Award Day

On behalf of myself and the other Northern Colorado Writers members who have contributed to this blog, I say thank you.

Pat Stoltey gave me this wonderful Circle of Friends Award earlier this week. According to the rules, I must pass it along to five blogging friends. This is always a hard decision for those of us who have tons of blogging friends, so be aware that I appreciate each and every one of you.

The blogging award process is fun and is a wonderful networking tool as it gives each of us the chance to follow the links and make even more friends in the blogging community.

For The Circle of Friends Award, I have selected:
The ladies over at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen
Terry Odell at Terry's Place
Mason Canyon at Thoughts in Progress
Carolyn Yalin at Thoughts from a One-Armed Writer
The group at Adventures in Writing

These are all blogs I enjoy. I hope you will stop by each and say hello.

You Say Tomato….

Post by NCW member Jenny Sunstedt

At a recent NCW coffee, the discussion turned to time management. A few of us expressed frustration with our inabilities to limit distractions, interruptions, procrastinations, and other time-wasters.

I’d had the same discussion with my sister, a writer and entrepreneur in Seattle, a week earlier. Her method of dealing with any kind of ‘block’ is to go to the bookstore, get a few self-help books, and start analyzing her life. Sometimes that’s helpful, but in this case, doing all that homework is one more thing I can’t make time for.

I know my time management stinks, but I don’t particularly care whether it’s due to bad habits, fear of success, fear of failure, self-sabotage, self-indulgence, sun spots, chocolate addiction, or plain old laziness. I just want to fix it.

So I was intrigued when NCW member Brian Schwartz suggested The Pomodoro Technique. (After I realized he wasn’t talking about a poufy hairstyle. That would be The Pompadour Technique.) In a nutshell, the Pomodoro Technique ™ is as simple as it gets.

Get a kitchen timer (the original was a tomato; hence the name, which is Italian for—you guessed it—tomato). Choose an item from your to-do list. Set the timer for 25 minutes. Work on your task until the timer rings. (No cheating!) Take a five minute break. Repeat. Visit the website (pomodorotechnique.com) for more details—but rest assured, there aren’t many. The book is a free download, and, if even that is too much of a commitment, a cheat sheet explains the basics.

I’m eager to give this a try, so I picked up a kitchen timer from Target. It’s not a tomato, but it ticks and rings. (As the Pomodoro people say, “charmingly low-tech.” Hey, just like me! ) And so, my great Time Management Experiment of 2010 begins. Stay tuned….

Have you tried the Pomodoro Technique?

ReBooWee: Final Week

This is the final week of ReBooWee (Read a Book a Week). What book did you read last week? I read The Time Traveler's Wife. It actually took me two weeks to get through it and I think that is because this book is literary fiction.

I have heard that term "literary fiction" before but never grasped what it truly meant until now. The Time Traveler's Wife is definitely a literary piece. The pace seemed slower, the language fuller and the descriptions more lengthy. I found I wanted to savor it more and let the language, story and characters cover me like a blanket. This book, and I believe other literary works, are more character driven.

Page-turning stories like Dan Brown or John Grisham are definitely plot driven. They are hard to put down and great to spend a weekend with.

I know my goal was to read one book a week, but I have to admit, it was nice to slow down a little and get lost in the language of The Time Travelers Wife.

What kind of book did you read last week? Did you enjoy it?

Do What You Love...

I am a big fan of the new Blackberry commercials. My intention here is not to promote the product, but the commercials and the message being conveyed.

True writers love the craft. They love exploring the language, manipulating a plot and creating a piece that will impact a reader.

The problem I see is these same writers put this creative outlet they love so much, on the back burner. They pack their days with other activities and claim they don't have the time to write.

We all get the same amount of time in a day, but how we use it is totally up to us. I challenge you to make time to do what you love---and write.

Who Are You?

Post by NCW member Duane Noriyuki

My most important lesson in writing was learned in jail. It was taught by Los Angeles street gang members.

In 1996, while working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I found myself standing in front of a small group of young men in orange jumpsuits. I handed out paper and pencils, looked at them and gave my first assignment, “Tell me who you are.” The pencils began to move.

I was brought to this moment by a profile I had written about Sister Janet Harris, then chaplain at Central Juvenile Hall. To this day, she is the most noble, graceful, tenacious and intelligent person I know. She is my hero. The story was about how she had dedicated her life to young people on the verge of hell, not in a religious sense but rather in the context of graveyards and prisons.

After the story ran, she telephoned and said she was starting a writing program and asked if I might be interested in participating. Long story short, I found myself standing in the day room of Unit M-N, one of two units housing those charged with the most serious crimes.
“Tell me who you are.”

Initially many of them began with: “I’m a 16-year-old Hispanic male.” “I’m a 17-year-old black male.” I found this tragic. They defined themselves in the ways they were described in police reports.

It is my nature to listen more than speak, and it turned out that’s what they needed. They were desperate to be heard. That, too, kept the pencils moving, leading them to deeper understanding of themselves and their lives.

It turned out, they, more than I, understood the power of words, for on the streets words can get you killed.

"Where are you from?” Translated, it means, which neighborhood, which gang are you from? From those words, gang signs and bullets fly. People die and kill.

“Guilty.” Another word that would shape their lives.

“Unfit,” a term used to determine whether they would be tried as children or adults.

I understood that many of them had committed horrendous crimes. They were not the victims. I knew the courts would deal with the crime in the systematic ways that justice and injustice are determined. In separating the person from the crime, my role was to deal with the person--not to judge or save or even teach, but to hand out pencils and paper. And listen.

A young Asian-American student, in a piece titled, “I Am,” wrote:
I am a bird, without wings.
I am free, but cannot fly.
I can move, but cannot soar.
I can feel, but only pain.

As they wrote then, I am writing now. I read my words hoping to discover the answer to an unanswerable question: “Who am I?”

"How would you answer the question, "Who am I?"

ReBooWee week 7: How Do You Judge a Book?

Post by NCW member Laura Bridgwater

Heading out to purchase a farm and raise dogs after reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski this week. And I don't even like dogs. Or farms.

I judge a book not by its cover but by how it makes me feel. Like how I still want to raft the Mississippi after reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Can people still do that?

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer made me want to take a hike and Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen made me want to wash my hair in the river (Or was that just the movie version? In that case, Robert Redford made me want to wash my hair in the river…)

Next week I’m planning on re-reading an old favorite—The World According to Garp by John Irving. If memory serves me, I hate to think what this book might inspire me to do.

What books have made you want to train dogs, spend a summer on a raft, breath bottled oxygen, have public displays of nudity, or other behaviors you might not usually engage in? How did your ReBooWee book make you feel?

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Laura Bridgwater is a freelance writer and radio commentator from Colorado. Listen to her latest commentary at KUNC.com

5 Books That Changed My Writing Life

Looking back over the past decade as a writer, there were defined moments when I made shift in what I was doing or thinking. Those moments all happened after reading a certain book. I always knew books were powerful tools, but as I reflect back on the past ten years, I realize just how strong their impact can be.

Here is the my writing journey, shared by the books I read.

The Successful Writer's Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles by Eva Shaw
I had just made the decision to write for magazines. Not knowing anything about it, I sought after any information I could. Eva Shaw happened to be speaking at our local Barnes & Noble, so I went to hear her speak about her book. I left excited about all the possibilities and her book, an amazing tool that started me down the path of writing for magazines.


2010 Writer's Market
This book opened up the world of publishing to me and I soaked it up. I would scour the pages looking for markets like I was looking for buried treasure. With a highlighter, pen and sticky notes, I would mark all the potential markets I wanted to submit articles too.


Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments by Jenna Glatzer
I found Jenna's book a few years after I started writing for magazines. It was the beginning of the internet and email and I was looking for a more updated book about being a freelancer. Her book was and still is amazing. I began teaching magazine writing classes and I recommended this book to all my students. I often say, that if I was to write a book about writing for magazines, it would be just like Jenna's.


The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield
About five years into my writing journey, a friend and I decided to do a book study with Canfield's book. We set weekly goals on how much we would read and then we got together to talk about the it. Over the course of a few months we went through the book and had done everything in it. It was because of this book that I created my personal mission statement, "To use my God-given talents to support and encourage other writers as they pursue their dreams." My focus and path shifted to helping others. This lead to the formation of Northern Colorado Writers.


On Writing
by Stephen King
I read this book last year and I was on fire after I read it. I found it inspiring, honest and full of useful information. It was eyeopening to realize that even Stephen King struggled to get published. It helped to clarify some things for me and I now plan to revisit the book at least once a year in order to stay on the right track.

What books made a strong impact on you and your writing life?

ReBooWee: end of week 6

Sorry for the delayed post. My days got kind of mushed together. I'm bummed to report that I didn't finish a book last week. I started one and got about a 1/3 in to it and just didn't like it. So, I started another one, The Time Travelers Wife. I am enjoying this one so far and will definitely get it done this week.

How did everyone else do? Did you read and finish a book last week? What did you like most about it (characters, plot, setting...)?

Writing Quotes about Change

" Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely."
~Karen Kaiser Clark

"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."
~Georg Christopher Lichtenberg

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security."
~Gail Sheehy

"Change is a process and not a destination, it never ends."
~James Belasco

What changes do you plan to make on your writing journey this year?

Methods of Character Presentation

Post by NCW Member Carolyn Yalin

Sometimes I feel like my characters are flat, the same cardboard cut-outs of each other. At a weekend course, I learned about Character Presentation, and it has helped me add some life to my characters.

The instructor, Chris Ransick, used Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction to discuss the various methods of Character Presentation. Below I’ve adapted his handout, which I hope also helps you.

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There are four methods of direct presentation:

Appearance
This is important because our sight is our most highly developed means of perception, through which we receive most our information about someone. It is what prompts our first reaction to people, and everything they wear and own indicates some aspect of their inner selves.

Much of the tension and conflict in character comes from the truth that appearance is not reality. But in order to know this, we must see the appearance, and it is often in the contradiction between appearance and reality that the truth comes out.

As a writer, focus on the significant details, the two front teeth gap, or the pot belly.

Speech
Dialogue plays an important dual function. It must simultaneously characterize while advancing the action, developing the conflict, setting the scene, foreshadowing, or reminding. The character’s words, which obviously have their own contextual meaning, should simultaneously suggest image, personality, or emotion.

It’s what is said versus how.

Action
Action is physical movement that both characterizes and advances plot. Differentiate it from mere gesture, which are part of appearance or body language (speech) that characterizes without moving the plot forward. Action is physical movement that simultaneously characterizes and advances plot.

Thought
Thought is the presentation of a character’s thought not the judgment or interpretation of character offered by the narrator or another – the indirect method, below.

The indirect method of presentation has the narrator telling us the character’s background, motives, values, virtues, etc. often with a tone of judgment. This can be delivered by on character “interpreting” another character.

What are some techniques you use to liven up your characters?

Best Opening Lines

American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University, created a list of the 100 best opening lines in a novel. Here are the top ten.

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

Out of these, which is your favorite? Do you have another that you think should be in the top ten?

What Did You Read This Week? ReBooWee 5

2010 is here and opens up a new year of wonderful opportunities and dreams. But for now it is time to give you a ReBooWee (Read a Book a Week) update. So far I have successfully accomplished my goal of reading one book a week and I have loved it. There are four more weeks to go in my initial challenge, and I foresee finishing it without any problems.

This week I finally read The Prairie Grass Murders written by my friend and NCW cohort Patricia Stoltey. I was taken on a thrilling ride which included all the twists, turns and surprises of a good mystery novel. (Thanks Pat!)

"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."
~ Joseph Addison ~

I hope you will set aside some time this week for the diversion of reading. It will be well worth it.

What did you read last week? What did you enjoy about it?

Reading in the New Year

Post By NCW Member Joannah Merriman

Kerrie Flanagan of Northern Colorado Writers reminds us how important reading is to our writing enhancement:

"As writers, we should all be reading as much as we can. Stephen King in his memoir On Writing says, 'Constant reading will pull you into a place where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.'"

This is the third version of excellent advice I've received in the last few weeks, and it is a lesson my own father taught me when I was very small, learning to read at age 4 (minus the reference to the word processor!).

Some writers think that if they read more in their own writing category, that somehow they will lose their own voices and adopt the voice of the author whose books they are reading. In my experience, the more I read memoir, for example, the better sense I have of the options out there for the memoir form, the ways in which one person's style of telling the story of his or her life makes me want to read more rather than put the book down, etc. This is not to suggest that it is helpful to read only one author and his 20 books before you embark on your own writing journey.

But words enrich us, good reading evokes a better sense of what good writing is all about. If you want to write the next literary masterpiece, don't fill your shelves with grocery store romances. However, if you DO want to leap into a mainstream genre for fun, by all means, read many samples of that genre so you know what the "rules" are. Some genres, like romance novels, DO have a formula, and you can attend conferences to learn that formula. But there is no lock-step formula for literary writing, except to read books by excellent authors!

The new year is here. What are your writing goals? Whether it is to begin a journal for yourself or a specific project, or whether it is to get that novel draft in shape, reading and writing on a regular basis are essential for your success. Curl up in a corner and let yourself be immersed in the words of a compelling writer.
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Joannah Merriman, M.A./Lifeprints
www.lifeprintsjournal.com