Milking When the Power Went Off

Posted on November 6, 2012 by

Hurricane Sandy brought death and destruction to the East Coast last week. Millions who came through the storm unscathed still face an ongoing problem, the loss of electrical power. After a day or two, the lack of power went from an inconvenience to a hardship.

Thinking back to the loss of power on our farm, I remembered that we got along pretty well. We had fresh vegetables in the garden and canned ones in the storm cave, chickens to provide eggs and fresh meat, a kerosene stove for summer cooking, and a good supply of lanterns. After all, we didn’t even get electricity until the late 1940s.

When storms knocked out the power, our biggest problem was milking the cows by hand. Like the father in The Feedsack Dress, my father cared little that electricity enabled us to have bright electric lights rather than dim kerosene lamps, an electric radio rather than a battery-powered one, and an electric range rather than the hot wood-burning stove. To him, electricity meant the opportunity to milk with a machine and triple the size of our dairy herd, then about 10 cows.

He and my mother could milk those cows by hand in about an hour and a half, the same time it took to milk the expanded herd with the milking machine. And milking with the machine took far less energy and produced much less stress on the hands and wrists. Replacing the lanterns with electric lights also raised human (not bovine) productivity, especially on dark winter mornings and evenings.

I’m not sure what the cows felt about the changes, but they adjusted.

Less work and more money. It was great—until the power went off. Milking all those extra cows by hand took hours and cramped the muscles.

Nothing like losing your electricity to make you value it.

Posted in The Feedsack Dress, Young Adult | Comments Off

Starting and Maintaining a Critique Group

Posted on November 2, 2012 by

Loved ones usually can’t give us objective feedback. For that we need a good critique group, one made up of four to six writers who share our interests and goals. How do you find them? The best bet is to recruit them from a writers’ organization or a writing class. If neither is available, post a notice at the library or bookstore. If that fails, look for an online group.

Turning several writers into a useful (possibly inspiring) critique group takes time and patience. Once established, many groups continue for years. In my experience, you improve your chances of having a great group if you remain flexible but follow these basic steps.

 

1. Before committing to a group, discuss:

*** the compatibility of writers’ current and anticipated projects:

*** the time each writer can devote to writing and critiquing:

*** the preferred frequency and location of meetings.

2. Writers should agree on the following:

*** the amount of material a writer can submit to the group at one time;

*** the deadline for submitting material before each meeting (critique before, not during, the meeting);

*** members’ responsibilities (e.g., critiquing—not just marking typos—of all work submitted and submitting occasionally);

*** a coordinator who will deal with scheduling, etc.

3. During each meeting, follow an established procedure, preferably silent author-single speaker. Under this plan, no one interrupts as each critiquer takes a turn at commenting on a manuscript. Often a group modifies this to allow the author to ask for a clarification and other critiquers’ opinion of a specific point. A group may suspend the rule to discuss an issue, but it’s critical that the author listen rather than “explain” at length.

4. Be honest but constructive. Be professional, not personal.

*** Start by summarizing the piece’s strengths but noting any major weaknesses.

*** If you are the first critiquer, be thorough; cover minor and major points.

*** If you’re not first, focus on points no one else has mentioned and on major points where the writer needs to hear different opinions.

*** When everyone has finished, the author may ask for suggestions.

*** Suggest—not dictate—changes, always remembering this is another writer’s work, not your own.

*** Give the writer the manuscript with your comments written by hand or on the computer.

If you get into a critique group where writers offer destructive rather than constructive criticism or seek nothing but praise of their own work, leave the group and find another.

 

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Missouri Writers Gather to Take the Next Step Nov. 10

Posted on October 28, 2012 by

Whether you’ve been published for years or want to expand beyond Twitter, the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers’ Guild’s annual conference offers tips and tactics to help you improve your writing.

The conference, The Write Direction: Taking the Next Step, meets 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.  November 10 at the Unity Center, 1600 West Broadway, Columbia.

Award-winning writers will share their special skills and small publishers will tell how and why they select manuscripts. The sessions include

* Novelist Bridget Bufford on creating characters through archetypes,

* Nonfiction children’s author Matthew Murrie on finding your perfect pitch,

* Missouri poet laureate William Trowbridge on humor in serious poetry,

* Short story writer Donna Volkenannt on structuring stories for passion and profit.

Editors from Mozark Press, AKA-Publishing, and High Hill Press will explain their operations and, in a separate session, evaluate the first page of manuscripts submitted anonymously by conference participants.

To read the schedule and session descriptions and to register, visit the Conference page at http://www. ccmwg.org. Warning: Registration fees (members, $40; nonmembers, $45; students, $25) go up November 6.

Full disclosure: I helped organize the conference and will moderate the publishers’ sessions.

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Finding Overused Words Helps Us Rewrite

Posted on October 23, 2012 by

In a first draft, most of us fall back on tip-of-the-tongue words rather than rummage through our brains or the thesaurus for the best ones.

Those overused words attract our attention when we polish a short piece—a poem, an article, a short story. In a long manuscript, one we write and rewrite for months, our favorite crutches may not stand out.

The computer’s Find can help us check an entire manuscript, but we need to tell it what words to search for. These searches not only guide us in improving our word choice but also show us where we need to make other changes.

Here’s a basic strategy to follow in your discovering your own words to avoid.

Start with to be verbs and their surrogates, particularly seem and feel.   Don’t contort sentences to eliminate an occasional is or were, but rewrite if to be  verbs outnumber active ones on any page.

Check common active verbs. My list includes look, watch, stare, glance, study, walk, run, hurry, turn, smile, grin, glare, and shrug, Any one of these may pop up dozens of time in a first draft. How many glances or shrugs constitute overuse? No one can say. I’d advise against using more than one per fifty pages.

Know thy nouns. If you don’t know what you overuse, skim a couple of chapters focusing on the nouns, particularly common objects, emotions, and actions. My list includes tea, Glock, interrogation, smile, and anger. Frequent use of a noun may indicate problems with plot or setting as well as word choice.

Certain adverbs reveal syntactical problems. If Find turns up numerous whens or wheres or whiles, the manuscript contains excessive complex sentences and, quite possibly, ineffective transitions. Frequent use of then and now also signals poor transitions. If ly adverbs flourish, come up with verbs that don’t need modifying. Strong verbs empower to your sentences.

Repeated use of certain adjectives points to poor descriptions. How many of your men are tall or rugged or muscular? How many of your women are slim or anxious or vivacious? How many of your rooms are elegant or messy or spacious? To make sure unique adjectives distinguish every character or setting, compare your word choices in each introduction.

The more you search for overused words, the less you need to. You come to recognize more and more ineffective words (and their attendant problems) and omit them during your first draft.

 

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The Coming, and Going, of Egg-sucking Dogs

Posted on October 21, 2012 by

Recently a TV commercial included a line from an old country song about an egg-suckin’ dog. It reminded me of what trouble egg-sucking dogs caused when most farmers, and some town dwellers, had a flock of hens.

Our farmhouse stood an eighth of a mile from a crossroads hidden by a small hill, a choice location for dumping off an unwanted dog. It would show up at our back steps, where we put out scraps for our dog and cats, or down at the barn, where my father poured milk into the cats’ pan after milking each evening.

Over the years a few dogs made it through the probation period and stayed with us. Several turned out to be egg-suckers. They would sneak into the hen house, chase a hen from a nest, and break the eggshell enough to suck out the contents. That may not sound like a problem to people used to buying eggs by the dozen in stories, but farm women counted on eggs for feeding the family and for selling in town.

An egg-suckin’ dog wore out its welcome overnight. Once a dog had the habit, you couldn’t break it. The dog had to go. The tough part was figuring out where. You couldn’t take a dog to the pound in those days, and no one wanted an egg-sucker.

We had several strategies, the preferred one being returning it to whoever had dumped it on us. My father worked as a substitute rural mail carrier and knew the county well. Sometimes he’d seen the dog on a farm. We’d drop the animal off close to home. No one ever had the nerve to bring it back.

Another favorite strategy was to leave the animal at the home of someone we knew dumped animals or trash on our or other farms.

The least favorite alternative was to choose a farm with no chickens so the dog wouldn’t be a costly pest. If no dog ran out to bark at my father when he stopped at the mailbox, that improved the chances people would take in a stray.

Even an egg-suckin’ dog has the right to a decent home.

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The Publishing Process Nears the Final Stage

Posted on October 20, 2012 by

The Publishing Process Nears the Final Stage

My heart rate jumped last week when I received two boxes of advance readers’ copies, uncorrected page proofs of Show Me the Murder. Nine years after a news story sparked the idea for my protagonist and thirteen months after I submitted the manuscript to the publisher, the final product is only four more months away.

I will read (aloud) one last time for typos and begin sending out copies to local, regional, and special-interest reviewers. The publisher will send out review copies to national publications, correct any typos, and print books for release in late February.

A year and a half is a long time in this age of instant communication, but that’s standard in traditional publishing. Here’s the basic process.

The pitch: I described the book to an editor at Killer Nashville in August 2011. She invited me to submit it. 

Submission: I submitted the manuscript in September 2011. A few weeks later the editor told me she liked it and had sent it up the line.

Acceptance: The publisher offered me a contract in December 2011. The legal department asked for details on what real places, people, and products appeared in the book. My interpretation: The lawyers wanted to be sure I hadn’t libeled anyone.

Contract signed: January 2012.

Developmental editing: This step typically focuses on big-picture issues, but in February 2012 the editor and I spent more time (roughly two weeks) working on style questions. (Most publishers have their own style manual, usually a variation of the Chicago Manual of Style.)

Copyediting: This step focuses on consistency of style, but in May 2012  the editor also caught a couple of content errors (e.g., a person in the wrong room).

Proofing: I read the entire manuscript aloud to catch typos, missing words, and similar errors in July 2012.

Cover: An editor emailed me the image in September 2012.

Final proof/review copies: My copies arrived in October 2012. I hope to find no typos. Why send out uncorrected review copies? Because magazines operate with a three- or four-month lead time.

Release: February 2013.

Posted in Mysteries, Show Me Series, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Ten Reasons for Attending Your High School Reunion

Posted on October 16, 2012 by

The older I get, the more important and pleasant I find reunions. Asked to speak (briefly) at my Kirksville, Missouri, High School reunion, I listed our top ten reasons for coming.

10. Because we can.  We’re still walking, even if it’s with a knee or hip replacement.  We’re still social, even if we don’t know to whom we’re talking.  We’re still able to find our way here, once we find our car keys.
9. Because we enjoy talking to people for whom history begins  before WW II rather than before 9/11.  People for whom fast food used to mean a bologna sandwich.  People who don’t say huh when you mention Roy Rogers, Doris Day, Baby Snooks, Ma and Pa Kettle, or Jack Benny.  People who can at least hum “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” and  “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window.”
8. Because we’re curious.  What do our former classmates look like? Sound like?  What are we doing?  How much have we changed?
7. Because we value old friends.  People we knew during a vulnerable period.  People who don’t ask what our hometown is near.  People who share some of our most vivid memories.
6.  Because old friends value us.  They remember us when we were energetic, smart, athletic.  They remember our first triumphs.  They really want to know what we think.
5. Because they listen to old stories no one else will.  All the guys’ ears perk up when anyone mentions Coach Spainhower.  Remember when Miss Kallenbach raved about the young senator and war hero who wrote Profiles in Courage?  Can you name the two poems Mrs. Bailey assigned you to read aloud for a tape recording? One of mine had a refrain: “Let me live in a house by the side of the road/And be a friend to man.”
4. Because the reunion is the easiest item on our bucket lists.  Less risky than skydiving, exploring the Amazon, or driving to Alaska.  Less annoying than mastering social media.  Less frustrating than finding a job for a boomerang relative.
3. Because we’ll celebrate any occasion with a big number in it.  A wedding anniversary, an offspring’s birthday, an organization’s founding.  Earning a master’s, being drafted, joining the Peace Corps.
2. Because I never get everything on my to-do list done anymore, I skipped 2.
1. Because sharing those days made us part of each other. In high school we explored the adult world and discovered ourselves. Our experiences—those we shared and those we kept secret—bind us together.

Posted in News | 2 Comments

How Elizabeth Peters Found Amelia Peabody’s Voice

Posted on May 6, 2012 by

A group of mystery writers celebrated Elizabeth Peters by playing the major characters in her beloved Amelia Peabody series during a skit at the 2012 Malice Domestic Convention. Ms. Peters (Egyptologist Barbara Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels) played straight woman but occasionally demonstrated her distinctive wit.

Twenty years ago I interviewed her about how she created the strong-willed Victorian archaeologist and found her distinctive voice. A shortened version of the article follows. It appeared in the January 1992 issue of Writing Concepts.

Mastering the writing style of another era requires care, Mertz says. “When the heroine was speaking, I had to have a certain speech pattern, which was more formal and more melodramatic than the modern pattern.”

While remaining ever aware of being true to the period, she doesn’t check every word. “I was not pedantic enough to look up words in the OED to see if they were in use at that point. Every now and then I get caught, of course.”

She’s particularly conscious of idioms. “If I am in doubt about one, if it strikes oddly on my ear—and I think that comes from having read so much—I’ll either change it or try to verify it. There are an awful lot of slang words and expressions that were in use much earlier than we think.”  Novels of the period proved more useful in researching speech and daily life than books on social history. Her research and leisure reading merged as she sought Amelia’s voice.

The writer set out to create a traditional Victorian lady traveler and speak with her voice.  “I went through every travel book from that period, especially ones written by women, and novels.” She read, among other novelists, Charles Dickens, Rider Haggard, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

“I love doing a very pompous Victorian voice. That is the way these people wrote,” Mertz says. “I love caricaturing it. I think it comes out as being amusing because it is caricature, but Amelia means it very seriously, and most of the things she says, I mean to.”

Mertz strives to be as historically accurate as possible but avoids extraneous historical details. “It’s tempting when you find something that’s awfully interesting to just dump it in to entertain the reader and show how smart you are, but unless it’s usable in the plot, you shouldn’t have it in there.”

She expresses great respect for writing as a craft. She says, “I will never learn everything there is to know about this business. I will never write the book I really want to write, but every time I’m a littler closer and know a little bit more about why I’m doing things.”

 

Between the standing ovations that greeted Elizabeth Peters and bid her farewell at Malice, she revealed that she is now on chapter five of a new manuscript.

Posted in Mysteries, Mysterious Ways | 4 Comments

An Interview with Elizabeth (the Great) Peters

Posted on April 24, 2012 by

Mystery fans are honoring Egyptologist Barbara Mertz, best known to them as Elizabeth Peters, author of the beloved Amelia Peabody mystery series featuring a strong-minded early archaeologist. Fellow authors will interview Barbara April 28 at the annual Malice Domestic Convention.

That reminded me that I interviewed her 20 years ago on how she made the transition from academic to accessible and entertaining nonfiction (look for Red Land, Black Land) and from nonfiction to genre fiction, first Gothics as Barbara Michaels and then mysteries as Elizabeth Peters. At that time (1991) she already had 50 books to her credit.

What she told me still applies, so a shortened version of the first of my two articles follows. It appeared in Writing Concepts, December 1991, under the head “Egyptologist tells how she writes as two novelists.”

 

Today Barbara Mertz is better known as Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, the authors of bestselling novels noted for strong story lines, well-defined characters, accurate settings and serious themes both masked and emphasized by humor.

Thinking back to the beginning of her writing career and the development of her writing style, Mertz says, “I’m a big reader. I think that’s probably the most important thing for anyone who writes—reading enormously. You end up being imitative at various stages of your life. You imitate the writers you admire.  I think that’s a useful stage, too. It teaches you some of the techniques of syntax and how to get an idea across. And eventually, one hopes, you develop your own style.”

Developing your voice takes time. She found hers in nonfiction much more easily than she did in fiction. Publishers rejected her first novels. She says, “I had not found my voice. It’s a rather pretentious terms, but I think it’s true that there’s a certain kind of thing that each person does well, and you can mess around trying this and trying that.”

You also need to learn what works, and sells, in your preferred genre. Mertz says, “You have this awful crisis between writing for the market and being totally cynical, giving up what you like to do just to sell something. … I think you have to consider the market, but I just don’t think anyone can write his or her best by playing solely to the market.

She broke in with traditional Gothics—“Victorian settings and spirits and haunted castles and that sort of thing.” Once established, she moved to modern settings and wandered from the formula. She found the restraint on humor frustrating.

So she became Elizabeth Peters, a mystery writer noted for her humor. The styles and content produced under the two names differ enough that many readers don’t realize that Michaels and Peters are the same person. Yet Mertz says she doesn’t consciously make her writing style fit the pseudonym.

Michaels and Peter strike different tones. “Peters is a lot sillier,” Mertz says. “I am more sarcastic, and the dialogue is, shall we say, sappier and more sardonic. The whole tone of the books, the commentary, is humorous, but I’m still talking about serious things. Most of the things I’m saying, whether they’re hidden under a guise of humor or not, are serious ideas. Definitely the Michaels books are more serious in tone. Peters makes fun of everything—of pomposity, of staid ideas, of prejudice.”

 

 

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An Opportunity to Promote Reading

Posted on April 1, 2012 by

The Missouri Center for the Book (MCB) board of directors elected me to a three-year term at the March meeting. Librarians and college professors dominate the 18-member board, so part of my function will be to work with the writing community.

MCB is an affiliate of the National Center for the Book, Library of Congress. In Missouri, the mission is to

  • bring together authors, publishers, librarians, scholars, teachers and readers;
  • promote the state’s literary heritage and community of the book;
  • promote public interest in books, reading and libraries;
  • strengthen and celebrate the role of books in the human endeavor;
  • recognize the contributions of Missourians involved in the literary arts.

As a child, I read any book I could get my hands on and longed for more. Books entertained and educated me and became a crucial part of my life. It’s an honor and an obligation to work to bring such experiences to others. 

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