that reveal, that imply, that specify, that build character and forward the story. He finds details in the life around him-a scene observed in the Safeway or the laundromat, a conversation overheard on the bus, for example, as well as in the books he reads. Someone said that a novelist's mind is a garbage pit of odd information. It is also a storehouse of detail. Contemplating a scene that he must bring to life in fiction, he selects the details that will best serve his purpose, he contemplates the best means by which to employ them, and he renders the details by the use of action, by the employment of sensory impressions, and by the means of point of view.

Beginnings

I have no preconceived idea where this blog is going, or if I will even have the time to keep it up (the blog) on a regular basis. I am hoping to connect with other novice writers to share ideas on how to get the job done.