Writing
News for the Sunshine State & the Solar System
http://web.fccj.org/~hdenson/NFW/ws-0503.htm
(May 2003)
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Festival
to feature nuts-and-bolts advice
at
17th annual conference
Novelists,
poets, freelancers, nonfiction writers, editors, and agents will give nuts-and-bolts
advice atthe 17th annual Florida
First Coast WritersFestivalat
the Sea Turtle Inn at Atlantic Beach on May 15 to May 17.Speakers
will include the following:
NOVELISTS:
Laura Parker Castoro,S. V. Date,Lenore
Hart, Ad Hurdler, Cassandra King, Doug Marlette, Scott Morris, David Poyer,
Paul Sinor (also screenwriter), Les Standiford, Gerhardt Thamm
FREELANCERS
AND NON-FICTION WRITERS:Bill Belleville,
Peter Bowerman, Steve Brown (also former FBI agent), psychologist Gary
Buffone, TV reporter/writer Marisa Carbone,John
Finotti, Elizabeth Furdell, Allison Glock, Amanda Lynch
MEMOIRISTS:Ann
Hyman (also a journalist) and Judy Stough
POETS:Eddie
Bell and Ray McNiece
CARTOONIST:"Kudzu"
creator Doug Marlette
AGENTS:Cricket
Pechstein and Jacky Sach
EDITOR:Kathy
Pories of Algonquin Books
To
take advantage of the early bird rate, interested persons should register
early by going to the Festival s website at http://web.fccj.edu/wf or calling
904.997.2669.
The
winners of the Festival contests will also be announced at the conference:the
novel contest (sponsored by the North Florida Writers), the Page Edwards
Short Fiction contest, the Douglas Freels poetry contest, and the Robert
Grimes "Good Earth" poetry contest.
Scriptwriter-actor
to speak to NFW
about
marketing stories to Hollywood
Aspiring
script writers may wish to attend the May 10 meeting of the North Florida
Writers, when award-winning writer-actor John Boles will give tips to those
who want a slice of the Hollywood pie.
His
talk will be at 2 p.m. Saturday in F128B of FCCJ's Kent Campus. Guests
are welcome to attend.
He
will also explain available options to authors who want to market their
work to the film and television industry.
Boles
has been a screenwriter, producer, director, Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
actor, and screen writing instructor.
He
is an award-winning writer, producer, director, editor, and actor with
more than twenty years in the entertainment industry. He was assistant
director for Columbia Pictures TV's ABC network popular prime time series
Hart
to Hart, which starred Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers.
He
also orchestrated the much-heralded
re-sign-on of KTXH with the help of film director, Peter Bogdanovich and
actors John Ritter and Colleen Camp.
He
has appeared in a number of TV commercials, short films, TV series, and
a TNT movie titled Orpheus Descending, which was based on a play
by Tennessee Williams and starred Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave.
THE
WRONG STUFF
America's
Victory
by David W. Shaw:
Each
of the dozens of countries exhibiting their examples of art,science, and
technology were allotted their own space in the Crystal Palace.
and
They
laid in their bunks and listened to the tide gurgle past the hull inches
from their ears, and to the occasional tap of the halyards on the foremast
in the slight breeze coming through the hatch.
In
the first sentence, EACH is the subject, so the verb should be WAS allotted.In
the second sentence, of course, the crew LAY in their bunks.
Festival
at Sea features Chocolate Ship
Festival
at Sea has selected Marissa Monteilh's The Chocolate Ship: A Novel,
for the book talk portion of a seven-day Caribbean Cruise, July 5-12, 2003.
This
"groove-ship cruise," which is sponsored by African-American owned Blue
World Travel, is expected to attract a sold-out crowd of more than 2,500
cruisers, including book club members who will receive a special, $100
discount.
The
headliner will be comedian-actor Sinbad, with appearances also by the Ohio
Players, comedian Damon Williams, and other acts to be announced later.
The
Festival at Sea's full-ship charter is the first major cruise marketed
specifically to African-Americans.
This
summer's cruise departs Port Canaveral near Orlando July 5, with stops
in Ocho Rios, Grand Cayman, Belize City and Cozumel.
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Book
reviewer: not a critic
By G.
WILLIAM GRAY
My
first published book review was more than a half century ago when I was
a
cub reporter in Birmingham and it was a hesitant 60 words on a short story
collection. Six years ago, after I had written three historical pieces
for the Sunday Commentary section of the Tampa Tribune,
its editorial page editor, Ed Roberts, told me he was going to expand
the Sunday book review pages and asked if I wanted to be a reviewer. I
met with him and Diane Egner, Tribune book editor, to see
what my guidelines would be.
"Don't
ever say a book 'is a good read,'" said Ed, a stylish writer who hates
clichés. Diane suggested, "If a book is really bad, don't attack
it.Just don't review it."
Since
that meeting I've written about 250 reviews for the Tribune. Perhaps
100 were 750 to 1,000 words in length; the rest were capsule reviews of
100 words.
I
think of myself as a book reviewer
not a critic. My
academic background was journalism, not literature. After a long career
of writing--reporter, advertising and mainly public relations--I'm confident
about the quality of writing, so I often comment on style in a review.
The
book editor has never dictated what I will read. I visit her office, awed
by a dozen shelves of new books. On the floor are boxes fresh from publishers
spilling with still more books. Then I settle in, thumbing through volumes
and I'm happy in this milieu. I take along a canvas boat bag and drop in
hardbacks that interest me, usually six to ten books, then make a list
of my selections for Diane.Occasionally
she will ask if I will read a book that is getting a favorable publicity
buzz and needs a timely review.
The
past couple of years I've leaned to non-fiction books-- memoirs, biographies,
political analysis and the like. It's not a conscious decision; they just
seem to end up in my book bag. I never
review books by pop
authors, such as John Grisham, Danielle Steel and Stephen King. Formula
writing bores me and I'm probably wrong, but I imagine rows of writers
grinding out these books in machine precision like Japanese assembly-line
paintings.
In
reading my book, I make notations as I go, marking nice phrases and other
data I may want to use. I have access to an author but I seldom call unless
there is a Florida angle to exploit. I give the lead a lot of thought;
I want it to be provocative and hook the reader. It's akin to writing a
newspaper feature story. For example, my review on Dear Scott, Dearest
Zelda began:
"No
couple continually haunts our literature like Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.
They keep stumbling drunkenly out of 20th-century anthologies.
And they will inexplicably appear--she in a shimmering beaded dress, he
in pale and rumpled linen suit-- whenever anyone writes about the decadence
of the expatriates in France in the 1920s. Their poignant life is enough
to break your heart. Lord knows, it broke the Fitzgeralds' hearts and spirits.
They were both dead before they were 50 years old."
It's
obvious in many of the books I read that keen editors and fact-checkers
are no longer around in the publishing process. A casualty of today's economics,
I suppose. A book of fiction placed during the first World War, had the
protagonists listening each evening to the war news on the radio. A warning
bell went off in my mind and I remembered (from journalism classes at the
University
of Alabama) there were no radio broadcasts until 1920- two years after
the war ended. I gave the author a small razz berry in my review.
Fortunately
for me, there are editors at the Tribune that read my copy.
The book editor and her colleague, Nancy Gordon, read my initial review.
Later a page proof is routed to all the editorial writers. A tough audience.
Still,
my errors occasionally pop up. In a long review on Eisenhower
I had his West Point class incorrect. The Monday after the review ran,
there were several phone calls to the book editor and a correction was
run to satisfy all the military retirees in the Tampa Bay area.
Finally,
I have many new friends because of the reviews. One is Marie Rudisill,
Truman Capote's aunt. She wrote a book about Capote and I discovered she
lived in nearby Hudson, Florida. I went to see her, got quotes for my review,
and, when she learned I grew up in Alabama, too, we became buddies. Now
she calls and tells me about all the activities going on in her 93-year-old
life such as flying to California to be on the Jay Leno show.
Hey,
I know 30-year-old authors that aren't half as much fun. ©
Bill
Gray was a journalism major at the University of Alabama and began his
career as a reporter in Birmingham with Scripps-Howard newspapers. He moved
to Tampa and an advertising agency in 1955. He later founded his own public
relations firm that was bought by Hill & Knowlton, a worldwide PR firm,
for its entry into Florida. He ran the H&K Florida office for many
years. He still does some consulting and is writing a novel.
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FROM
A WRITER'S QUILL
"Thank
you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."--
Moses Hadas
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Writers
born in May
1--Joseph
Addison (1672), Joseph Heller (1923), Terry Southern (1924), and Bobbie
Ann Masons (1940); 3--Niccolò Machiavelli (1469) and William Inge
(1913); 4--Lincoln Kirstein (1907), Heloise (1919), and Graham Swift (1949);
5--Karl
Marx (1828), Robert Browning (1812), Thomas Edward Brown (1830), Nellie
Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) (1867), and Richard Eberhart (1904); 6--Sigmund
Freud (1856), Orson Welles (1915); 7--Dániel Berzsenyi (1776), José
Valentim Fialho de Almeida (1857), Archibald MacLeish (1892), Ruth Prawer
Jhabvala (1927), Angela Carter (1940), and Peter Carey (1943); 8--Henry
Baker (1698), Thomas B. Costain (1885), Gary Snyder (1930), and Thomas
Pynchon (1937); 9--James M. Barrie (1860) and Austin Clarke (1896);
10--Ivan
Cankar (1876); 11--Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855), Irving Berlin (1888), and
Stanley Elkin (1930); 12--Andrei Voznesensky (1933); 13--Daphne DuMaurier
(1907), Bruce Chatwin (1940), Armistead Maupin (1944); 14--Sir Hall Caine
(1853) and George Lucas (1944);
15--Melchiorre
Cesarotti (1730), L. Frank Baum (1856), Edwin Muir (1887), Katherine Anne
Porter (1890), and Max Frisch (1911); 16--Randall Jarrell (1914) and Adrienne
Rich (1929); 17--Henri Barbusse (1873); 19--Lorraine Hansberry (1930);
20--Honoré
de Balzac (1799) and Sigrid Undset (1882); 21--Alexander Pope (1688) and
Robert Creeley (1926); 22--Arthur Conan Doyle (1859) and Peter Mathiessen
(1927); 23--John Bartram (1699) and Theodore Roethke (1907); 24--William
Trevor (1928) and Bob Dylan (1941);
25--John
Stuart Mill (1713), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803), Jocob Christoph Burckhardt
(1818), Jean Richard Bloch (1884), Robert Ludlum (1927), John Gregory Dunne
(1932), and Raymond Carver (1938); 27--Arnold Bennett (1867), Max Brod
(1884), Dashiell Hammett (1894), John Cheever (1912), Herman Wouk (1915),
Tony Hillerman (1925), John Barth (1930), Harlan Ellison (1934); 28--Ian
Fleming (1908), Patrick White (1912), and Walker Percy (1916); 29--Patrick
Henry (1736), G. K. Chesterton (1874), Max Brand (1892), and André
Brink (1935);
30--Alfred
Austin (1835), Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901), and Countee Cullen (1903);
31--Georg Herwegh (1817), Walt Whitman (1819) and Norman Vincent Peale
(1898).
"WE
ASPIRE TO CREATE WITH WORDS."
The Write
Staff:
JoAnn Harter
Murray, President
(JoAnnHarter@aol.com)
Carrol Wolverton,
Vice President
(carrolwolve@hotmail.com)
Nate Tolar,
Secretary
Howard Denson,
Treasurer and newsletter editor (hd3nson@aol.com)
Jean Mayo,
Membership chair.(jmayo13497@aol.com)
Joyce Davidson,
Public Relations (JoyceWDavidson@aol.com)
Doris Cass,
Hospitality
Presidents
Emeritus:
Frank
Green, Dan Murphy (dmurphy@media-mayhem.com), Howard Denson, Nate Tolar,
Joyce Davidson, Margaret Gloag (haggisgal@juno.com), Richard Levine (richie@rocketmail.com),
Bob Alexander
NEWSLETTER
ADDRESS:THE WRITE STUFF, FCCJ Kent,
Box 109, 3939 Roosevelt Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32205.
HOMEPAGE
EDITOR:Brian Hale (Astrodor@aol.com)
Submissions
to the newsletter should generally be about writing or publishing.If
possible, please submit mss. on IBM diskette in either WordPerfect, Microsoft
Word, or RFT format.We pay in copies
to the contributors, with modest compensation for postage and copying.We
pay $5 for pieces of 500 to 599 words; $6, 600+; $7, 700+ words. For cartoons
or art (in our print-version), we pay $5 each.Writers
and graphic artists retain all property rights in their work(s).
ISSN
No. 1084 6875
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CALENDAR
OF EVENTS
Meetings
of NFW are held on the second Saturday of the month at 2 p.m. on the Kent
Campus of Florida Community College of Jacksonville. We generally meet
in F128B (auditorium conference room).
You
may receive feedback from specific individuals by mailing the manuscript
and return postage to the above address. Be sure to allow time for the
manuscript to reach Kent.
Some
dates to remember:
Sat.,
May 10, 2 p.m., F128B: NFW Speaker:John
Boles of Jacksonville University, screenwriting
Sat.,
June 14, 2 p.m., F128B: NFW Speaker:Robert
Kline of St. Augustine
Sat.,
July 12, 2 p.m., F128B: NFW Speaker:Bill
Kerr of Jacksonville, novelist
Sat.,
Aug. 9, 2 p.m., F128B: NFW Speaker: Dan Murr
Sat.,
Sept. 13, 2 p.m., F128B: NFW Speaker:Charles
Feldstein of FCCJ South, poet
Past
speakers have included novelists Jack Hunter, David Poyer, Page Edwards,
Ruth Coe Chambers, William Kerr, Tom Lashley; poets, William Slaughter,
Mary Baron, Mary Sue Koeppel, Dorothy Fletcher, George Gilpatrick; columnists
Vic Smith, Tom Ivines, and Robert Blade; editors Buford Brinlee and Nan
Ramey; agent Debbie Fine; plus many others.
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MEMBERSHIP
IN THE NFW
If
you are writing a story or poem, you will need some expert feedback--the
sort that you will receive at a meeting of the North Florida Writers.
You
won't profit from automatic praise that a close friend or relative might
give or jealous criticism from others who may feel threatened by your writing.
The
NFW specializes in CONSTRUCTIVE feedback that will enable your manuscript
to stand on its own two feet and demand that it be accepted by an editor
or agent.Hence, you need the NFW.
The
North Florida Writers is a writer's best friend because we help members
to rid manuscripts of defects and to identify when a work is exciting and
captivating.
Membership
is $15 for students, $25 for individuals, and $40 for a family.(Make
out checks to WRITERS.)
Won't
you join today?
The
following is an application. Mail your check to WRITERS, Box 109, FCCJ
Kent, 3939 Roosevelt Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32205.
Name___________________________________________
St.
address_______________________________________
Apt.
No. ________________________________________
City
________________State _____ Zip ______________
E-mail
address: __________________________________
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HOW
DOES CRITIQUING WORK?
When
you attend a meeting of the North Florida Writers, you eventually discover
that NO ONE has ever died while his or her manuscript was being read and
critiqued.You may be ready to face
the ordeal yourself. . .or, reading this, you may wonder what exactly takes
place during a critiquing.
First,
you pitch your manuscript into a stack with others' works-in-progress.Then
one of the NFW members hands out each piece to volunteer readers, taking
care NOT to give you back your own manuscript to read.
Second,
as the reading begins, each author is instructed NOT to identify himself
or herself and especially NOT to explain or defend the work.The
writer may never have heard the piece read aloud by another's voice, so
the writer needs to focus on the sound of his or her sentences.
Third,
at the finish of each selection, the NFW members try to offer constructive
advice about how to make the story better.If
a section was confusing or boring, that information may be helpful to the
author.
The
NFW will listen to 10 pages (double-spaced) of prose (usually a short story
or a chapter).
UNHELPFUL
FEEDBACK:As you listen to a manuscript,
you may be tempted to say, "That's the stupidest piece I've ever heard."Alas,
you aren't being CONSTRUCTIVE.If
you simply do NOT like any, say, science-fiction, then you may not
have anything helpful to say.That
is all right.On the other hand,
if you think that a piece was going along okay and then fell apart, you
can help the author by saying, "I accepted the opening page, but, when
the singing buffalo was introduced somewhere on page 2, the piece lost
it for me."
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