May 2014 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter

Welcome to the May issue of The Scribblers.  In this issue we have new writing prompts, part two of the story "Sisters" by Jamie Baker. We hope you enjoy this issue.

May Writing Prompts
(courtesy of Writers Digest)

Each month we try to provide prompts for you to use. Pick one or more and write 500 to 1,000 words using the prompt/s as the basis of your story. 

1.   You wake up one morning to find that you are your three year old self, with your parents again, with all of the memories and experiences of your current life.

2.  Your computer won’t shut down when you are getting ready to leave work at five. Instead, it is looping a message, and then attempts to tell you something. What is your computer doing?

3.  Daydreaming on your way to work, you get into a car accident. Frustrated because you will be late for an important meeting, you curse and yell as you get out of the car. When you go to confront the other driver, you find out it is your boss.

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

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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’ssupposed 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.

Sisters, Part 2

by Jamie Baker

Christmas day was both better and worse than a normal day.  My mom is really big on tradition and doing things the right way, which usually means her way.   My first brother, Jeff, was born when I was five and at his first Christmas, mom decided that we would always open our presents on Christmas morning and I should be the one to pass them around.  That tradition lasts until my other brother, Mike, came along four years after Jeff.  At the next Christmas Jeff pestered to be allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve.  So the now the tradition is, everybody gets to pick one present to open the night before, and I pass all the rest the next morning.

My brothers woke me up while it was still dark, Jeff whispering in my ear to wake up while Mike switched the ceiling light on and off.  So that was the beginning of the bad part of the day.  I made it worse by screaming at them to get out of my room.  My alarm clock said it was only 5 o’clock.  Then I heard mom and dad’s bedroom door open.  Mike flipped the switch, the room went dark again, and they ran into each other, tripping and fighting each other, trying to get back into their own room.  I heard dad’s slippers slapping past my room and I went back to sleep.

It seemed like it was only five minutes before they were back again, but the light was coming in from the window and my clock said 7 o’clock, so I got up.  Mom and dad were in the kitchen, making coffee and pouring the orange juice.  We always ate breakfast after the presents were opened, so we took our cups and glasses in to the living room and I started reading the tags and passing out the presents.  I also make sure everyone has one and wait while those are opened and fussed over before I pass out the next batch.  I tried to stretch out the best part of the day, but it was all over by 9 o’clock.  My brothers ruined breakfast by trying to steal each other’s French toast and Mike knocked over Jeff’s milk.  That really set my mom off.   Things got worse in the afternoon, when they started bouncing on the couch to launch themselves across the room.  Jeff bounced in the wrong direction, banging into the TV, knocking off of its stand.  The picture tube broke with a sound like a thousand light bulbs smashing.  Then the Christmas tree fell over. 

The next few days dragged by.  The library was closed all week.  I did laundry whenever there was enough for a load.  I checked Ginger and Marci’s plants.  I rode my bike over to the school, but that was sad and stupid.  Why would I miss a place that I hated so much?  One of my Christmas presents was a new record player to replace the one that Mike had dropped over the railing, watching it blast apart on the concrete yard.  I had a few records that I played in my room, but if I turned up the volume loud enough to matter, mom banged on the door and screamed at me to turn off that blatty music.  Whatever blatty is.  Then it got really cold and rained for two days straight, so I was stuck in the house.  So were my brothers and with no TV they were worse than ever.  I finally stuffed my ears with cotton and resorted to doing school work.

The day before Ginger and Marci were supposed to come back, dad asked me if I wanted to go to a store with him.  The boys starting screaming that they wanted to go too, but dad said no.  In the car, I asked dad why we’re going shopping when we just got a bunch of socks and stuff for Christmas.  He said it was a surprise.  He took the freeway into Oakland and we went to a big discount furniture store and he bought a new TV.   Then we went to Woolworth’s and ate hot dogs.  It was kind of fun.  I think we were both sad to go back home, back to the music hater and the TV destroyers.

An even better part of the day was that night at dinner.  The boys were quiet for once, their mouths full of mashed potatoes and baked ham, when mom made the big announcement.

“Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve.  Your father and I are going out for the evening.  We deserve a night out.”

Jeff opened his mouth, gluey with potatoes, but dad cut him off. 

“No. The night is just for your mother and me.  Carol, you’ll be in charge.  We’ll leave phone numbers where we can be reached and Mrs. Duncan, the apartment manager, knows we’ll be out.  She said she’d check on you and you can call her if you have any problems.”

I almost cheered. My parents hadn’t been out for a long time, not since dad got laid off, so I was glad for them.  My parents having a night out, plus the new TV on top of all the Christmas stuff, made me think things were getting back to normal.  Even better, I’d been worrying about how I was going to get out of the house for Ginger and Marci’s party.  Mom would never let me go if she knew about it, but since she wouldn’t be here, she wouldn’t know.   I’d still be sneaking, but at least it would be easier.

 (to be continued in the June issue)

Writing Advice, Templates, etc.

Throughout the month I receive a lot of emails, newsletters, etc. regarding writing and I keep them in order to pass them along in the hope that someone reading this newsletter will find them helpful or at least interesting.  This is a list of websites that you may find helpful in your writing:

8 MS Word Templates That Help You Brainstorm & Mind Map Your Ideas Quickly:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-ms-word-templates-brainstorm-mind-map-ideas-quickly/

GET ME WRITING

Get it finished, Get it published (eventually), but most of all, Get Writing:

http://www.getmewriting.com/planning/free-planning-template-for-your-story/

How to Write a Children's Story

Sample Children's Stories, Writing Your Own Children's Story:

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Children's-Story

How to Write a Short Story

Sample Short StoryWriting a Short StoryEditing a Short Story:

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Short-Story

Manuscript and Cover Letter Formatting for Short Story Submissions:

http://theimpire.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/manuscript-and-cover-letter-format-for-short-story-submissions/

Proper Manuscript Format, Short Story Format (includes a free plagiarism checker):

http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

Write Your Ass Off

Because sometimes, you just need a kick in the pants:

http://tymberdalton.com/writer-beware-how-to-research-a-publisher/

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 at: 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.

April 2014 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter

Welcome to the April issue of The Scribblers.  In this issue we have new writing prompts, part one of a story by Jamie Baker, a story by John Matthews, contest information, a few interesting writing sites/blogs.  We hope you enjoy this issue.

April Writing Prompts

Each month we try to provide prompts for you to use. Pick one or more and write 500 to 1,000 words using the prompt/s as the basis of your story.  And have fun with it.

1.  Karen slammed the door and got into her car.  This was the end.

2.  Dave and Jim were fishing from the shore of Assateague Island.  Jim's deep sea rod bent almost to ground level.  What in the world was on the line?

Sisters

A Coming of Age Story, 

by Jamie Baker

Part 1

The hall was crowded with kids, yelling and messing with each other in the five minutes between classes.  Scuttling along the edges, waiting for a break in the crowd so I could cross to the intersecting hall to the science class, I watched as the kid ran towards me and swerved around the corner.  He was one of the Mexican kids, his hair greased back so that it was as smooth and shiny as his sharp-pointed dress shoes.  Swerving around the corner, he smacked full-face into Nannette Gyerson.  Nannette is in the same science class as me.  We both sit in the back, slumped, heads down, crouched behind the broad lab tables. 

I always thought Nannette was a name that should belong to a pretty girl, a girl like Annette Funicello, smiling and confident, but this Nannette wasn’t like that.  She was tall, taller than all the other students and many of the teachers.  And she was big, shaped like a barrel, wearing shapeless baggy flowery dresses that looked like the housedresses Mrs. Pelligrini wore when she gardened.  On Saturdays, she would pay me a dime or a quarter to pinch off the dandy lion buds so they wouldn’t bloom into yellow flowers and then the white puffy seed fairies that blew away in the wind.  That was at our old house, before I had to come to this school.

 When the kid hit Nannette, the hall became instantly silent, all heads and eyes turned to watch the collision, mouths half open in stop action.  The kid slammed into her, his face burrowed into her big chest for a half second before he bounced off her and fell on the floor.

In the next instant, time started again.  He jerked himself back up off the floor, the noise in the hallway winding back up to full volume. 

“Damn,” he screeched, “she bounced me like a ball.”  Jumping and pointing at her as she tried to apologize, he continued to screech, “She bounced me like a ball.”  The laughter in the hall rose into an echoing clamor.  Nannette laughed too, a hysterical giggle that sounded too much like the cries of a coyote I’d seen on Wild Kingdom, it’s rear leg caught in a trap. 

I dodged around the crowd and slunk into the science lab.

We don’t live next to Mrs. Pelligrini anymore.  We had to move.  Now we live in an apartment complex.  Our apartment is on the second level, above the big open concrete yard where the pool is. 

“The pool will be great, hon,” my dad said to my mom as he carried boxes up the concrete steps that led from the parking lot, always trying find the silver lining.  Always trying to convince her that opportunities and good fortune were everywhere. 

The new apartment, number 32, is right above the pool.

“You can keep an eye on the kids when they’re out here swimming.  Just look out the window and they’ll be right there.”

As it turned out, she never needed to look out to see them.  You could hear my brothers all over the complex when they were in the pool, or anywhere, if they weren’t asleep.    And she didn’t have to look for me at the pool either, because I was never there.  I stayed away from my brothers as much as I could, but even when they went over to the playground at the elementary school, I didn’t go to the pool.  I’d outgrown my old bathing suit and I’d gotten into an argument with my mom in the middle of trying to pick out a new one.  She wanted me to get one with a little skirt on it, which only babies and old women wear.  Even my mother’s bathing suit didn’t have a skirt on it, which she never wore anymore because her legs were veiny. 

On the far end of the courtyard, which is what my parents call the concrete yard that surrounds the pool, is the room where the coin-operated washers and dryers are located.  There are a couple of chairs in there, along with a wobbly table and some old magazines, and a Coke machine.  Outside the laundry room, there are two old beach chairs tucked in under the concrete walkway that runs around the 2^nd level.  I volunteered to do the family laundry because it’s the one chore that gets me out of the apartment.  I was down there one Saturday, slouched in one of the beach chairs, reading the Red Badge of Courage for school and waiting for the washer to finish so I could move the clothes to the dryer, when I heard voices and laughter echo through the concrete entrance from the parking lot.  

Two girls, carrying boxes and suitcases, came through from the shade of the walkway and went to the door of apartment number two.  I tried to look like I was still reading my book while I watched them.   They were young, just a few years older than me I thought.  The girl with long blond hair had on a short little sundress; one of the thin straps slipped off her shoulder.   She fumbled a key into the door lock.  The other girl had a mass of frizzy brown hair that reached to her shoulders.   She was wearing faded jeans and a t-shirt that was cut off at the waist.   Both girls went in to the apartment, closing the door behind them.

Two pages later, and after I had slotted the quarters into the dryer, the girl with the wild hair came out of the apartment and crossed the court yard to where I was still sitting in one of the beach chairs.  She nodded at me as she passed by and went into the laundry room.  After a few moments, I heard the clink of coins, followed by the crash of a bottle tumbling out of the Coke machine and then the pop and hiss when she used the machine’s opener.   Standing in the doorway, she took a big swig of the Coke, and then dropped into the other beach chair, sitting sideways with one leg over the grey-weathered arm of the chair, so she could face me. 

“Hi, I’m Ginger.”

“I’m Carol.  Did you just move in?”

“You know I did.  You just watched me move in twenty minutes ago.”

“Well, yeah.  But I thought maybe you were helping your friend move in.”

“That’s Marci.  We’re sharing the apartment.”

“Um, I didn’t see any furniture.  Is your apartment furnished?”  We had brought our own furniture with us, but I knew that a few of the apartments were rented furnished. 

“No, Marci’s boyfriend has a truck.  He’s coming over after he gets off work.”

“Oh, well, welcome to the neighborhood, I guess.”

“Sure, thanks.” She unwound herself from the chair and stood up.  “Well, see you later.”

“OK, bye.”

I watched her walk back over and let herself into the apartment.  When she came out again a few minutes later she was wearing cowboy boots.  Marci had the same little dress on, a big macramé bag slung off her shoulder, and sandals that laced up her tanned calves. 

After that, I tried to hang out at Marci and Ginger’s apartment as much as I could.   They were both waitresses at Galloway’s Family Restaurant, three blocks away. Marci would turn 21 on her next birthday.

“As soon as I do, I’m getting a job tending bar at one of the lounges down by the airport,” Marci said.  She was dressed for work and I could see her standing at the bathroom sink, putting the finished touches on her make up.  “That’s the way to make money.  The tips are great and a bar’s a good place to make connections, if you know what I mean,” and she winked at me in the mirror.    I didn’t know what she meant.  

“I’m not going to work in restaurants or bars for the rest of my life, that’s for sure,” said Ginger, who had graduated from high school in the spring. It was her day off and she’d hollered come in when I tapped on her door.   I had two loads of whites sloshing away over in the laundry room.  Ginger was slouched down in the faded over-stuffed armchair she’d bought at the Salvation Army store.   There was an old sofa, too, covered with a bedspread to hide the torn cushions. 

“What are you going to do?”

“Join the army.  Or maybe get a job at the zoo.  You know the San Diego zoo?  It’s the best zoo in the world.  But I’ve got some family business up here to take care of first?”

I wanted to know what kind of family business, but I didn’t want her to think I was prying. 

“Does your family live close by?”

“Oh, yeah,” she took a long drag on her Marlboro and then stubbed it out in the tuna can she used for an ash tray, “yeah, one of my families lives close by.  Real close.”

“You have more than one family?”

“Sure, doesn’t everyone?”

I thought about that.  I had my family that lived upstairs and then I had my grandparents who lived in New Jersey, but I just thought of all of them as one family.

“Where does your other family live?”

“In Oakland.  That’s where I grew up.”

“I was born in Oakland.  At City Hospital.  Is that where you were born?”

“Yep.”  She pulled herself out of the chair and padded over to the refrigerator in the kitchen alcove.  This was a one-bedroom apartment, much smaller than ours, which had three bedrooms and an eat-in kitchen.    This apartment seems small and compact in comparison, cozy and relaxed, with milk crate book cases filled with second-hand paperbacks and Marci’s collection of shells and bones, the two twin mattresses on the bedroom floor, flanking the dresser that Marci and Ginger shared, and the pots of aloe vera and wandering Jew on the window sill in the living room.

Ginger flopped back into her chair, reaching a Coke out to me.

“It’s the last one.  We can share.”  I took a sip and handed it back to her.    She passed it over to Marci.  I’d never drunk from the same bottle as anyone except my brothers.   I felt my cheeks get hot, but Ginger and Marci didn’t seem to notice. 

Marci took a couple of sips from the bottle before passing it back to Ginger.

“I’m going in a little early, I’ll see you there Ginger.” She swung her macramé bag onto to her shoulder and went out the door. 

Ginger gave me the Coke and crossed to one of the milk crates, pulling out a photo album.  She sat down on the sofa, close enough that I thought I could feel the warmth of her thigh. 

“This is my Oakland family,” she said, flipping the book open.

Over several pages, I looked at pictures of people I didn’t know doing the same kind of family stuff my family does, trips to the beach, picnics at the state park, holiday dinners.  There were two girls and two boys.  It was hard to tell anything much about them in the earlier, black and white pictures, but the ones on the later pages were in color, taken when the kids were older. 

“How come your parents named you Ginger?  You don’t have red hair.  No one in your family does.”

“My name’s Virginia.  My other mom called my Ginger and my Oakland family just stuck with it.”

“Your other mom?”

“Yeah, the mom in my other family.   Hey, I have to get ready for work.”

“Yeah, ok, I better go check the laundry.  I’ll see you later.”

If she answered, I didn’t hear.  She was already in the bedroom, shucking out of her jeans, when I was letting myself out. 

A few days later, Ginger and I sat in the beach chairs, a load of my brothers’ clothes tumbling in the dryer.   A light rain was falling, spattering the surface of the pool, sending overlapping, concentric circles across the water.    Ginger was talking about her family again. 

“My parents aren’t really my parents, you know?  I mean, they brought me up, but they adopted me.  They adopted all of us.”

I couldn’t think of anyone that had been adopted.  I thought about the pictures in Ginger’s photo album. 

“Are you the oldest?”

“Yeah, but I was the last to be adopted.”

“Wow, really.”

“Yeah, the boys, Tom and Rick, are brothers.  My parents adopted them first, when they were 2 and 3 years old.  A year later they adopted Christine.  She was just a baby, ten months old.  I was adopted next, when I was seven.”

I was about to ask her where she’d been before she got adopted when the buzzer went off on the dryer and I had to pull the clothes out and fold them before they got wrinkled.  When I came back out, the warm, folded clothes neatly stacked in the basket, Ginger had gone back to her apartment. 

I had looked forward to Christmas break, planning to hang out with Ginger or Marci as much as I could.  I stopped by their apartment the day before the last day of school.    Ginger was packing one of the suitcases I had seen the day they moved in.

“Hey, Carol, I’m going to Oakland for a week.  Can you water the plants for me and keep an eye on the place?”

“Um, sure.  But what about Marci?  Won’t she be here?”

“Maybe sometimes, but she’s been staying with her boyfriend a lot, so she may not be around.”

“Her boyfriend?  That guy Jimmy?”

“No, not him, they broke up.  She’s going with some older guy she met at the restaurant.  He’s a bar tender and he’s been teaching her how to mix drinks.”  She fished a key out of the Mason jar they kept on the kitchen counter for the change they needed for the laundry machines.

“Here’s the spare key.  Don’t water the plants too much, maybe just once and then let them dry out.  I’ll be back for New Years.  Marci and I are gonna have a party here.  You’re invited.”

I checked the apartment every day, letting myself in with the key that I had added to my own key ring, sometimes two or three times a day.  Sometimes I hung out in there for an hour or so, watching game shows on Marci’s little black and white TV or thumbing through the worn paperbacks.  More than once I pulled the photo album out and studied the pages.  Now that I knew that Ginger was the oldest, it was easy to pick her out in most of the pictures, but the images were so small and grainy, it was hard to see any real features or details.  In most of the pictures her hair was short, a tangle of kinks and ringlets that reminded me of my own mess of cowlicks and curls. 

To Be Continued

Writing Sites for Authors:

Suite 101.com, Four Steps to Editing and Revising a Manuscript:  Four Steps to Editing and Revising a Manuscript

Helping Writers Become Authors.com, 10 Ways to Make Your Readers Loathe your Antagonist:10 Ways to Make Your Readers Loathe Your Antagonist

The Write Life.com, 25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy: 25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy

Writing Blogs for Authors You May be Interested In:

Better Novel Project.com, Deconstructing Bestselling Novels, One Index Card at a time:Better Novel Project.com

Martha Alderson, the Plot Whisperer: Plot Whisperer.Blogspot.com (At the bottom of the page is her plot planner)

Vix Stories.com, 25 Guides on How to Write a Short Story: http://vixstories.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/25-guide-on-how-to-write-a-short-story/

Downsizing

by

John Matthews

                                                            

     “Mike, she’s here again.  She’s pulling weeds in the flower bed.”

     “I’m sorry Wilbur.”  I said.  “I’ll be right over to get her.  This is embarrassing.”

     “It’s okay, Mike.  She’s no bother.  I was just worried you might not know where she was.”

     “I should have guessed.”

     I hopped in the car and started over to our old place to pick up my wife.  It had been a year since we moved out of the big house in the country.  The work of keeping up with the garden and flower beds had become too much for Bonnie, even though she loved to do it.  Yes, of course I did my share, but I was retired and starting to resent how the chores were eating into my enjoyment of my golden years. 

     So we downsized.  Moved to a condominium in the city.  The extra time we found ourselves with was a blessed relief.  I had time to play golf again.  And Bonnie’s hip and back pain got better.  I thought she was at last content.  But she has always been a restless person.  When she finally agreed to give up her driver’s license it made the boredom even more confining.  And with boredom came confusion.    She sometimes forgot we had moved and seemed perplexed when she stepped out the front door of the condo and found the surroundings strange. 

     But we coped.  We had good neighbors who lent a hand when necessary and offered reassuring reminders when she needed them.

     It was one of the neighbors who first drove her over to our former home.  It seemed like a reasonable request from Bonnie.  She said she wanted to visit one of our former neighbors who, she said, would bring her back to the condo.  That was the first time I got a call from Wilbur, who had bought our old place.  He said Bonnie had walked into the garage, helped herself to a pair of clippers, and was deadheading the butterfly bush blooms. 

     It’s true Wilbur has never taken as good care of the landscaping as Bonnie had.  What she was doing was as necessary to her as it was a waste of time to Wilbur. 

     But her plan for getting back to the old house and getting our new neighbor to leave her there, alone and without a car, was so well thought out and reasonable that it reassured me.  I had started to fear that Bonnie was starting to slip into one of those conditions common to older people.  One of those diseases I can never remember the name of.   No, not Asperger’s, the other one that starts with an “A.” 

      And when I picked her up that first time at Wilbur’s she gave no indication she was in any way mixed up.  She was not thinking that the place was still ours, just that Wilbur was kind of lazy.  And, truth be told, I think when Wilbur saw her, he waited to call me until she had done a pretty good piece of work.

     So I saw no reason to try to change things.  Life was good.  We were happy.  Sometimes I even drove her over to the old place myself and sat and visited with Wilbur while she puttered in what used to be her yard.  Yes, of course I kept my eye on her.  I could tell she now got shaky after shorter and shorter periods of work.   But she wasn’t doing anything she didn’t want to do.  And she never forgot her doctor’s warning:  “Just  remember,  Bonnie.   No BLT’s.  Do not bend, lift, or twist.”

     I enjoyed watching her doing what she loved and I was reluctant to tell her when she’d had enough.  Sometimes Wilbur would go out and suggest she quit and she never argued.  At his suggestion she would come in and tell me she was ready to go home.   She knew we now lived at the condo.  And she was glad to go home. 

     Her bones, joints, and muscles continued to wear down.   But there was nothing wrong with her mind.  She was aware of what was going on and that eventually even our home in the condo would be too much for her to manage.  I was going to suggest we visit some places where she could get some assistance with her day to day living.  But I was selfish.  I didn’t want to live at such a place together when there was nothing wrong with me.  But I didn’t want to live without her.  She made it easy, as she always did. 

   “Let’s just look,” she said.  “We don’t both have to move.  I know you’ll still visit, take me out now and then, have dinner with me.  It will be like when we were dating, remember?  We each had our own home, which we loved, but we looked forward to our times together as something special.”

   Yes, it was easy.  I hadn’t realized there are people who are specialists at working these things out.   We could afford to keep the condo and a room for one at Evergreen Manor.  Our kids were very supportive.   Oh, that’s right.  I didn’t tell you we have kids.  They are great, but I hate old codgers who are always bragging about their kids.   Their names and ages and jobs wouldn’t interest you so I won’t waste your time listing them.  But Bonnie would not ever consider asking them to take care of her, any more than I would.

     So now I visit Bonnie every day.  She has her own room so we can share some privacy, but we spend most of our visits with the other inmates.  I’m not supposed to call them that.  It’s sort of an old person’s joke.   Some of them are really sharp.  Witty and clever.  But of course some of them have a little more trouble keeping things straight.

     Today’s visit was particularly pleasant.  Italian night in the dining room.  Braciole and a nice glass of Sangiovese.  We sat at a table with several other women, friends Bonnie has made already.  She doesn’t usually have trouble remembering their names.  But once in a while I have to help her.  Sometimes it seems like I know these people better than she does.   Why is that?   We took a walk on the veranda in the moonlight then came back to her room and watched “Doc Martin.”  I dozed off for a few minutes but it didn’t matter.  It’s pretty easy to pick up what’s going on.  At least we haven’t degenerated into watching Lawrence Welk.   

     After that, it was time to go.  I got up and fumbled in my pocket for my car keys.  They’re never in the pocket where I left them, but this time it was particularly difficult to find them. 

     But then Bonnie’s arms were around me.  She knows just how to squeeze to make everything seem all right.

     “Oh, Mike.  You forgot again, didn’t you?”  I could hear her jingling her car keys in my ear.  “I’m the one who has to go home.  You’re already home, remember?”   

                                                          THE END   

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.

                                                           

  

March 2014 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter

Welcome to the March issue of The Scribblers.  In this issue we have new writing prompts, an article about writing formulas, and a look at Andrew Greeley.

March Writing Prompts:

1.  How could I have guessed that a simple 'hello' would have impacted my life so dramatically?

2.  Just as I stepped off the curb at the corner of E. Camelback Road and N. 32nd Street in Phoenix, a blue car ran a red light hitting a mini-van.  The unattached door of the blue car was flying toward me as other parts rained down.

3.  Mason was broke.  His bank statement showed it, but he hadn't spent that money.

Glimmer Train "Family Matters" Contest

Family Matters. 1st prize: $1,500, and publication. Deadline: March 31.

A bit of 2013 data as we report the results of the December Fiction Open: 7 of 12 of our 2013 1st-place winners were women—please don't feel bad, guys, it 

all goes in waves—and 8 of 12 winning stories were those authors' 1st fiction publications.

Most submissions come in at 1,500-6,500 words, but any lengths up to 12,000 words are welcome.

Submit here  

Winners and finalists will be announced in the June bulletin, and contacted directly by May 27th.

Please note: The next Family Matters contest will be held in October. Writing Guidelines.

There are certain people in our lives, for instance, who can say just a few words—I love you, I hate you, I'm mad at you, you've disappointed me—that 

suddenly cause the chemistry in our bodies to change. It makes our heart race. Literally the words can change us at the chemical level.—Ben Marcus, 

interviewed by David Naimon

Writing 'Formulas'

At a recent meeting, we were discussing whether or not there was a valid writing formula and decided to some research.  

I believed there were such formulas.  I remember having read many of Sidney Sheldon's novels in the 1980's and noticing so many similarities of descriptions and phrases (what I considered to be 'formula') that I finally became bored and stopped reading him.  So I recently looked him up and found the following:

"At his best, Mr. Sheldon was considered a master storyteller whose novels were known for their meticulous research, swift pacing, lush settings and 

cliffhanging chapters.

Working in the office of his Palm Springs compound, he composed his books orally, dictating page after page — as many as 50 a day — to his secretary. Like traditional oral epic, Mr. Sheldon’s work depended crucially on formulaic construction, relying on stock characters and narrative boilerplate to keep the plot humming.

A Sidney Sheldon novel typically contains one or more — usually many more — of these ingredients: shockingly beautiful women, square-jawed heroes and fiendish villains; fame, fortune and intrigue; penthouses, villas and the jet travel these entail; plutonium, diamonds and a touch of botulism; rape, sodomy, murder and suicide; mysterious accidents and mysterious disappearances; an heiress or two; skeletons in lavishly appointed closets; 

shadowy international cartels, communists and lawyers; globe-trotting ambassadors, supermodels and very bad dogs; forced marriages and amnesia; naked ambition and nakedness in general; a great deal of vengeance...” ~ The NY Times

Lester Dent’s Magic Formula

However, there is another formula for writing that I found that has nothing to do with repetitive descriptions, phrases, themes, etc.  It is called Lester Dent’s Magic Formula.  It is not magic, but it is logical and very helpful, especially to the author of short stories.  The following is Dent's formula:

"Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word part, put the following:

FIRST 1500 WORDS

1–First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved–something the hero has to cope with.

2–The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)

3–Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.

4–Hero’s endeavors land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.

5–Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE? Is there a MENACE to the hero? Does everything happen logically? At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot. Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise’s tail, if nothing better comes to mind.
They’re not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

SECOND 1500 WORDS

1–Shovel more grief onto the hero.

2–Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:

3–Another physical conflict.

4–A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE? Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud? Is the hero getting it in the neck? Is the second part logical? DON’T TELL ABOUT IT***Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader–show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM. When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page. It is reasonable to expect these minor surprises to sort of inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until–surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader’s mind. TAG HIM. BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

THIRD 1500 WORDS

1–Shovel the grief onto the hero.

2–Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:

3–A physical conflict.

4–A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: it still have SUSPENSE? The MENACE getting blacker? The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix? It all happens logically?

These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story.

These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once. The idea is to avoid monotony.

ACTION: Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action. ATMOSPHERE: Hear, smell, see, feel and taste. DESCRIPTION: Trees, wind, scenery and water. THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1–Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

2–Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)

3–The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.

4–The mysteries remaining–one big one held over to this point will help grip interest–are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.

5–Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.)

6–The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line? The MENACE held out to the last? Everything been explained? It all happens logically? Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING? Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?"

Andrew Greeley, an Unusual Novelist*

In the 1980's I was 'hooked' on Andrew Greeley's novels and thought he'd be a good subject for the newsletter.  He was a very unusual novelist and a very unusual priest.

Andrew M. Greeley (February 5, 1928 – May 29, 2013) was an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and popular novelist.
Father Greeley was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona and the University of Chicago, and a Research Associate with the National Opinion. 

 For many years, he wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times and contributed regularly to The New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter, America, and Commonweal.

Greeley was born into a large Irish Catholic family in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  By the second grade, he knew that he wanted to be a priest.  In 1954, he was ordained for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

From 1954 to 1964, Greeley served as an assistant pastor at Christ the King parish in Chicago, during which time he studied sociology at the University of 
Chicago. His first book, The Church in the Suburbs (1958), was drawn from notes a sociology professor had encouraged him to take describing his experiences. He received a Master of Arts in 1961 and a PhD in 1962. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the influence of religion on the career plans of 1961 college graduates. 


Greeley's appreciation for the spiritual power of art inspired him to begin writing works of fiction.  His literary output was such it was said that he "never had an unpublished thought."  

He published his first novel, The Magic Cup, in 1975, a fantasy tale about a young king who would lead Ireland from paganism to Christianity. A second novel, Death in April, followed in 1980.

His third novel, The Cardinal Sins (1981), was his first work of fiction to become a major commercial success. As one reviewer put it, The Cardinal Sins "did for the Catholic Church what The Godfather did for the mafia." The novel's principal characters were both priests—one a writer-sociologist, like Greeley, and the other a cardinal who had broken the vow of celibacy. At the time of the book's release, Chicago's cardinal was the subject of allegations of having diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Church to a mistress. 

Church officials accused Greeley of using the novel to attack the cardinal, although Greeley denied the charges and told the New York Times that the cardinal was "a much better bishop ... and a much better human being" than the character in the novel.

The Cardinal Sins was followed by the Passover trilogy: Thy Brother's Wife (1982), Ascent into Hell (1983), and Lord of the Dance (1984). Thereafter, he wrote a minimum of two novels per year, on average. In 1987 alone, he produced four novels and two works of non-fiction. He once said that he wrote an average of 5,000 words per day.

The explicit treatment of sexuality in Greeley's novels was a source of controversy for some. The National Catholic Register said that Greeley had "the dirtiest mind ever ordained." Greeley responded to his critics by saying that "there is nothing wrong with sex" and that "at the most basic level, people learn from the novels that sex is good." He insisted that, from what they heard in confession from women, priests probably knew more about marriage than most married men; and he drew on this knowledge to write a marital advice book he called Sexual Intimacy (1988).

At the height of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, Greeley wrote The Priestly Sins (2004), a novel about a young priest who is exiled to an insane 
asylum and then to an academic life because he reports abuse that he has witnessed. 

His book The Making of the Pope (2005) was intended as a follow-up to his The Making of the Popes 1978. The Making of the Pope (2005) was a first-hand account of the coalition-building process by which the conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ascended to the papacy as Benedict XVI. Greeley also dabbled in science fiction, writing the novels God Game and The Final Planet.

Politically, Greeley was an outspoken critic of the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War, and a strong supporter of immigration rights. His book entitled A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq 2001–2007 (2007) was critical of the rush by the Bush administration to start the Iraq War and the consequences of that war for the United States.

Reflecting on his life's work, Greeley told the Chicago Tribune in 1992, "I'm a priest, pure and simple.... The other things I do — sociological research, my 
newspaper columns, the novels I write — are just my way of being a priest. I decided I wanted to be one when I was a kid growing up on the West Side. I've never wavered or wanted to be anything but."

Greeley was probably the best-selling priest in history, with an estimated 250,000 readers who would buy almost every novel he published, probably generating at least $110 million in gross income by 1999.  He was able to live comfortably in Chicago's John Hancock Center, but he donated most of his earnings to the Church and other charities. 

In 1984, he contributed $1 million to endow a chair in Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago. In 1986, he established a $1 million private educational fund for scholarships and financial support to inner-city schools in the Chicago Archdiocese with a minority student body of more than 50%. He had originally offered the donation to the Archdiocese, but the then Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Bernardin, had declined the gift without ever publicly offering an explanation. In 2003, the Archdiocese accepted the $420,000 that still remained in the fund to bolster a newly established Catholic Schools Endowment Fund, providing scholarships for low-income students and for raising teachers' salaries in the Archdiocese's schools. Greeley also funded an annual lecture series, “The Church in Society”, at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois, where he had earned his S.T.L. in 1954.

In 2008, he donated several thousand dollars to the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, who was then serving as a U.S. Senator representing Illinois, although Greeley predicted that racism would lead to Obama's defeat.

Greeley had been in poor health since an accident on Nov. 7, 2008, that left him with traumatic brain injury. On that afternoon, an article of his clothing was caught in the door of a departing taxi, he was thrown to the ground and hit his head. He never fully recovered from the injury.

Writing about Greeley in 2010, Eugene Kennedy, said that although he looks at the newspapers daily and scans emails, Greeley “lives now in twilight and 
visitors report that they are not sure what he sees or hears.”

*Information courtesy of Wikipedia

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.