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The Official Propaganda Organ of the Cincinnati Writers Project Mary Fitzpatrick YOU ARE INVITED TO THE CWP MEMBERS PARTY ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9TH FROM 4 TO 6 P.M. AT ARNOLD'S BAR & GRILL, 210 E. EIGHTH ST., DOWNTOWN CINCINNATI. Many, many thanks and a big gold star next to her name to Tonya Mitchell for organizing. (Tonya won the Wednesday night critique group's summer mini writing challenge - you'll be hearing more about her in the future). Arnold's does not have a problem with us selling books at the party, so we will have copies of the last anthology on sale, and if you have a book or chapbook available let me know and we can see about giving you a table corner. October is dues month. You can mail your dues to the CWP P.O. Box, bring them to your critique group meeting or pay at the party. Lastly, something to think about for the future. In the past CWP has invited folks who could provide expert background to fiction writers to come and talk to the group. I'd like to set up a few "ask the expert" nights for 2011. If you have a friend, acquaintance, or family member who has an interesting profession, PI, CSI tech, doctor, nurse, ballet dancer, psychic, TV reporter, Pop star, rocket scientist, fighter pilot, etc... (You see where I am going here) who you think would be willing to talk to a group of writers and withstand a little Q & A about their profession in exchange for dinner at Lenhardt's, let me know.
by Ryck Neube Writers, poets, and perverts--I know the subsets intersect among our membership--the CWP is run by volunteers like me. A cyber-genius could spend the time searching you down when you change your e-address. I ain't that bright. And I am a writer whose own work gets priority over his CWP work. Rough Draft costs you nothing. I'll come back to that point later. RD costs nothing, but squared, haven't you found something educational and/or interesting in it? Don't you want to stay on the mailing list? We are trying to give you consumer information about workshops, columns to improve your writing, and brags about people you know. Isn't that worth a little effort from your end? The least you can do is send me your new e-mail address when you change it. Is that too much to ask from your lazy ass? Rneube@juno.com. Maybe you're bright enough to realize how hard we are working for you. So maybe you are thinking, whoa, this is a resource I can use to sell my work. So maybe you are noble enough to say, hey this is something I can do to help others with my knowledge. When you attend a writers' conference or workshop, write an article. Send it to us. It's a writing credit. New York editors don't check. I used to claim my letters to the Lexington Herald as writing credits. You don't have to be Pollyanna. Some of these conferences and workshops suck. Tell us, warn us not to waste our money. Will those friendly people who organized the suck event ever track you down? Not likely. Here's the plea. The CWP wants to do more. We want to do readings, workshops, so many wonderful things. But it's all about the Benjamins. Your dues cover the wonderful membership meeting--this year at Arnold's on Saturday, 9 October, between four and six. At the moment, this is the only time all the CWP-ers can get together. We can do better. But we need your dues. The $25 we ask doesn't even cover a decent meal. Once a frigging year. (The editor is covering my beeping mo-beeping obscenities.) We cannot make a bad writer good, but we make every story and chapter and poem to go through our critique groups better. We are a demimonde who helps. Let us help more. Help us. . . Please. Marcia Eckstein, Editor-at-Home We kept looking for a sign. Will said he'd be damned if he'd let a dog be put down just because he'd become inconvenient. So we waited. Maybe we'd been a little spoiled? Thor died peacefully in my arms. Ellie crawled under a bush and never moved again. The oncology vet made the decision for us on Doug. Did we really have to make this one by ourselves? Come on, Hunt, just one little piece of conclusive evidence. An easygoing, gentle spirit, Hunt was happy as long as meals arrived on time and the sun rose each morning. Toward the end, his legs mutinied and he lost the ability to go for the short evening walk, which was huge because that walk includes the opportunity to check in on neighbor dogs and soak up affection from their humans. Once he turned that corner, there were more bad days than good. Finally, we called the vet. On my way to work that morning, as I turned onto the I-275 ramp, an enormous rainbow arced across the expressway. I called Will and told him, "The Rainbow Bridge is here. Tell Hunter to hop on." I had always thought the concept of the Rainbow Bridge was corny. Shows you how little I know. When the vet arrived in the evening we were at peace with our decision. We buried him in back with the other hounds and one hapless coyote who had snooped too close to the pack. The red railroad lantern burned all night. Hunter was quiet goodness wherever he went, a friend to all species, except rabbits and squirrels. Because we're queer for nicknames, we called him Sarge, Mr. Fezziwigg, Roo, Big Guy. But he was always just Hunt.
By Mary Fitzpatrick When I first started to write I thought that you had to write short stories before you could write a novel, a common misguided supposition. From the outside looking in, short fiction seems to be the logical first step. After all, if you walk before you run and if you want to run a marathon you start out with shorter runs. Why shouldn't fiction be the same? I should have known better. As a science educator I talk all the time about the dangers of using a theory developed for one field to shape thinking someplace else. Sometimes it works, but more often despite superficial similarities things don't match up. So, as a newbie writer I spent a couple of years trying to write short stories. I was never happy with them, they didn't have the punch I wanted and usually felt both meandering and incomplete. There seemed to be some sort of trick structuring a good short story that I just couldn't figure out. Then I did the speculative fiction genre writing workshop sponsored by Context, the excellent literature and writing based science fiction convention in Columbus, Ohio. Back then they ran a weekend writing workshop instead of the series of mini workshops they now offer. I had to submit a short story to get into the workshop. I knew the story submitted for entry, while the best I had written to date, had serious flaws so I was thrilled to get in. It was a great learning experience, on more than one level, but mostly because after talking with me about my story, Charles Finlay, the writer who was running the workshop said, something along the lines of "Why are you wasting time writing short stories, you need to be working on a novel. It's a much better fit for your style and the sort of stories you are trying to tell." It was like a lightning bolt between the eyes. Until then, I hadn't seriously thought about trying to write a novel. Having a respected writing teacher who was also a successful writer not just give me permission to try but to basically tell me to stop wasting time with short fiction was very liberating. Flash forward to the present. I've started three novels, which have all worked themselves out to between 32k and 39K words, novella length, my natural story telling length. But, each one has been a learning experience. I've learned about beats and pacing and I have great hopes that my current WIP will make it to 80K. Between that and the time spent doing critiques with the Wednesday night group I also think that I have a better understanding of what makes a short story work, although I still think good short stories have brains that work very differently than mine, at least when it comes to thinking of how to put together a piece of fiction. This summer at InConjunction in Indy (Yes, another SF Con. I don't have a Starfleet uniform in my closet, or a storm trooper armor kit, but I'm a geek and not ashamed of it), one of the panels was novels -vs- short stories. There were half a dozen writers on the panel. Some had only done novels, some only short fiction, some both. It was very interesting to hear them talk about why they picked the medium they did and it got me thinking. When I joined CWP it seemed that everyone in the fiction group was writing short stories, now it seems that everyone is working on novels. I'm curious about why that is. It may just be a practical change, there are fewer short fiction markets, although podcasts and e-readers are changing that dynamic. I'm curious to know why folks write what they do.
By Ryck Neube A conference has presentations and panels from authors, editors, and agents. Workshops offer the same panels, but the brunt of the experience is working on your manuscript in a critique group. In the former, the secondary goal is to get positive face time with the professionals. That does not mean you stalk them and strike up conversations at the urinal. Instead, try the hotel bar. The manuscript you circulate at a workshop should be your best work, polished as best you can, not something you dashed off the night before the deadline. Bruce Sterling made his first professional sale because he impressed an editor teaching a workshop. The editor bought the story right on the spot. Before you spend money, always give a workshop or conference a good google. Learn about the careers of the teaching writers and editors. If all the authors are literary, it won't help you write about vampires. Are the guest agents people who might be useful to you? For instance, if you are writing a young adult fantasy and the agent only handles mystery writers, it's not going to help. Beware of instructors and editors who haven't been published or worked in field for years; there’s a whole class of workshop authors who ride the circuit for profit after they've blown their own careers. One giveaway is how they will list not their work, but the other workshops and schools where they have taught. They are witty, practiced speakers capable of delivering crap with authority. Entertaining maybe, but helpful? Listen to everything, but believe nothing. Listen to your gut and common sense before you commit to a piece of writerly advice. There's a lot of nonsense being preached in the most convincing fashion. When you attend a conference, always select a panel or two outside your own genre. You'll be surprised what you can learn. I picked up some splendid research tips from a panel given by a posse of western writers. Many SF, romance, and mystery conventions offer panels and even mini-workshops for tyro writers. If you have a finished novel, you might consider the Maui Writers Conference each September. Although it is expensive, there is seldom a larger assembly of agents and editors under one roof. One vital trick here is to prepare yourself a smooth log line--i.e., be able to describe your novel’s plot in one snappy sentence. Nothing impresses an agent more. If you write SF or fantasy, the Clarion workshop is the yardstick. It has produced more published authors than any workshop in the US. However, it is an expensive and brutal experience. Some of its teachers brag that half the people who attend will never write again. Agentquery.com has a killer list of conferences and workshops. To sum up--be a smart consumer. Your wallet will thank you.
Murmurs and asides overheard at Wednesday night's critique group: Question: Are any of you staying long enough for me to order dessert? Answer #1: If you order, we'll stay. Answer #2: Does this involve chocolate? [Site Map] [Latest News] [History of CWP] [Writing Group Protocol] [Rough Draft] [Our Mission] [Officers] [Who's Published] [Join CWP] [Critique Groups] [Opportunities] [Writing Tips] [Links] Yep, we're under construction. But give us a break. We're writers not web monkeys. Stop back, or shoot us an email if you're interested in learning more. Last updated by Tgroh, October 12, 2011 |
