Pictures Inspire Storytelling

    In the last several days  three pictures from my past have been  posted on Facebook , each resurrecting a  sweet memory  from  a time long ago, including the one I downloaded  yesterday  to celebrate my girlfriend, Susan's  63rd birthday. Susan and I have been friends since we were in first grade and  often walked home from school together. Susan attended Zion Lutheran on one corner street in Maywood, a quaint  bedroom community  in southeast Los Angeles, while I attended the Catholic school, St. Rose of Lima , on the opposite corner. After eight years at  parochial schools, we both found ourselves starting as Freshman  at Bell High, where our friendship  would deepen and grow stronger. The picture I posted on Facebook was taken in the summer of 1967  while we were visiting my dad  at his home in  St. Louis. Susan and I were 16 years old.  My little brother, Walt was with us.

    The reason I share about  these pictures  on a writing blog is to show how photos  can  help us as writers to recall special times, places and people in our lives. For instance, the picture I  posted on Facebook of my friend Susan and I brings to mind how her parents said she  could make the trip to St. Louis with me as long as she earned the money to pay for her expenses, and how  Susan and  I  came up with a brilliant idea -  to collect pop bottles  (in those years redeemable for cash) .  Both of us took a  grocery cart and walked up and down Gage Avenue - a busy street  in our hometown of Bell -  day after day for several weeks to   search for empty pop bottles, until our carts were filled.  Besides checking  out  the laundry mat, Arvo's Market, the shoe repair shop, Jim's Hair House ,  and Clingman's Hardware, we looked under bushes, parking lots and trash cans. We became  bottle scavengers  - experts in our field! No pop bottle was left for someone else to find. We claimed them all.   In the end,  Susan's cup , or should I say,  her  cart was overflowing, and   exceeded  in cash needed   for her to make the trip.

    There are other pictures I look at   from long ago,  like the one of  my brother, Walt and  his  girlfriend (at the time), Patty with my   husband, Gary,  and me. I  can almost hear our shared laughter when we would picnic in the park and camp at San Onofre. I think of our marathon  ping pong games and playing Monopoly.  Seeing those pictures help remind me of who we were, about our  hopes and dreams,  and from where  we  came, and who we are now.   My mother recently repeated  the old adage,   " A picture is worth a thousand words".  I don't know  about a thousand words, but  as  writers,  I do know  if we can see  those pictures  perfectly, through a clean, clear lens we will find  a story to tell.

                                     
    Whether you're writing a  story of fiction, poetry or memoir, I encourage you to look at pictures from your   past to remind you of people, places and things that help inspire  you to  write your  storytelling adventures.


   

   

 



    

New Adult...A Flash Genre or Here to Stay?

New Adult, NA, genre has rather quickly popped on the writing scene. It is a genre that is a follow on to Young Adult, YA, books. It is aimed at readers 18-25 years of age. This genre targets the young adult of college or post college age who is dealing with being on her own and facing the grown-up world head on. It is for the "should I get my own apartment instead of living in my parent's basement, and shouldn't I find more than a temp job where I can use my master's degree" individuals. The Devil Wears Prada, although written as a thinly disguised assault on a real life obnoxious boss, would be an example of a NA book.

The New Adult category started with epublishing by authors like Cora McCarmack and her Jessica Darling series, by Megan McCafferty and by Tammara Weber. The following books are available for free download by searching for the author + epub.

NA is aimed at adults with more insight than teens. The targeted audience is focused on what part they will play in the future. They realize that decisions they make will have an impact on their lives as well as on the lives of others. YA fiction is based on that group, ages 12-17, who live in the immediate without too much thought for the future. These books do not contain sex. Case in point for YA books is Little Women, Swiss Family Robinson  and The Outsiders. 

Think of NA as the Downton Abbey of our times. One hundred years ago Edith, Matthew, Anna, Thomas, Sybil and Mary dealt with these same issues that 18-26 years old of today have. The plot lines for these Edwardian characters are New Adult themes....marriage and its responsibilities, joys and challenges; life's sorrows; sex; what to do with their lives and how what they do impacts others. The Twilight series, Hunger Games and Beautiful Creatures, all deal with slightly older characters and more mature story lines so they might be considered NA.

This new genre is also touching Christian Fiction by writing about Christians' ways of focusing on transition. These books explore young adults, believers of God, who are now in positions to make life driving decisions and what their impact on the world might be. Publishers of Christian fiction are clamoring for CFNA--Christian fiction new adult themed books.

The term New Adult was coined by St. Martin's Press in 2007. By 2009, it had caught on quickly with authors. E-books have been the driving force for this genre. Many ebooks are available for free downloads by searching for "new adult epub" using your preferred search engine.

Do you think this is a genre that will last? Judy Blume answered some of the questions about adult subjects for some of us, Peyton Place, East of Eden and Forever Amber for others. The times and mores have changed in fifty years. Critics think that immature teens will read NA books with situations too advanced for them to comprehend appropriately. They moan that the adult themes will contaminate young minds because these themes contain sex. Others realize that another money market fills not only a needed literary slot and but also their coffers. There are always spill over readers of all ages and genres; that is not something authors can or want to control. Control of what children read is for parents. The Harry Potter series started children and many adults of all ages reading and liking it. Possibly this genre of New Adult will do the same for people of the young adult age. What is your opinion?

Poetry 101

 Late last fall, I had a fun shopping experience. [To be noted: fun + shopping are never in my realm of existence.] But, this day in Asheville, NC, my son-in-law, three-year old grandson and I went to Bins of Treasure, a huge resale store of Goodwill Industries. It is a last stop before the recycle plant for items that have not sold in the regular Goodwill store. Sounds like it would be terrible? Not so. In the past my son-in-law picked up a well-used Barbie car, refurbished it with paint, decals and imagination for the brand new miniature Land Rover for his son, just like daddy’s car. He has found like new items and interesting cast offs like fishing waders, hundreds of Legos and camping equipment no one else wanted. Items are in waist high, five foot long, plastic bins on tables, mostly sorted by categories such as toys, clothing, books, outdoor equipment, etc. You pay by the pound, $.50/pound except for books which are bargain priced at $.75/pound. The items are clean, “interesting” and a definite bargain.

This day I found the book 100 Best-Loved Poems edited by Philip Smith, 1995 Dover Publications, Inc and previously owned by Sarah. Sarah seems to have been about 12 when she owned the book, not a good speller but an excellent student with a good English teacher. The book is underlined with her personal Cliff Notes written in the white spaces. What a treasure I had found!

Young Sarah had underlined all the alliterations and similes in poems they studied. She noted personifications and defined words or allusions to words she did not understand. Written were explanations that Dylan Thomas did not want his father to die when he wrote the last lines of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." "The Lamb" by William Blake reintroduced me to to personification. Sometimes I would read "i dont unerstand" and wonder if the teacher explained it to her. I also learned that "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman was about Abraham Lincoln; I don't think I ever knew that. This little gem of a book with 100 well chosen poems will never be recycled but it will remain with me, Sarah's fun, education comments and all. It is Poetry 101.

To quote Winston Churchill (he was talking about Russia), poetry to me is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Enigma defined is a person or thing that is mysterious, puzzling or difficult to understand. In my world poetry = enigma. Thanks to Sarah, her teacher, some studying and a blog with no author’s name anywhere with a stamp date of 169 visitors to the site since June 28, 2009 (http://www.firesides.ca/poemtips.htm), I began a journey to better understand the lure of poetry. Re-reading Writing North Idaho’s frequent informed and eloquent guest blogger, Liz Mastin, after reading this book and blog, has given me a refined appreciation of poetry. I still do not have any extended ability to write poetry but I do understand it better.

From the poetry blog site here are some explanations that may help you on your road to discovering poetry too.

“In short, poetry is bones, prose is flesh. Prose is a smooth ride, with all of the threads tied up neatly in an adventure, with the reader often left in midair after the last and largest bump. Whereas prose fills in all of the cracks, poetry covers just enough potholes to make the road navigable and get the reader to a destination. Indeed, the bumps along the way are half the fun of poetry.” The author goes on to say that prose has subplots and red herrings while poetry contains only the necessary to delineate the theme.

_____ From the poetry blog one helpful view of the basic elements of poetry may be the five "S's":

Aspect	Also known as	Explanation
Sonics	Sound	Alliteration, assonance, consonance, etc.
Senses	Imagery	Concrete images, not abstractions.
Sense	Clarity	Precision, focus and theme.
The Succinct	Brevity	Economy of language.
The Sempervirent	Fresh	New, as opposed to clichéd.

       To 

To further our understanding of poetry on an elemental level, check out this informative power point teaching presentation.

Introduction to Reading and Understanding Poetry

www.mjsd.k12.wi.us/mhs/.../IntroductiontotheAspectsofPoetry.ppt

File Format: Microsoft Powerpoint - Quick View

This PowerPoint is designed to help you understand what makes poetry such a creative and wonderful form of self-expression.

“Poets must seek “complex” thoughts and feelings and compress such complexity into a single moment.” –Ezra Pound

NEOLOGISMS 2012

It is time to review the newly coined words, neologisms, from 2012. People make up new words out of necessity, because no other word describes the situation, for comic relief, or to shorten a long phrase or name. The Washington Post  sponsors an annual contest and lists the top ten entrants which are mostly funny words, "coughee--one who gets coughed upon" for example.  People spend enormous amounts of time thinking up new words most of which never catch the imagination of others. But, because of the desire to be accepteced socially especially on the Internet by using neologisms and when the words are so clever, neologisms become well known and used by a variety of people over a wide geographic area.

The American Dialectic Society has devised a scale to judge the potential of long lasting success of a new word called the FUDGE scale:
Frequency of use
Unobstrusivenss --is it to "cutesy"
Diversity of users and situations
Generation of other forms word may take like a noun and a verb
Endurance of concept

Here are some examples of neologisms made popular in 2012. It is by no means inclusive.

blognescenti---bloggers who write with class
jigsaw family---a family blend of of children from two or more sets of parents
pentrepreneur---an entrepreneur of pensionable age
autograt---a tip automatically added to your restaurant bill, hotel or bar bill
ego surfer--someone who searches the World Wide Web for his names using Google or some other search engine. (Hmm.)
404--someone who is hopeless; from World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found" meaning the web site you are searching for was not found
fidocam---camera on the head of a police dog
Frankenstorm---devastation brought by storm Sandy (not likely to endure)
pay-neutral---describes a paycheck that only covers expenses after  child-care costs, travel , etc. costs have been deducted
metrosexual--someone who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance
the precariat--new class of people consisting of debt-ridden, educated people looking for jobs but many are not finding jobs so they settle for casual or part-time work
bankster---a banker whose actions are illegal
geobragging---repeated status updates noting your location in order to get attention or to make others jealous
zero-hours---employee contract where an employee has no guarantee of work but who must be available to work and is paid only for hours worked
chilax---being told to calm down, relax when you are getting uptight
Republican'ts---49% of Republicans in a recent survey who did not know what what their "GOP" symbol stood for "Grand Old Party" (not likely to endure)
moon-basing---political candidate's offhanded comment or proposed policy that is so outrageous that it hurts his campaign. EX: "legal rape"
prenopsis---summary of a book movie, TV show or event formed purely on expectation, bias and hope formulated before the object or event has occurred.
tweet cred--social standing on Twitter. Justin Bieber has the most tweet cred

meh---from the writers of "The Simpsons", a shrug of indifference

@---to write a message to or about someone on Twitter
Twisticuffs---an argument conducted on Twitter (Demi Moore and Kim Kardashain, Katy Perry vs. Lady Gaga and Perez Hilton vs almost everybody)
#bashtag---Twitter  account companies created to promote themselves but are then used by others to publicly criticize the company. In a January 25, 2012 article by Jamie Griswold on MYNorthwest.com, Ms Griswold wrote

"A McDonald's social media marketing campaign has gone viral, but not exactly in the way they wanted.

'They decided to start a twitter hashtag, which is a way of organizing tweets about the same subject on twitter, about these great stories about McDonald's,' said 97.3 KIRO FM host Luke Burbank, in a discussion of the campaign on The Ross and Burbank Show. The LA Times reports McDonald's stopped promoting the campaign two hours after launching it. But as twitter users observed, it's hard to kill a twitter trend. 
The failed hashtag even spawned a new twitter term #bashtag.

"So instead of a hashtag, it's a bashtag. That's when you either start a hashtag just to sort of decry something or you take over someone's hashtag and make it into a negative, that is a bashtag," explains Burbank.

Many twitter users conclude "#McDStories was a #McFail."

symblomatic---coined by Donald Trump and is a combination of symbolic, emblematic and symptomatic
webinar---seminar on the internet or the Web as in a MOOC (massive online open courses)
brain candy---non-intellectual form of entertainment
truthiness---coined by Sephen Colbert to describe a quality characterizing a "truth" that is known intuitively, a gut feeling, without regard to logic, facts, intellectual study or fact supported                                      STEPHEN COLBERT

Tebowing---prayerful stance derived from use by NFL quarterback Tim Tebow after a touchdown

'Write Every Day': How's That Working For You?

"Write every day." How many times have you heard that advice? It seems to make the top-ten list of every how-to-succeed-at-writing article ever published.

I've always thought of "write every day" as one of those inviolable rules of writerhood. Adding 500 or 1000 or even 100 new words to a project daily meant I was making progress, moving forward, eating that proverbial elephant one bite at a time. The trouble is, I can only reach that quota for so long before I slip up and miss a day. Then what? Write twice as many words the following day? Fall "behind" and risk sacrificing quality for churning out words? Abandon the whole thing and go and check if there's any Fudge Ripple left in the freezer?

Cal Newport, a computer scientist, is a prolific writer as well as an academic. He writes Study Hacks, an insightful blog on developing peak performance for students and professionals. He's also authored several books, including How to Become a Straight-A Student and his latest, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

In a recent blog post, "'Write Every Day' is Bad Advice," Cal asserts that striving to achieve a daily word count goal is counterproductive, given how the human brain works. He writes,"The problem for the would-be writer is that the brain does not necessarily distinguish between your vague and abstract goal, to write a novel, and the accompanying specific plan, to write every day, which you’re using to accomplish this goal. When the specific plan fails, the resulting lack of motivation infects the general goal as well, and your writing project flounders."

He continues, "When I’m working on a book, I instead approach each week as its own scheduling challenge. I work with the reality of my life that week to squeeze in as much writing as I can get away with, in the most practical manner. Sometimes, this might lead to stretches where I write every morning. But there are other periods where I might balance a busy start to the work week with half days of writing at the end, and so on. The point is that I commit to plans that I know can succeed, and by doing so, I keep my brain’s motivation centers on board with the project."

Read Cal's post and let me know what you think. Does writing to a daily word count goal work well for you? Do you use some other method to measure your writerly productivity? Or do you not worry about measuring progress and just write (perhaps the neatest approach of all)?

Proper spelling: Luv it or h8 it?

Years ago someone (me, perhaps?) gave my husband a sweatshirt that says, "Bad spellers of the world, untie!" On the flip side, this past Christmas I received a tee shirt that announces to the world, "I am silently correcting your grammar." The slogans may be cringe-worthy, but they are also accurate.

Yes, it's true. I'm in a mixed marriage. Can a--um--casual speller and a grammar nerd ever find true love and happiness together?

Since today marks 25 years since the day we met, and we've been together ever since (okay, full disclosure: we did break up once for twenty minutes--the longest twenty minutes of my life-- and that bleak incident had nothing whatsoever to do with spelling), I'd say YES, true love and happiness between grammatical opposites is definitely possible. You just need a sense of humor and a heaping helping of mutual patience and understanding.

Casual Speller recently demonstrated his understanding of my fanatical quest for proper spelling, even though he doesn't happen to share it, by showing me this item in The Week magazine:

"Australia: Where even the teachers can't spell" by Kevin Donnelly was originally published in The Australian. I wasn't able to locate the full original article online, but the digest version is viewable online to subscribers at The Week. In case you're not a subscriber, here is the snippet that caught my eye:

"In a recent survey, more than 40 percent of parents said their kids' teachers had sent home comments or assignments that were misspelled or ungrammatical or, worst of all, written in text-message style, using '18r' for 'later' and 'U' for 'you.' But this appalling state of affairs is not the teachers' fault--nobody ever required them to learn how to spell. They came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, when progressive theorists were [unconcerned about] teaching proper English. The only time they studied the mechanics of language was when they learned a foreign language. Now we are all paying the price. . . . The teaching of English has been 'dumbed down,' and it's making Australia look dumb.'"

(A quick online search revealed that Kevin Donnelly is director of the Education Standards Institute, so naturally he'd take an interest in the subject. I removed a few politically charged sentences so that we could focus on the topic without getting sidetracked into politics.)

What do you think? Have the standards of spelling fallen, and if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does poor spelling make someone look "dumb," as Mr. Donnelly asserts? Or does striving for perfect spelling make someone seem uptight or inflexible or (heaven help us) uncool?

**THIS JUST IN: Writing North Idaho has just exceeded 50,000 page views! We're very excited. Thank you, dear readers!**

The Joy of Prosody: Writing Better Poetry

By Liz Mastin

Happy New Year friends, I would like to share with you my collection of tips for writing better poetry; things to keep in mind which may be of considerable help. I keep these in front of me to remind myself of the many things to consider when writing a poem. I also add new tips to this collection as I come across them. In fact, so I do not misplace them, I framed them. They now stand on my desk in good sight, next to the computer.

I hope these might be of use to you as well as you move into the New Year.

In writing better poetry

1. Use vivid verbs, ones that evoke vivid mental images.

2. Use sparingly: prepositions, adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions.

3. “No good poem makes common sense. The essence of a good poem is the uncommonness of the sense it makes.”

4. Passionate precision inspires readers.

5. Use active adjectives: the “dancing” portraits on the wall, the “staring” ceiling, etc.

6. Use strong words

7. Splash colors, odors, textures

8. Make sure your poem feels right and then polish it.

9. Always have an editor

10. Be bold.

11. The first lines are very important (the leader): “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

12. Poems should surprise!

13. Use hard sounds for hard objects and ideas and soft sounds for soft objects and ideas.

14. Can it be said “a better way”

15. A good poem moves in surprising ways, taking us to places we did not expect, avoiding the predictable.

I hope you have a beautiful Christmas. Here is my Christmas gift for you. It is an ode; a form used by many poets including Pablo Neruda. This is in written in free verse, following Neruda’s example (he uses many metaphors) in his collection “Ode to Common Things”

Note: Liz sent this post before Christmas, but due to our schedule, it didn't get posted until today.  My apologies to Liz that we missed you before Christmas, but I'm sure your tips will be just as valuable to our readers today and that they will appreciate your Christmas greetings despite the tardy delivery.  

  

Ode to Christmas Tree Ornaments

To you, I sing

Oh Christmas tree ornaments

As you tenuously cling

To your tinsel-tossed hooks.

Like golden garlands

You rise and fall.

Like air-show planes

You lift and stall,

And settle down

On fat green boughs.

Your brilliant bellies

Are delicate mirrors

Reflecting minuscule

Christmas lights,

Window panes,

And table lamps.

You are rainbow drops,

You are lollipops,

Carousel animals

Encircling the stalk.

You are hot air balloons

Engaged in a rally

Above the soft rug;

A round lighted valley.

You cranberry strings

Are red salmon eggs

Trapped in towering,

Turbulent seaweed.

And you ornaments of old

Are bold little ghosts:

White bearded Santas,

Tarnished glass cherries,

Yellow-flocked bananas,

And sepia-tinged fairies.

You speak of childhood,

In innocence, you are cast.

You are vibrant reminders

Of Christmases past.

Note: Liz sent this post before Christmas, but due to our schedule, it didn't get posted until today.  My apologies to Liz that we missed you before Christmas, but I'm sure your tips will be just as valuable to our readers today.

Liz Mastin Bio

Liz Mastin is a poet who lives in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho during the summer and Bullhead City, Arizona in winter. She thrives on the study of the great poets, their biographies, the schools of poetry to which they adhered, and the poetic conventions of the times in which they lived.

While she enjoys free verse as well as metrical poetry, her main interest lies in prosody. She notices that most of the enduring poems are those we can remember and recite. Liz enjoys poetry forms such as the sonnet, the sestina, the couplet, blank verse, simple quatrains, etc. and she hopes to see modern poets regain interest in studied metrical poetry.

Liz is currently putting together her first collection of poems which should be completed this winter. The poems are a mixture of metrical and free verse poems.