THE REVIEW

BACK IN PRODUCTION


Wednesday’s meeting was exciting, with five of us here, and after a month without a meeting. Gemma has decided to come back to our meetings after taking a long break to recover from injuries sustained in a car accident. And we have a new member, Jim Williams, who attended Wednesday as well. Jim has written an exceptionally long novel he is turning into a trilogy, and wants some serious feedback on his endeavors. Welcome, Jim, to the fold.

I shared some pictures and a note received from our dear Susan out in Newfoundland. There was an awesome picture of her and Chris with their five offspring, and a cute one of Declan with a hockey stick, standing by the net. As soon as school was out, they were all heading to Lancashire, England to visit Chris’s birthplace.

Sylvia Taylor attended a recent meeting of the Murrayville Library Writers’ Group, and talked about the publishing industry, the function of editors, and the basics of acceptable prose. She said the U.S. publishing industry has been in free fall since last year and the economic downturn, and that American agents and publishers are NOT accepting any new writers. But the Canadian publishing industry has still been plugging along, the same as always, as Canadians are wont to do, not huge or mega-successful, but still viable. Unfortunately, that means American agents and writers now have their eyes on getting published up here. Where is Canada Customs when you need them?

On the subject of what editors or contest judges look for, these are the points she stressed, in order of importance:
- Formatting of manuscripts!!! (double spaced, 12 point font, acceptable margins all around, pages numbered top right, title & author name & date top left every page, except for blind contest entries)
- Punctuation
- Language
- Point of view (only one per scene if using multiple points of view)
- Tenses
- Descriptions
- Dialogue
- Character development
- Show, don’t tell
- Story arc
- Weaving of plot and sub-plots
- Showing character remembering, or thinking, or use of flashbacks.

Sylvia also said that she is judging a novel writing contest back east this summer and with over a hundred novels to consider, there is a system judges tend to follow. They read the first page, the last page, and maybe every fortieth page in between to check for story arc.So there you have the latest info from somebody in the know
Jim was the first to read from his novel, “Power Tends To Corrupt”. Book One of his trilogy is “Joseph And Daniela”. In the first chapter we are introduced to Joseph, cutting back on his meds in order to fuel his obsession for writing. He wants control of the creative process, which he doesn’t have taking medication for a mental illness that is hinted at, but not clinically defined. Jim does a good job of showing Joseph’s teeter-tottering between reality and illusion, and how members of his household react. We look forward to meeting Daniela, the other protagonist in this story.

Margaret read another story from her Peabody collection we are now calling “Blow Up The Castle!”. The latest story is “Sheep Dip”, and tells of two detectives going to visit Mr. Lamb after his still blew up. He steadfastly maintains he was only brewing sheep dip, and that was what blew up. Margaret is almost at the end of the Peabody collection and is already planning another series of stories about a detective. Go, Margaret!

Gemma has done a lot of thinking and revising of her canine novel “What Heidi Knows”. She will use points of view of two different dogs, Heidi and Checkmate, and will title chapters/sections based on periods of history (ie: ‘Age of Innocence’).

Bob and I did not have anything of our own to read. I think Bob’s been watching baseball, and I’ve been very busy typing a manuscript for another writer.

Meetings this month are a little out of whack since the first Wednesday was a holiday. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, July 22nd at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see you then, and be sure to bring your Muse.

Lisa