Up Coming Events

Writing a book or story and need research about women’s fashions? Check out this exhibit!

Northwest Museum of Art and Culture: Dress Code

• Date(s): Now - 04/30/2011

• Times: 10am-5pm

• Event Location: Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture (MAC)

• Event Address: 2316 W 1st

• Phone: (509) 456-3931

• Admission: $7 Adults/$5 Seniors & Students/FREE 5 and under

• Venue(s): Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture

Clothing and fashion can signal the changing roles and ambitions of women and provide clues about personal identity. From the luxury of feeling beautiful to strategies for getting ahead, women wear the varied armors of female fashion to get what they want. This whimsical exhibit decodes the social mores and messages telegraphed by what women wear. You’ll get to try it on, and check it out!

Feed another artistic side

Chagall, Kollwitz, Miró, & Picasso

• Date(s): Now - 03/12/2011

• Times: Mon-Fri 10am-4pm/Sat noon-4pm

• Event Location: Jundt Art Museum

• Event Address: 202 East Cataldo, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA

• Phone: (509) 313-3890

• Admission: FREE

• Venue(s): Gonzaga University-Campus Services

Chagall, Kollwitz, Miró, & Picasso, an exhibit from the Gonzaga University Permanent Collection, is displayed in the 1,288 square-foot Arcade Gallery through March 12. In addition, the Chancellor's Room has installations of Chihuly Glass, including the permanent installation of the Gonzaga Red Chandelier. Also featured in this gallery are statues by Auguste Rodin and prints by Piero Fornasetti. The Museum also includes a print study room for Gonzaga's print collection.

Book Signing

Auntie’s Bookstore

402 W. Main, Spokane

Start: 02/05/2011 1:00 pm

End: 02/05/2011 3:00 pm

Local author LeAnne Kemmish signs copies of her novel, Zion Quest. Rachel returns to college after the death of both her parents, then finds herself caught up in the stories she uncovers in a journal dated 1853, written by an immigrant ancestor who settled in Utah territory.

New Writing Group Forming

Valley Writing Group--Join local author Jessica Titchenal in the Barnes & Noble Cafe for a writers' group. Bring your ideas, drafts, pens and papers for a support group for writers of all genres.

Thursday February 10, 2011 7:00 PM - Thursday June 09, 2011, weekly

Market Pointe I Shopping Center, 15310 E. Indiana Ave., Spokane, WA 99216, 509-922-4104

Selecting a Title for Your Book

Having trouble thinking of a title or subtitle for your book, story or poem? Writer John Faulk in an article for www.writingworld.com, 2006 and Nick Padmore, contributing writer to “A List Apart for people who design web sites“ (www.alistapart.com/article/greatcopyshot/) offer some helpful tips.

Faulk says that a title is a “forever marketing tool. It is as important as your first paragraph.” In other words, it is the hook that gets people attracted to and interested in your book. The same is true for tag lines for products. “The pause that refreshes” is much better than “Hot and sweaty? Take a break and drink our soda”.

Both men state that a title or tag line should be easy to recall. Think about asking a sales clerk in a bookstore to find “that book my friend talked about a spy in MI6 in England” versus “Do you have The Spy Who Came in from The Cold?” or “I want that paper towel that works really well” versus “Bounty The quicker picker upper.” There are several ways to accomplish this. Effective methods include themed titles: places like Michener’s Hawaii, Alaska, Caribbean; Sue Grafton’s alphabet titles A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar; and James Patterson’s nursery rhyme titles Roses Are Red and Along Came a Spider . Taglines like “Look, ma, no cavities”, “Good to the last drop!” and “Mm! Mm! Good!” are immediately evocative of the products names.

Publishers will tell you a negative in a book title is a no-no even if you are writing true crime or a thriller. Patricia Cornwell’s book would not have gotten published under the titles “Decomposing Bodies on a Hill” (The Body Farm) or “Don’t Look at the Dead Body on the Morgue Slab” (Post Mortum). Likewise Holiday Inn’s tag line “Pleasing the world over” sets a positive thought in your mind: if I stay at Holiday Inn, I will be happy in a clean, nice hotel room with pleasant staff wherever I travel.

Advertising tag lines are an average of 3.5 words according to Padmore. “A diamond is forever”, “The breakfast of champions” and “Because I’m worth it” and “Zoom Zoom Zoom” all elicit the products names without taking up valuable space. The same should be said for book titles. The Robe, Angels and Demons, Lake Wobegon Days, and My Sister’s Keeper are all short titles. Effective one-word titles have been: Jaws, Atonement, Heidi, Persuasion and Beloved.

Study tag lines of other commercials for inspiration. When thinking of a title for your book, poem or subtitle, use some of these techniques to see if it genders a memorable, short, likable, marketable title.

To add a smile to this blog some book titles and tag lines that are labeled the worst in their industries:

Knitting with Dog Hair: Better a Sweater from a Dog You Know than from a Sheep You’ll Never Meet (book)

Cooking with Pooh (Disney’s Winnie the Pooh cook book for kids)

Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern America (book)

Book by Whoopee Goldberg

Oh, Waiter: One Order of Crow! Inside the Strangest Presidential Election Finish in American History by Jeff Gold Greenfield (book)

“We get you there” Delta Airlines, tag line. Most people think: “You’d better!“

“We want you to live” Mobile gasoline. “Ummm, me too!”

“Eat Jimmy Dean” Jimmy Dean sausage. “Why would I want to eat a person?”

Question: When searching for a book to read in the bookstore or library, does the book title influence your choice?

(All product names, tag lines and some book titles are copy righted)

Neologisms (New Words and Phrases) from 2010

The American Dialect Society, a group of writers, editors and publishers, annually votes for the best new word of the year. January 7, 2011 the new word chosen was APP. It is short for application. An application is a program designed for a particular purpose on a computer or cell phone operating system. One of the reasons it was chosen was because a writer said even her grandmother knew what it was even though it is a new word to a lot of people.

APP has quickly been utilized around the world in a fast 18 months but has been used in computer technology for decades. Part of this revived popularity is due to the marketing and advertising campaign of Apple for its iPhone and tag line, “There’s an APP for that”. There are APPs ad nauseum. You can get one for calorie counting, sports scores, news, games, Harry Potter, and many others. A follow up phrase “killer app”, is an application that is so popular that people buy a computer or other device just to use that APP.

Other words and phrases, some considered by the American Dialect Society, and others found on lists of newly coined and popular words and phrases are:

Fat finger or thumbo—striking one or more keys while texting; a typo

Baggervation—feeling at the airport when other travelers found their luggage but you haven’t

Spillionaire—a person who got rich because of the British Petroleum oil spill

Phoenix firm—a troubled company that emerges under a new name

Gate rape—phrase for the pat downs in airports by the TSA

Smirting—flirting while outside the front door of a building to smoke

Skyaking—jumping out of planes with your kayak

Tombstoning—jumping or diving into water from a dangerously high perch

Nom de womb—parents not knowing the sex of their baby until he or she is born

Mouse potato—someone who spends an inordinate amount of time on a computer; also netizen

Trout pout—too much collagen injected into person’s lips

Soul patch—small growth of beard under a man’s lower lip

Cheepuccino—inexpensive, low quality cappuccino usually bought from a vending machine

Push present—gift given by husband to wife shortly after their baby is born

Menoporsche—attempt by middle aged man to recapture his youth by purchasing an expensive sports car

Noughts—decade from 2000-2010 that end in zero or “nought.”

Starter marriage—short, first marriage and divorce ending with no children, no property and no regrets

Wardrobing—buying a garment, wearing it and returning it to the store

Jumbrella—large umbrella over an outside table at a café or coffee house

LBD—little black dress

Sources: www.learn-some-english-today.com; http://owlnet.rice.edu; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19sifton.html; http://newsfeed.time.com/new-words-in-the-ode

[“Apple”, “iPhone” and “There’s an app for that” are all trademarked phrases or names owned by Apple Computer Co.]

TGIF: Writing Prompts for a Cold Winter Day

Seems to be a quiet weekend coming up in greater North Idaho. It might be a good time to stoke a cheerful fire or light some candles, settle in with a notebook and pen, and do a bit of scribbling. Here are a few writing prompts to get you going:

*Randomly choose a newspaper headline, clip it out, and dispose of the accompanying story without reading it. Write a short fiction piece using the selected headline as the title.

*Turn on the TV and watch a few minutes of the first program that you see--with the volume off. What are the characters saying? You fill in the dialogue.

*Leaf through an old magazine and choose a picture of any person. Write a description of what it might be like to be the son, daughter, parent, or sibling of that person.

If cabin fever strikes, venture out of the house and go see an American classic. Lake City Playhouse is presenting John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d'Alene (208-667-1323).

Afterward, read the book and think about how the playwright translated the novel to a stage play. Is that something you'd like to try with one of your favorite novels?

Happy weekend! Stay warm.

Learning to Write, Featured Writing Instruction Resource, and a Lesson

(Today we're delighted to share a guest post from Post Falls, ID, writer Jessie Gunderson, cross-posted with permission from her fun and informative blog, Blog Schmog. Jessie writes mainly inspirational fiction and poetry. She's currently hard at work at two important creative projects: (1) a political suspense novel, and (2) her fifth child, due in February!)


Learning the craft of fiction is sometimes a tricky and expensive business. But we are on a single income budget with a whole passel of kids to boot, so "expensive" and "my own ambitions" (no matter how noble) don't go together.

That's why Amazon, the library, and author/agent blogs where the craft of writing is taught and discussed are places I like to frequent.

Although, the howling toddler flopping at my feet as I attempt to type this quick post is making me reconsider other options: check into a loony bin, fly to the moon . . . .

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman is a hand-me-down book from an author friend of mine. But don't let my worn copy deceive you. It is well-loved! This is a great instructional resource to keep and refer back to.

Each chapter addresses a topic aimed at "staying out of the rejection pile" with examples of errors, ways to fix trouble spots, and then ends with a lesson to apply to your own work in progress. From presentation to dialogue, and on to more advanced techniques like pacing, this is an invaluable resource. It also happens to be concise, and chapters move along quickly so you can learn a lot in a short amount of time, especially if you apply the end-of-chapter lessons.

Your Mission #1: Here is a lesson from my reading that I enjoyed. Join me if you like by leaving your "homework" in the comments below or on a blog post and linking back.

Lesson from the chapter on setting:

Lukeman challenges writers to train themselves to be attentive to their surroundings, and by learning to better observe, infuse richer settings in their writing. Find ten unusual details in the room you are in and write them down. It doesn't matter how small. Then see if you can convey a feeling or leave an intentional impression about the setting using these details.

Here's mine:

1. Dust clung to the blades of the fan.
2. A candle tipped out of rank on a wall sconce of otherwise tidy crimson candles.
3. Laundry spilled out of the hamper, slumped like an old man, weary and tired.
4. Neatly stacked books occupied every flat surface, holding up random wads of this and that.
5. A well-loved quilt was spread over the stilted log bed.
6. Pages from Parents Magazine littered the floor.
7. A white scratch marred the wall painted with midnight forest green.
8. Grandmother's old rugs made a cozy place for feet to land on the hardwood floor.
9. The faint smell of heated rice and lavender filled the small space.
10. A lone wooden block lay abandoned in the corner.

Your Mission #2: What can you gather from my surroundings?

The Writer's Virtual Watercooler

(tap, tap, tap) "Hello? Is this thing on?"

That old saw refers, of course, to the performer sweating on stage, tapping the microphone to see if the audience can hear him . . . perhaps in the wake of a joke that has fallen flat, or a rousing speech he hoped would inspire murmurs of agreement. Instead there is dead silence--the proverbial chirping of crickets. Surely they didn't hear him, or they would have responded! (tap, tap, tap) "Is this thing on?"

In some ways, blogging is like performing on stage. You send something out to the universe, hoping it won't come back void. While some bloggers may write purely to express themselves, not especially caring to hear what others think about what they've written, we at Writing North Idaho care deeply about what the Inland Northwest literary community is thinking and doing.

One of our dreams for Writing North Idaho is that it will be a place for writers, readers, and others who love the written and spoken word to come together and share thoughts, information, ideas, opinions, and inspiration. We'd like to be a gathering place, a virtual watercooler for wordsmiths. To do that, we need to hear from you!

Now that we've gotten our sea legs at this whole blogging thing, we'd like to increase blog traffic and activity and get the conversation going. While researching ways to do this, I've learned a few interesting tidbits. Most of them are pure common sense, like paying attention to what we put in headers, linking to other blogs, joining a blog ring, and adding a blog roll to the homepage, all things to consider as we move forward.

But we also want to hear from you, dear reader. Specifically:

*What would you like to see more of (and less of) on Writing North Idaho?

*What would make the blog most useful and fun for you?

*What inspires you to comment on a blog (any blog, not just WNI)?

*What might prevent you from posting a comment? (One potential commenter mentioned being intimidated at the idea of posting on a blog for writers, worried that we're hovering here with eagle eyes, ready to swoop down and pounce on every grammar and spelling mistake. Believe me, this is not Mrs. Grundy's English 101 class! We're eager for your thoughts and ideas, not precisely placed past-perfect participles--if such a thing even exists!)

*Finally, if you are a blogger yourself, what tactics have worked for you, in terms of increasing traffic and getting comments on your blog?

As always, we're eager to hear from you!

Red Hats Provide Valuable Marketing Tool

Local author Joyce Caudel is presenting her novel, The Hat Pin Murders, the first in her Red Hat Mystery Series, to the public at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane tonight (January 21) at 7:00 p.m.

When I read the blurb about her book, I thought, "She's a marketing genius!" With over 70,000 members of the Red Hat Society, the largest women's social club in the world, she has a built-in international market - and is a publisher's dream.

Fascinated, I looked a little further into Caudel's first foray into the publishing field through her publisher, Gray Dog Press of Spokane. I discovered this remarkable woman has authored her first book at age 69, "fullfilling her lifelong dream to be a writer."

According to her publisher, Joyce is a nine-year member of the Red Hats and currently serves as Queen of her chapter. She also shares her talents as an inspirational speaker, giving a message of encouragement to women to dream the dream that God has placed in their hearts.

What a great inspiration to women in general, and writers in particular. Joyce Caudel is living proof that it's never too late to go after your dream.

If you get the chance, stop by Auntie's tonight and pick up one of Joyce's books and get her autograph. According to Gray Dog, she'll be easy to find. "Just follow the red hats."

And don't forget the smarts behind writing a series (what a publisher wants) with a ready market (what a publisher loves). Whether you're a retired teacher, a railroad buff, a veteran, or a proud Kiwanis member; tie that concept to a series of stories and you've created a valuable marketing tool.

Don't forget to check out other writing-related events on our Events page!