BETWEEN HEAT WAVES
Our Meeting Wednesday was between heat waves. Annette, Cougar and Chris joined me to honour The Muse.
Cougar read first, from Chapter One in his novel “The Viking Elf Cult Conspiracy”. It starts out with two people in Iceland talking about their suspicions about a Russian spy. This was third person past tense. It then changes point of view to Eric, a young American who is the main character, talking about graduating from college and not knowing what to do with his life. This was first person past tense. Then there was a section further into the future where Eric is talking in first person present tense about writing his story of what happened after he left college. And then the next section goes back in time again and shows Eric thinking about going to Iceland. The Chapter ends again with the first two characters talking about spying on the Russian spy, but also thinking they must watch out for Americans too. We discussed this chapter for quite a while. As readers, we found it confusing the way it jumped around in the time frame, and had been written sometimes in past tense and sometimes in present tense. We suggested moving some parts around so the story line wasn’t so broken up, and the time sequence not so confusing. Cougar said he already knew he had to be consistent with which tense he was using. The chapter used a lot of very good dialogue and both Eric’s predicament and his reactions showed a lot of humour. It promises to be an interesting read.
I read next, another “Honey” story. This was titled “My Small World” and relates an incident last year when I was in a motor vehicle accident with a semi, and had been unable to contact Honey. It also tells of Honey driving home from the dump and seeing my totalled vehicle being loaded up by a tow truck, and Honey doing a U-turn to ask a policeman what happened to the driver, his wife. Someone who talked to him that day later told me how upset he had been and that he really, really loved me. So nice to know.
Annette and Chris didn’t read. Charity had said she was unable to attend on Wednesday. We had some discussion about when the next Meeting will be. It was decided there will be no Meeting on August 1st and the next Meeting will we Wednesday, August 15th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Here’s hoping the extreme heat will be over and done with by then. Keep writing in the meantime and hope to see you on August 15th!
Lisa A. Hatton
Author
PS: Here are four short sentences to illustrate points of view, the simplest explanation I’ve ever seen.
First person: I bought the candy.
Second person: You love eating candy.
Third person: Honey stole the candy and ate it.
Omniscient: Lisa thought the candy was hers but Bryon ate it because he wanted it.
Friday, July 20, 2018
Friday, July 6, 2018
THE REVIEW
HIDDEN EDITORS
Had a great Meeting here Wednesday night. Jim, Chris and Cougar joined Annette and I for an evening where the women were outnumbered by the men for a change. It was inspiring to have their different viewpoints on things that were read.
I read first, my short, short that I have submitted to Polar Expressions. I had read it before, but I think Annette was the only one who had heard it. It is the fictionalized story “Grief or Guilt”, that I wrote about another writer whose health was declining and was contemplating suicide.
Then Annette read her short, short that she is submitting to Polar Expressions. Her story was first person, a mother watching her tween daughter wanting to play in the dirt with diecast cars. Ignored by her brothers, she is finally offered a car to play with by another boy. She eventually comes back inside covered in dirt, all wide-eyed, to tell her mother he invited her to the school dance. And just like that, she went from tomboy pursuits to being a young lady. This was a great story. Annette had titled it “Playdate”, but we thought that denoted much younger children. Annette said she would research the specific name of a diecast car and perhaps use that as the title.
Jim read Chapter 3 from his novel about Emilie. She is still at the meeting for recovering addicts, and passes out from her withdrawal. Mosi tends to her and two other attendees also remain. 911 is called and an ambulance and paramedics arrive. She will be taken to hospital. This episode has profound effects on Mosi and Josh and Doris, all recovering addicts themselves. Since Jim had passed out hard copy and red pens to everyone, this evoked the editor within all of us and we spent some time helping Jim with every sentence. He emailed me later to say that was probably the best critiquing session he’s ever had!
Chris and Cougar both said they weren’t going to read. But Cougar did spend some time outlining the creative process he’s gone through in writing the novel he’s working on. We hope to have him read more of it to us.
We had some discussion about using just chapter numbers versus chapter titles. We seemed to prefer simple numbering. Choosing actual titles for things is sometimes difficult. We want our titles to pique interest, but not to mislead the reader, either. And I chose chapter numbers for my novel that I self-published at Kobo. Since I used the EPub formatting for digital publishing, I found it difficult to format the hyperlinks in the table of contents with words rather than digits.
The next Meeting will be Wednesday, July 18th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see everyone then!
Lisa A. Hatton
Author
Had a great Meeting here Wednesday night. Jim, Chris and Cougar joined Annette and I for an evening where the women were outnumbered by the men for a change. It was inspiring to have their different viewpoints on things that were read.
I read first, my short, short that I have submitted to Polar Expressions. I had read it before, but I think Annette was the only one who had heard it. It is the fictionalized story “Grief or Guilt”, that I wrote about another writer whose health was declining and was contemplating suicide.
Then Annette read her short, short that she is submitting to Polar Expressions. Her story was first person, a mother watching her tween daughter wanting to play in the dirt with diecast cars. Ignored by her brothers, she is finally offered a car to play with by another boy. She eventually comes back inside covered in dirt, all wide-eyed, to tell her mother he invited her to the school dance. And just like that, she went from tomboy pursuits to being a young lady. This was a great story. Annette had titled it “Playdate”, but we thought that denoted much younger children. Annette said she would research the specific name of a diecast car and perhaps use that as the title.
Jim read Chapter 3 from his novel about Emilie. She is still at the meeting for recovering addicts, and passes out from her withdrawal. Mosi tends to her and two other attendees also remain. 911 is called and an ambulance and paramedics arrive. She will be taken to hospital. This episode has profound effects on Mosi and Josh and Doris, all recovering addicts themselves. Since Jim had passed out hard copy and red pens to everyone, this evoked the editor within all of us and we spent some time helping Jim with every sentence. He emailed me later to say that was probably the best critiquing session he’s ever had!
Chris and Cougar both said they weren’t going to read. But Cougar did spend some time outlining the creative process he’s gone through in writing the novel he’s working on. We hope to have him read more of it to us.
We had some discussion about using just chapter numbers versus chapter titles. We seemed to prefer simple numbering. Choosing actual titles for things is sometimes difficult. We want our titles to pique interest, but not to mislead the reader, either. And I chose chapter numbers for my novel that I self-published at Kobo. Since I used the EPub formatting for digital publishing, I found it difficult to format the hyperlinks in the table of contents with words rather than digits.
The next Meeting will be Wednesday, July 18th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see everyone then!
Lisa A. Hatton
Author
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