December 2013 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter

 Welcome to the December issue of the Scribblers.  This month we have a portion of the newest progressive story, and a link to magazines seeking submissions.

953 Literary Mags Seek Submissions 

from Poets & Writers Magazine

For those of you looking for magazines who are looking for submissions, this is for you.

 

Wondering where to submit your work? Our Literary Magazines database lists 953 journals that accept submissions. Listings include detailed information about what, where, and when to submit work for consideration. 

All of the publications listed must meet our criteria for inclusion, including careful editing and an established track record. 

Among the newest additions are Looseleaf Tea, an online journal "dedicated to the vociferation of culture-driven art" and Room Magazine, a Canadian quarterly that publishes "original, thought-provoking works that reflect women's strength, sensuality, vulnerability, and wit."  Search the database here: http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines

 The Letter

a progressive story by the Scribblers members

Part 1: Alexis Faro

          Tears splatter over the lined paper I’ve rewritten 4 times, sitting alone in the quiet kitchen.  My body shivers despite being wrapped in a heavy, scratchy wool blanket; the absence of the radiator ticking painfully comes to mind as.  I need to remember to turn it back on before 2pm.  I sigh heavily, knowing this letter needs to go out before December, staring at the bag of donated foods I was allocated from the mission.  My heart collapses, like a boat taking on water, after each time I write Dear Santa.  All I need are a few toys, nothing much, just enough to assure my kids Santa doesn’t think badly of them.  They’re good, and the oldest is a better kid than I was at 18.  My tears keep damaging the paper, so softly it can be torn without being heard, like my heart.

          Last week the news reported that Congress is still deadlocked on funding the government, with only 2% of senators & representatives choosing to not receive pay.  It’s a cheap way for them to make headlines and look great, yet some idiots are still advocating that they deserve to be paid…the ones who are causing the problem.  This government shutdown is expected to continue another month, and I’ve been without WIC for 48 days, since it ran out of money on October 7^th.  I’m glad the President is fighting to fund the programs that help me, but is it really essential for him to have 15 staff taking care of him & his family (a reduction from the 90).  I don’t need to live that comfortably, just enough to run the heat when I want to or not panic at having the front door open when a chatty salesperson rings the bell.  There’s no way I can sustain another person, not if things keep going this way.  I still need to meet with that woman from the agency about my eligibility, if she ever gets back to work, but I’ve only got 19 days before the cutoff period.  I can’t even provide simple toys for my two kids as it is!

For 8 years straight I hid from my kids how much we struggled, how each week the government was paying most of their meals.  They don’t know the stress of the past year, the “relatives” who stayed to take care of them, or the money I owe everyone after that damn event in February.  And they never will, if I keep up this perfect act.  If I make it through Thanksgiving without having to explain why we’re not visiting family this year everything will be ok…right?

Part 2—Jamie Baker

          The two young men sitting on the steps of the career center were just visible through the wet, cold morning fog.  They both wore down jackets and knit caps, but the smaller of the two shivered as the cold from the concrete seeped through his insides.

          He was slapping a section of folded newspaper against his open palm.  “This article says there are jobs out there, in the fields yeah sure, but at least it’s warmer there.  And it says here a good picker can make $200 a day.”

          “I didn’t go to school for 12 years to be a farm laborer and live like an illegal alien.”

          “Hey, if we could make the kind of money this article talks about, we could buy a house trailer, like a Winnebago.  We wouldn’t have to stay in those shacks with the wetbacks or whatever.”

          “Richie, you’re talking about stoop labor.  We can do better than that.”

         

          “Can we? It might be stoop labor, but good money and warm weather could make it pretty tolerable.  And we don’t have families to take care of, everything we earn we could keep, save up a stake to start something better.”

          “I do have a family.  I can’t just leave my mother along with the rest of the kids.  Even if I did go away for a job, I’d still have to send most of my money back to them.”

Richie stood, shoved the paper into a back pocket and rocked restlessly from one foot to the other.

          “Christ, it’s cold out here.  I don’t think this place is going to open today.  We’re just wasting our time.”

          “My mom says they will open.  It’s a state office, not federal.  Some of the federal websites will be down, but the office will open.  I don’t care about the federal stuff anyway.  The local sites will have some seasonal stuff, Walmart or something, at least for Christmas.”

          “I think we’re wasting our time.  Even if the place opens, even if you get on at Walmart, what good is that?  $8 an hour for 5 weeks.  And then what?”                 

          “I don’t know, job training or something.  My mom says the government will offer some kind of new jobs program and I’ll be eligible.”

          “Tyler, you know what job the government will offer you?  The army, that’s what.  And really useful training you’ll get there, if you want to be an assassin or a terrorist.”

          “There’s other stuff, medical or security or computers.  Besides, I’m not going into the army.  I need to stay here and help my mom.”

          “This article says there haven’t been enough pickers for all the farms for the last 5 years.  We could get on anywhere, travel with the harvests and see some of the country.”

          “And how would we get out there, it’s 3000 miles away?”

          “Amtrack.  I’ve got enough saved for that and you probably do too.  If you don’t, I’ll lend it to you.  It would be an investment in our futures.”

          The noise of the door being unlocked behind them interrupted their conversation.    Tyler stood and turned toward the entrance.  He looked back, but Richie shook his head.

          “No,” he said, “do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got.  Not me, not this time.”

          Tyler watched his friend walk away.  He immediately felt lonely and he wanted to chase after Richie, to run with him to the credit union, empty their paltry accounts and go on an adventure.  Instead he turned, shrugged his way through the door and went to the counter to sign in. 

Part 3 John Matthews

   Barack Obama sat at his desk in the oval office. He was alone, sort of. All he wanted to do right now was to put his head on the desk and cradle it in his arms, like a school kid at nap time. Things had been rough. The shutdown was dragging on. He'd just seen a news story criticizing him for retaining 15 personal staffers at the White House while most of America had to be their own butlers, cooks, and chauffeurs. He had laid off almost 90 in a show of fiscal restraint. The ones who remained were in such precarious financial straits that he couldn't bear to let them go. And they weren't his personal servants, by any means. The White House couldn't be left to fall into disrepair so the world would look down on the US. The kitchen staff was to serve international guests who had to be treated properly to maintain the country's reputation. 

     Obamacare was underway although off to a shaky start with unclear and overloaded websites. But the laid off White House staffers had been signed up. He had made sure of that. He also made sure that Pelosi and Boehner knew that his Affordable Care Act was already doing its job making sure the unemployed didn't go without care. Pelosi said she still hadn't read all of the act so she probably didn't know about that provision.

     Even though the country's situation was not good, he didn't even have the luxury of being able to rest his head on his desk. He wasn't really alone. A hidden security camera was filming him and being monitored by a Secret Service agent. The President was being watched every second of his life, as were Michelle and the kids. Just the other day a Youtube video of Sasha jumping on her bed appeared on the internet. It could only have come from the security tape which was supposed to be destroyed daily. Probably some laid off Secret Service video technician trying to scrape up a few bucks for his own kids for Christmas.

     Yes, Christmas was coming, and with it one of the duties Michelle had roped him into. She had directed that some random bags of undeliverable mail addressed to Santa Claus be brought to the White House to be answered by staff people. Now there weren't even enough staffers to do it. Still the Obamas were fond of the idea and the President still asked that a few letters be brought to him personally to respond. After all, 99% of the correspondence that went out under his signature wasn't actually signed by him. So what was wrong with him actually signing Santa's name to a few letters?

     He picked a letter from the pile and slit it open. The Secret Service didn't like him opening unsolicited letters.   He did it anyway. It would have been good publicity, but there the Secret Service drew the line. They didn't want it made public that letters came to the Presidents hand without going through security.

     The letter was in sad shape. The envelope was wrinkled and smudged. The letter itself consisted of a page of tablet paper, the blue lines running from being wet. The paper had little crinkled places where it had been touched by droplets of...what? Probably water, or maybe tears from the tone of the letter, or something worse.

     The writer was not a kid, but an adult, a mother whose welfare payments had been curtailed by the shutdown. Her only income was the money her son brought home from a minimum wage job at Walmart. She knew she wasn't writing to Santa, but her desperation seemed to make her think her letter might fall into sympathetic hands. 

     There was a fund to provide a gift here and there to a deserving letter writer. It wasn't large, by government standards. It might have been large enough to solve most of this woman's problems. But it wasn't large enough to solve the problems of every hard luck letter writer.

     What to do when there wasn't enough money to solve everyone's problems? Was it fair to single out a few lucky ones, like lottery winners? And even if he did so, it couldn't be publicized. That would create a storm of resentment, and charges of running a discriminatory giveaway program not authorized by Congress.

     He decided to discuss it with Michelle and the kids at dinner. Tonight Malia was cooking vegetarian Sloppy Joes.

 

 And Finally...

We are always looking for articles and short stories to publish, as well as suggestions for the newsletter.  Please send any ideas, stories, etc. to colleen.  We'd love to see any contributions you'd like to make to The Scribblers.

If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, please email  colleen with the word 'unsubscribe' in the subject line and we will remove you from our mailing list.

November 2013 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter

 Welcome to the November issue of the Scribblers.  This being National Novel Writing month, we have a short piece on Nanowrimo, writing prompts, an article about a mystery writer with an unusual past by Jamie Baker, a few writing resources and an article about US Poet Laureate Billy Collins.

 

November is Nanowrimo Month

November is National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) which begins November first of each year.  As of this moment, Nanowrimo is upon us.  The goal of Nanowrimo is to write a novel, or at least 50,000 words, new and original, by the end of the month.  

Technically, fifty thousand words does not a novel make, but it is a very good start toward the 80 thousand to 220 thousand that comprise most novels..  So grab that pen or get in front of your keyboard and ignore the little voice that we all have whispering in our ears 'you can't do it, na, na, na, na, na', and give it your best try.

Several of our members, Laura (in California) for the first time, Jamie (in Chambersburg) for the second time, and I (in Lancaster) also for the second time, will be taking up the challenge.  

Best of luck to all who take part.  For encouragement and suggestions and downright nagging and a few laughs, go to nanowrimo.org to sign up and take advantage of all their resources.  It's free!

“Moider” She Wrote

  by Jamie Baker

In 1938, Juliet Hulme was born, daughter of British physicist, Dr. Henry Hulme.  Hulme moved his family several times to advance his career and in 1951 they moved to New Zealand.   Juliet was 13 years old, an impressionable young teenager who had spent several years isolated from her family recovering from tuberculosis.  

In New Zealand, Juliet met Pauline Parker, one year older than Juliet, who also suffered with health problems, having been born with osteomyelitis.  The girls became inseparable friends and over the next few years developed a rich fantasy life fueled by their imagined futures in Hollywood and peopled with famous actors and invented characters.

In 1954, Juliet’s parents decided the family should return to England.  The girls were frantic to remain together and they asked that Pauline by allowed to accompany the Hulme family.   Both sets of parents declined this request, a reflection of their growing concerns about the girls’ obsessive fantasy life. 

 

The girls devised a plan to kill Pauline’s sole parent, her mother, Honorah Rieper.   On June 22, 1954, during a walk in Victoria Park, the girls bludgeoned her to death with half a brick wrapped in a stocking.  Some reports claim that more than 24 blows were delivered to the mother’s face and head, others put the count closer to 40.  By some accounts, Juliet was only an accessory, but in others the 2 girls took turns with the brick that killed Pauline’s mother.

The girls were arrested the next day after police investigators read Pauline’s diary.  In the diary, Pauline gleefully described the “moider” plan as “brilliantly clever”, one that “we are both thrilled with”.  On her calendar, she marked June 22 as “The Day of the Happy Event”. 

Both girls were charged with the murder.  The trial was a sensation with speculations about the girls’ possible lesbianism and insanity.    In August of 1954 they were both convicted of murder; too young for the death penalty they were sentenced to be “detained at her majesty’s pleasure”.  They were sent to separate prisons were they each served 5 years and were then released and allowed to assume new identities.  

Fifty years later, the 1994 film, Heavenly Creatures, was released, a fictionalized account of the murder.  A few months later, the identity of Juliet Hulme was revealed.  This person is a well-known author who has written and published over 30 novels.  She specializes in 2 genres, historical murder mysteries and detective fiction.  Who is this famous person?

 November Writing Prompts

  Every month we try to provide you with two or three writing prompts to get you started on a story of your own.  Pick one, two or all of these prompts from Poets & Writers Magazine and write 500 to 1,000 words using the prompt/s as the foundation of your story.  Above all, have fun with it.

1.  Resist the temptation to build characters according to stereotypes. Character development must reflect the complexities of real people. Even Pure Evil buys his favorite niece a pony for her birthday. Learn to love your villains as people, and they will reward you as characters. Write a scene where the most despicable character in your fiction does something deeply touching and loving. Then send them on their evil way.

2.  “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” This writing axiom extolled by Kurt Vonnegut underscores the importance of human desire. However, desire often stems from human frailty: the need to fill or compensate for something we lack—a mothers’ love, approval from society, the ability to forgive ourselves. Write about what your protagonist's desires; this is where the story begins.

3.   Human beings are unpredictable. We can snap, betraying decades of impeccable behavior and moral living. A devoted wife cheats with her son’s tennis coach. A respected policeman steals M&Ms from a convenience store. A shy boy kicks a cup from the hands of a homeless woman. Human frailty is an important part of humanity, and our characters. Our attempts to hide indiscretions often lead to unfathomable tragedy. Write a scene where your protagonist snaps. Show, don’t tell. 

Billy Collins, the most popular poet in America

by Jamie Baker

 

I’m not a big fan of poetry, I prefer straightforward prose, but recently I heard Billy Collins read his poem Aimless Love on NPR.  I was intrigued; the poem was clear, clever and evocative.  I went to the library and read some of his other poems.  Here is one that I liked.

Dharma

The way the dog trots out the front door

every morning

without a hat or an umbrella,

without any money

or the keys to her doghouse

never fails to fill the saucer of my heart

with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example

of a life without encumbrance—

Thoreau in his curtainless hut

with a single plate, a single spoon?

Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world

with nothing but her brown coat

and her modest blue collar,

following only her wet nose,

the twin portals of her steady breathing,

followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside

every morning

and eat all his food

what a model of self-containment she would be,

what a paragon of earthly detachment,

if only she were not so eager

for a rub behind the ears,

so acrobatic in her welcomes,

if only I were not her god. 

Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, was born in New York City in 1941.  He is the author of 10 books of poetry and a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton in New York.  

Writing Resources

Almost every day I receive email from a variety of sources concerning writing and I'd like to share some of them as they may be helpful to you.

Daily Writing Tips offers a variety of tips on writing on a daily basis.  These are worth keeping in an email folder.  Everything from basic writing, punctuation, style, grammar and much, much more.  And...it's free.  To take a look, go here: http://www.dailywritingtips.com

Children's Writer is a great monthly resource for anyone who wants to write for kids.  This is a full color online newsletter covering everything from writing advice, contests, and new publishers to writing style and techniques.  It is not free, but the cost is only $18.00 per year (12 issues).  Well worth the cost.  To check out a sample issue go here:  http://childrenswriter.com/

Writing Whims, a blog by P.C. Zick, is delivered on a more-or-less random basis.  Recently it's been every day or every other day.  It's pretty interesting and offers writing tips, interviews with authors, book reviews and more.  To check it out, go here: http://pczick.com/

The Writer, a monthly magazine which offers articles on fiction, non-fiction, screen play, children's lit, poetry, interviews and profiles, book reviews and more.  The cost to subscribe is $32.95 per year (12 issues).  To take a look, go here: http://www.writermag.com

Poets & Writers, a bi-monthly magazine which offers articles about fiction, non-fiction, jobs available, calls for manuscripts, writing prompts and more.  I personally like Poets & Writers more than most writing magazines.  The cost for a 2 year (12 issues) subscription is $25.95.  To have a look, go here: http://www.pw.org/

Target character and conflict with a handy checklist

from The Writer magazine

 To write a compelling story, you must thwart your character's desire. These questions will keep you on the right track.
By Gregory Martin | Published: December 29, 2009

Your character wants something badly. Your reader wants your character to get what he wants. Your job is to disappoint both of them.

Ironic? Sure. Narratives are driven by desire: 1) the character’s desire, 2) the reader’s desire that the character succeeds, or at least, the reader’s desire to see what happens to all this yearning, and 3) the author’s desire to thwart both the character and the reader.

It’s this thwarting of desire that beginning writers need to cultivate. It doesn’t come naturally. Far too often, writers are unwilling to let their characters make mistakes and get themselves into trouble that has both cost and consequence for which the story holds them accountable. In stories with this kind of trouble, the protagonists are too passive, too coddled by their author, to make the kind of graceless mistakes born of the yearning and desperation that create good fiction.

You, the writer, can be as poised as you want, act with aplomb, reserve, tact, polish. But your characters can’t. Your task is to put your characters in true dilemmas, where they make hard choices and don’t always make good decisions. These situations, and these choices, ought to be open to the reader’s moral imagination, allowing the reader to participate in the life of the story—so that the reader has to ask: What would I do?

The following checklist is a craft guide to characterization and conflict. It’s not a crutch or simple remedy. It’s asking a lot of you and your story. It should make you feel slightly despairing. It’s designed to help your draft become more of a story, less a rough assemblage of unsuspenseful, incoherent narrative-ish moments.

The checklist is also a form of triage. It helps you to focus on necessary elements, without which your draft is not a story. The movement from an early draft to a middle draft is predicated entirely on focusing on major flaws. Your job is to stop the bleeding where the bleeding is most profuse. Don’t worry about hangnails. Too many beginning writers think that tinkering around with syntax and punctuation constitutes revision. Not at the early stages it doesn’t. Steven Koch, in his great book The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop, says, “Don’t polish a mess.”

Some students find applying a rubric like this “constraining”; they feel less intuitive and spontaneous. It’s supposed to feel constraining. Form is a container, a constrainer; it gives shape to what was amorphous and lacking. You need it because your intuition and spontaneity are not enough to render meaning to readers.

1. What is your character’s ground situation? The ground situation, according to John Barth, is the unstable but static (tense but unchanging) situation prior to whatever comes along and kicks the story into gear.

2. What does your character want?

3. Why? What are your characters’ motivations? Why do they want what they want? Often this is related in some meaningful way to the answer to question No. 4.

4. What is your character’s problem—rooted not in the situation but in the character? Put another way: What is your character’s existential dilemma? Dumbo’s problem is not his big ears. His problem is how he feels about his ears.

5. What’s in the way of your character getting what he or she wants?

6. What happens to make this static situation dynamic? I sometimes call this the story’s trigger. Things were like this and this, and then one day … a wig turned up in the garbage … a blind man came to spend the night.

7. How does this trigger change the nature of the ground situation? How does this trigger present new obstacles that weren’t there before?

8. Are these obstacles formidable? How? (Each one needs to be formidable.)

9. Is there complication or rising action? Are these obstacles of a different kind? (They can’t just be, in essence, the same obstacle but in a sequence.)

10. How is the story a record of choices? Are these choices true dilemmas, open to the reader’s moral imagination?

11. Describe your character’s reversal. In order for your story to be a story, your character must, in some way, change. No one grabs your collar and says, “You’ve got to listen to what happened to me. After this happened, I was the same as I was before.” That’s not a story.

12. How is this reversal both related to a) action—to something that happens in the story —and b) a choice the character made, and how is it related to some kind of c) recognition on her part?

13. Do your characters get what they want? They shouldn’t, at least not in some meaningful way.

Are these questions hard to answer without first having a draft finished—without a beginning, middle and ending? Yes, so write your draft first. How do you write something that has a beginning, middle and end, without first knowing all the subtle, profound complexities? Here’s how. Write down the basic sequence of events. This happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. Until you’re done.

Then, apply the checklist. Revise accordingly. Then, go back and make it subtle and profound.

Gregory Martin is the author of the memoir Mountain City, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. He teaches at the University of New Mexico. This article first appeared in The New Writer’s Handbook 2007: A Practical Anthology of Best Advice for Your Craft and Career, edited by Philip Martin, from Scarletta Press.

 And Finally...

We are always looking for articles, suggestions for the newsletter, short stories to publish.  Please send any ideas, stories, etc. to colleen.  We'd love to see any contributions you'd like to make to The Scribblers.

If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, please email  colleen with the word 'unsubscribe' in the subject line and we will remove you

 from our mailing list.