The Wannabe Journal
for
October 2012
for
October 2012
The last days of Fall are here in all their beautiful colors. We recently held our monthly meeting of the Wannabe's at UD's River Campus. I would encourage you to take a look at our Blog site to see the picture of some of our writers and contributors. We had a very good meeting even though we changed room three times during the course of the morning.
Here is an update on what we are all talking about and writing:
Mary Lou: Read her story entitled: "Baby in a Basket" which she has submitted as one of the stories to be included in the new anthology that Don H. and his team are putting together. Great short story of life in eastern Europe when large families. did I say twelve children, and parenting responsibility was a requirement of all townspeople.
Rosie H: Reported that the Fine Art gallery in Town and Country is having a gala on November 8th and the public is welcome. Here is a copy of their invitation
Don P: He always has a new project. He has been working with his Pastor to have each parishioner write a one page biographical summaries of their life. The leaders of his church hope to have it published in the future.
He shared a poem that his pastor wrote about our current election process:
A Prayer for the Final Weeks of the Campaign
Dr. Rodney Kennedy
O Lord,
Where can I flee from the political ads that disturb my peace?
Behold I live among a people of lying lips.
How long, O Lord, will I cry to you, "Liar, liar, pants on fire,"
And no one listens?
"Well, at least he's our liar," cry the partisans.
If I ascend to heaven, the ads are there.
If I make my bed i hell. the ads are there.
If I watch football, baseball, or CSI, the ads are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest
limits of the sea,
Even there the ads reach me
By internet, television, radio, newspaper, by osmosis,
The ads are in the air I breathe.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover for me," the ads haunt my dreams.
"I approve this ad"
resounds in my head day and night.
Is there nowhere I can hid?
The cleft of a rock?
The wilderness of temptation?
The Mount of Transfiguration?
The Isle of Patmos?
After this I heard what seemed to be the voice of the Lord,
"Gird up your loins, and go to Louisiana.
Take no purse, or bag; no sandals; and greet no one on the road.
Leave your computer and cell phone.
There you will find peace.
There are no presidential campaign ads in Louisiana.
Neither party is crazy enough to spend money there."
Then I said,
O Lord,
Thank you for hearing my prayers,
But if it is all the same to you,
I will stay in Ohio.
See you in church Sunday. Amen
Don also shared with us a listing of all the publishers and the genre's that they specialize in for our use.
Cindy K: Recommended that we investigate a library in Columbus for Ohio authors and publishers. The organization's name is Ohioana and has over 45, 000 books in its collection and reviews over 200 books a quarter for its Ohioana Quarterly. Too bad but they do not take self-published novels or eBooks. Too bad...they must be living in the past.
Fay D. She read a wonderful story that she wrote in the late 1970's about a woman's convention that she attended in Cincinnati. There were over 1, 000 young women in the audience who were captivated by the talk that was presented by Maria Von Trapp, of Sound of Music fame.
She Gave Her Love Away
Maria Von Trapp, whose life story is portrayed in the movie, The Sound of Music, entered on stage dressed in her native Austrian frock, a scarf wrapped around her head and knotted at the nape of her neck. She humbly acknowledged the cameras that flashed like fireflies about the banquet hall at the Netherlands Hilton
Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 17, 1979. It was the event of the 59th
Annual State Convention of the Ohio Child Conservation League, an
organization dedicated to the study and betterment of children
everywhere. One thousand women had gathered to welcome her.
“Dear friends,” she voiced and waited for the applause and flashing cameras to subside.
“Dear friends,” she repeated, paused, and looking to her right, said, “I don't see any cameras over here.” The audience warmed to her and cameras flashed again.
“Dear friends,” Maria began again and reached to remove a flower from the bouquet in front of the lectern. Placing it in a glass of water, she leaned forward and
explained, “It was blocking someone's face and I could not see her.”
We all knew well the story of The Sound of Music, but eagerly awaited to hear it directly from Maria Augusta von Trapp, who as a young child was an orphan in Austria.
She told us she entered a convent in the hopes of becoming a nun. One day her superior called her aside and asked her what she had learned while at the
convent.
“To find out what is the will of God and then go and do it,” she answered.
When
a request came to the convent for a governess to care for the seven
children of a widower, Captain Georg von Trapp, the consensus of opinion
was certainly Maria should go. Maria told of reluctantly leaving the security of the convent to tutor the children for ten months.
“I fell in love
with the children immediately and then grew to admire and love their father,” she said. Maria and Georg von Trapp were married on November 26, 1927.
Maria
enjoyed teaching the children to sing, but when friends urged the
family to take part in the contest at the festival for group singing in
Salzburg, the Baron von Trapp refused. Of her
husband, Maria said warmly, “He proved not to be a prophet when he said,
'my family will never be on stage' for the first prize was awarded to
the Trapp Family from Salzburg at the Festival in August, 1936.
Then the touring began. The Trapp Family sang for many dignitaries in many countries, including Paris, London, Brussels, and Rome.
On March 11, 1938, the radio brought the news of Hitler's invasion of Austria. She
told about hearing the church bells ringing from every church in their
town and when they called a priest inquiring about this, they were
informed that a Gestapo man with a gun was supervising the ringing of
the bells in all the churches. However, she said, the radio announced the bells were ringing a greeting to their liberators. This was the first of many lies they were to witness.
“Overnight our freedoms were gone”, Maria told her audience. “We lost our freedom of speech. We found ourselves whispering things. We lost our freedom of religion. If we went to church, we lost our job. We were afraid all the time.”
......................
Anyone who wishes to read the entire story please send me an email.
Jud: Busy as ever. She took a family sabbatical on Bald Head Island
for two weeks as a retreat for her writing ambitions. She reminded us that November is National Writing month. National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo /ˌnænoʊˈraɪmoʊ/ na-noh-RY-moh) is an annual internet-based creative writing
project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new
novel between November 1 and 30. Twitter even has a separate group who
helps encourage writers to write at lease 2500 words a day. Jud was
busy during her retreat organizing her plans to
write the next best selling fictional novel.
She
also recommends Wordsworth Writers Center in Dayton for their classes
and support groups for this program. Here is their website: http://www.wordsworthdayton.com/
She
is also involved in her radio program and is learning the new world of
photo editing. She recommends The Reinvention Story.
Wanda: has been busy as well. She read two different poems to the group.
Here is one of them.
TOAD
THERE WAS A LITTLE BOY
LOOKING FOR A TOAD
HE WENT ON A HIKE
OFF THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
ALTHOUGHT HE WAS ONLY FOUR
HE WAS DETERMINED TOEXPLORE
HE LOOKED UNDER A ROCK
HE LOOKED UNDER A TREE
HE EVEN LOOKED UNDER
A SLEEPY OLD ME
COME ON, I SAID
IT’S TIME TO GO
THE LITTLE BOY CRIED
NO, NO, NO, NO
THE TOAD, HE SAID,
I SAW IT COME HERE
WE MUST WAIT
EVEN IF IT’S A YEAR
ALL RIGHT, I SAID
JUST ONE MORE LOOK
AND I STOOD UP
AS I PUT DOWN MY BOOK
AT JUST THAT TIME
IF YOU WONDER OR DOUBT
I SAW THAT TOAD, FROM
A HOLE HE CAME OUT
THE LITTLE BOY YELLED
AND SHOUTED WITH GLEE
HE CAUGHT THAT TOAD
JUST FOR ME
Don H
brought us up to date with the status of our latest Anthology book that
he and Robert MacKenzie have been working on. Don indicated that there
are now 26 stories and poems in the current novel entitled "Triumphs
and Tragedies".
Don Q:
Announced that the annual Christmas Brunch will again be hosted by Mary
Lou at her Centerville condo. Santa has even attended the event in the
past and this
year will again prove to be something that you should add to your
meeting list early. The date for our brunch this year is December 21st
from 9 AM to noon. Directions and suggestions on what to bring will be
sent out next month. We hope to have everyone attend.
Some other announcements:
Marketing your book: Check out Google Adwords at: ttps://adwords.google.com/
It will allow you to investigate tags for a new novel to
see which words will attract the largest audience in web searches.
While
we are on the topic: check out this article which I found on the web
about putting together a marketing plan for Non-fiction titles.
An excellent Blog post of ISBN rights and Copyright protection from Jane Friedman's newsletter blog. http://janefriedman.com/2012/10/15/qa-on-copyright-with-an-attorney/
Last
of all since I mentioned Jane's Web site I had the opportunity to
corespondent with her recently. I had sent her an email hoping that she
would like a copy of my recent book: Santa's Magic. I knew what the
immediate answer was before I hit the Enter key. However being the good
friend that she is, she directed me to web site which provide me with
the same kind of support I was looking for. She recommended that I
investigate the following: "I know there are a number of community
sites that can help you get some readers, e.g., Wattpad, Authonomy,
Book Country."
I
had already heard of Authonomy so I thought I would give it a try. It
has been fantastic. I recently uploaded the first three chapters of the
book and immediately started to get feedback from many of the 13,000
writers who participate in the site. You do not receive feedback
everyday but when you do many times it is very informative:
Gosh,
I haven't written a letter to Santa in a long time! This is a nice,
nostalgic tale about one of the greatest bits of magic most kids get to
hold onto, at least for a while. You tell your story well, quite
clearly and with obvious deep affection. Nicely done! Critique-wise,
there were just occasional missing commas or other minor errata. A
couple were: a question mark that should
be a period in : "Little did I know that it would become an annual
passion for more than 30 years?" and a period that should be erased
in: "but Billy . would remember".
Thanks for sharing this magical tale, Santa.
If you wants some feedback from your writing peers this is an excellent site. I am going to check out the other sites with some other short stories that I have written and put on the shelf. I will let you know.
Our next meeting of the Wannabe's will be early in November due to Thanksgiving being early this year. We will have our meeting on November
16th.
Thank you Paul Logus for this cartoon:
Also look for an announcement in the coming weeks on a Writers Event at UD River Campus. Happy Halloween
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