Eliot - A Writers' Blog

In the Nineties Fahrenheit

Marcel Toussaint © 2010

The outside temp

is remotely read

on an astute device

that tells the in and out

temps, if liveable or not.

It read ninety-six!

Such a scary number

I had been told

not to go any place,

but my mailbox is six feet

across on the landing.

Slowly I opened my door,

then the glass one outside.

A swish of hot air stopped me.

There I was immobile

suffocating, my surprise,

my lungs refusing to breathe.

Closed tight got both doors.

The rest of the day was spent

inside not doing much

with no desire to defy

the barrier between

breathing and what is not.

Popularity: 1% [?]

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About the Author: Marcel Toussaint is a poet, lyricist, novelist. Publication of his autobiography was in August of 2009, Poetry of a Lifetime, an acclaimed combination of poetry, prose, illustrations, local history, mention of his time line of interviews, on radio and television, and articles written on his works for decades, photo album from childhood to today on three continents. Raving reviews from The Netherlands, France and the US. Winner of gold, silver and bronze medals in poetry at the state and national levels. Well known in the open mike circuit. His poetry is in fourteen anthologies, in Remember Me Young booklet, Poetry of a Lifetime many more publications. He has taught poetry at the elementary and high school levels, lectured at the college level. His articles have been well received in Cantos, a poetry Journal of the Missouri Baptist University. He has participated in Washington University's poetry projects. His poems are reaching the 2000 mark. Term of Interment, will be published by NACG Press shortly and his The Remote Control Snare and Cosmos Secrets have been accepted by a publisher. Marcel Toussaint is fortunate not to have to seek for a publisher, they come to offer to publish his work. He writes in English, French and Spanish.
Marcel Toussaint's Website

A little over a year ago, I was hired by a man to write his autobiography. The assignment was unusual in two ways: He wanted it written like a novel; and he was dying from mesothelioma (that’s incurable lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos). The book came off the press three weeks ago, and I took the first copy to his house. He held the book for several seconds, turned it over in his hands, then said “thank you” with some effort. Five days later he passed away. Three dozen copies were printed to distribute to family and friends. More copies are available to the public. My friend Robin Theiss is handling this with her Stlbooks.com. I’ve never had an assignment like this before. I probably never will again.Where the Mountain Takes Me

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About the Author: Freelance writer, sometime musician, sometime photographer, sometime playwrite Former ad guy as writer and producer. Works mostly in fiction, but also humorous commentaries and articles as opportunities appear.
Noodles's Website

Setting Sun

Picture taken during SLWG 2009 Picnic at Creve Coeur Lake.

Photo Courtesy of Lynn Obermoeller
Copyright ©2010 Lynn Obermoeller. All Rights Reserved.

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Many of the people who know me personally call me “the busiest person they know.” Statements like this began an inner quest to understand my drives behind what I do and why I write. I reexamined my priorities and my life long goals. Over the last three months I have not posted anything new on my blogs. Despite my desire to share my writing with others the simple fact is that my number 1 priority is to be a consistently published novelist and a consistently published poet.

When I examined the time I have to actually write per week, I was dismayed to see how little time I have—despite sleeping only 4 to 6 hours a day. Then I looked at my writing production over the last year, including blogs and saw just how over blogged I am. My goal, as I stated above, is to be a consistently published novelist and poet. Yet, most of my writing time was being spent writing blogs and articles for the internet. I was blogging nine different topics a week. That is at least nine hours a week. This may not sound like much to many of my readers. However, with everything I have to juggle in my life, nine hours is often the only amount of time I have in a week to write. Meanwhile I am working on 8 novels and 4 poetry collections. Something had to give.

As such, I am changing my schedule of blogging all together. I will keep my Coffee with David blog, going on a consistent weekly basis. My others will be as I have time or a pressing matter to share.

Thank you for reading and checking this blog from time to time. Please continue to follow me on Coffee With David as I share the “behind the scenes life” of this writer who is determined to reach his goals in life: That goal is to publish 300 novels and 80 poetry collections over the next forty years. I know how insane that may sound, but that is my goal should God let me live that long.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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About the Author: Martial Artist, Poet, and Author of Crime Drama, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more info.
David Lucas II's Website

Frigate

The main feature of a male frigate bird is a throat sac which during the breeding season changes from its normal orange color to bright red and is inflated like a balloon completely dwarfing the head of the bird. The sac is used primarily to attract females overhead and to warn other males against intruding on the breeding territory.

Photo taken on the Galapagos island of North Seymour.

Photo Courtesy of David Motherwell
Copyright ©2010 David Motherwell. All Rights Reserved.

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Hi Folks,

Many novice writers hesitate to submit their work for publication because they fear the editor will issue a rejection, then purloin the work for himself. Fortunately, that notion is pure, unadulterated bull cookies. To further quote the vernacular, “It just ain’t gonna happen.” Why? Several reasons.

First, most editors are far too busy reading manuscripts to even consider lifting anyone’s work. They’re searching through a coal pile for a diamond. For example, when I served as the editor of a small literary magazine (the circulation never exceeded 500), I received, read, and accepted or rejected dozens of essays and short stories each week, and that was on top of a hundred or so poems each week. I published only every three months, and sometimes filling the journal was a stretch.

Second, writers in general are a close-knit, protective family, and word travels fast. Any editor who does stoop to literary theft will be ostracized and out of the business almost immediately. Even those of us who don’t know each other are more than happy to share horror stories about  our experiences with editors and publishers. The thing to remember is this: If there were no editors or publishers, writers still would write. If there were no writers, what would editors and publishers do? You want fries with that? Editors won’t steal from the hand that feeds them.

Third—and think about this for a moment—if a manuscript isn’t good enough to be accepted for publication, why on Earth would the editor want to steal it? (If you really believe the editor might reject your work for the specific purpose of stealing it, go back to “First” and “Second.”)

Fourth—and be honest with yourself—when you exchange stories or poems or essays or articles with other writers in a critique group, are you really as interested in reading their work as you are in having them read yours? Of course not. Imagine having a job wherein you have to read other writers’ works all day. I guarantee you won’t find any you want to steal.

Face it, most editors are stringently overworked and direly underpaid. Few even have a friend who’s willing to turn them over occasionally to avoid excess wear. And editors know better than anyone that writing probably is the most difficult way to make a buck this side of mucking stables for Clydesdales. 

All that having been said, should you happen to run across an unscrupulous sort in your dealings with editors and publishers, you do have certain protections. The most widely known, and probably the least understood, is the copyright.

Many writers believe written work must be registered with the copyright office in order to be copyrighted. That is not true. The fact is, your work is copyrighted (that is, you own it) from the moment it’s in fixed form, whether on paper, disk, cassette tape or CD. You certainly have the right to go to the trouble of registering your copyright with the Copyright Office in Washington DC, but that’s a costly and unnecessary step. The last time I registered a copyright personally, over thirty years ago, it cost $20. Today, it costs $35 for electronic filing or $50 for paper filing. Here are a few copyright and copyright-registration tips:

1. Just so you know, you can’t copyright a title or an idea or a concept. Yes, you can apply for trademark registration of a title, but trust me, the cost is more than prohibitive.

2. Although it’s a good idea to copyright book-length collections of poetry or short fiction, novels, or other long works, the publisher usually takes care of it. If you’re self-publishing a chapbook (a folded, saddle-stitched or stapled booklet of fewer than 60 pages or so), a copyright notice in the front matter will suffice. The copyright notice consists of either the word “Copyright” or a small “c” enclosed in a circle (©) followed by the year and the name of the owner. Formally registering the copyright still is not required.  

3. If you’re determined to register your copyright, I suggest you do so in batches. Instead of registering 10 individual songs or poems or short stories, which would cost $350 (electronic filing) or $500 (paper filing), register them under a batch or group title, such as “John Doe’s Poems (or Stories or Essays), 2009” for a total cost of $35 or $50. 

4. Yes, you can also do the old post office trick. Prepare a copy of your work, then mail it to yourself, using the postmark to prove date of possession. Mark the title of the work on the outside of the envelope or box. As long as the package remains unopened, no lawyer on earth can prove you didn’t write the work on or before the date of the postmark.

A note on manuscript preparation—Specifically because editors and publishers automatically assume the writer owns the work he or she is submitting for publication, a copyright notice on the manuscript is a sure sign of a novice writer. If you submit a multi-page manuscript and feel you simply must display a copyright notice, please put it only on the first page. I’ve actually received manuscripts with a copyright notice on every page. Being reminded each time I turned a page that the writer doesn’t trust me is more than a little disconcerting.

I hope I’ve alleviated your fears regarding thieves masquerading as editors. If nothing else, remember that the typical editor is intelligent; if she snaps, she’ll rob a bank, not a writer. 

‘Til next time, Happy Writing!

Harvey

Popularity: 8% [?]

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About the Author: Harvey Stanbrough is a fictionist, poet, writing instructor and freelance editor whose works have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He works from his home near Whetstone, Arizona.
Harvey Stanbrough's Website

Hi Folks,

A regular WTW blog reader wrote me a short while ago to request that I write a bit about the use of hyphens, em dashes, and ellipses, so here you go. As long as we’re all here, I’ll toss in a couple others too.

The Hyphen—Okay, let’s get right to it. The hyphen is that tiny little line on a key near the upper-right corner of your keyboard. (The underline is just above it on the same key.) If your keyboard has a pad of number keys, there’s a hyphen there too, acting as a subtraction (minus) symbol. The hyphen falls into what I call “spelling punctuation” because it doesn’t create a pause. In fact, it actually causes the reader to speed up. Use the hyphen to join words when you want the reader to read them as a single word. In school, for example, we’re taught to hyphenate two adjectives when they occur before a noun and when they combine to modify the noun, as in “He lived in a bone-white house on Chiller Street” or “That was an action-packed football game.” If the adjectives follow the noun, though, they wouldn’t be hyphenated, as in “His house is bone white” and “The football game was action packed.”

Folks most often get confused when the first adjective is “well.” Again, hyphenate the two words (“well” and whatever follows it) only when they occur before the noun: “That was a well-rehearsed play” or “He’s a really well-built guy.” And again, don’t hyphenate them if they occur after the noun: “The play was well rehearsed” and “That guy is really well built.” The main thing to remember is to hyphenate words when you consciously want the reader to read them as if they’re one word.

Most style manuals agree that you should always hyphenate words that begin with the prefixes ex, self, half, mid, multi, ultra and a few others. You should always also hyphenate spelled-out numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine and spelled-out fractions. But for goodness sake, please stop hyphenating children’s ages, as in “the three-year-old girl.” No need for all that. It’s much easier and less labor intensive to just write “the three year old girl.” Ugh.

Oh, one other use for the hyphen is to indicate stuttering. I suggest you use it sparingly: “Mrs. R-Robinson, I d-don’t know that my b-being here alone with you is all right.” See? That’s the whole thing on hyphens.

Okay, before I continue, for comparison here’s a hyphen, an en dash, and an em dash (also called a long dash) in that order. I’ve put a few spaces between each so you can see them more clearly:     -     –     —   Note that the hyphen is very short, the en dash is a little longer, and the em dash (long dash) is the longest. These lengths will vary with different typefaces.

The En Dash—Yeah, I know “En Dash” isn’t in the title, but I couldn’t include it because it would have messed up the rhythm that lends itself to the not-so-witty title of this post. The en dash (so named because back in typesetting days it was the width of the capital letter N) is used only to replace the preposition “to” in spans of numbers. For example, “I’ll be in the office from 7 – 9 (7 to 9)” or on a tombstone: “Joe Schmoe, 1952 – 2009.” That’s its only purpose. I find it much easier to simply write the word “to.” If you want to use an en dash though, in Microsoft Word you can usually form one by pressing the Ctrl and hyphen keys at the same time. (By the way, I insert a space on either side of the en dash because it looks cleaner to me that way, but the space is not required and is verboten by some style manuals.)

The Em Dash—Okay, this is the biggie. The em dash (yep, so named because back in typesetting days it was the width of the capital letter M) actually forces a medium-length pause. You know how if you write a complete thought and then follow it with a list, you’re supposed to introduce the list with a colon ( : )? Well, if you reverse that and put the list first, follow the list with an em dash. The colon creates a long pause (hence the requirement that it follows a complete thought) and puts emphasis on the list (because it creates a long pause). But when the structure is reversed and the reader has already seen the list, you want him to find out what the list is all about. Therefore you use the em dash (medium-length pause) to speed him on his way. Both of these examples are correct:

• These are my favorite things: whiskey, horses, and women.
• Whiskey, horses, and women—these are my favorite things.

 See how that works? You’ll also note that I follow each section title above with an em dash. That’s because I’m a bit of a purist and I want to use a colon only after a complete thought. You’ll also notice that there is not a space on either side of the em dash. This is how most style manuals say to use it. When I’m editing a manuscript, I don’t care whether there’s a space on either side or not. I only care about consistency. If you put a space on one side of an em dash, put a space on the other side too, and if you do it that way once, do it that way throughout the essay or short story or poem or novel or memoir or whatever else you’re writing. Consistency counts for a great deal. To form an em dash in Microsoft Word, in most cases (you either can or you can’t) press Ctrl and Alt with one hand and the hyphen key with the other hand, all at the same time.

You might also note that the em dash, as I mentioned earlier, creates a medium-length pause, just like the semicolon. The difference is, the semicolon should have a complete sentence (subject/verb) on both sides of the it when you’re finished. In school we learned we could use the semicolon “to join two closely related independent clauses,” remember? It “joins” them, creating a cause-and-effect sense in the reader, because it creates only a medium-length pause.

But I digress. The most important use of the em dash for the creative writer is to indicate the abruptness of an interruption. When two or more characters are talking and one interrupts another, cut off the first character’s line of dialogue with a word that would not normally end a sentence and then insert an em dash and close quotes. The character who interrupted then immediately begins to speak:

“Damn, Honey! Why d’you think I’m doin’ all this? I’m tryin’ to—”

“Don’t you dare curse at me! You have that little respect, that you have to curse at me?”

“I’m sorry. I mean… well… I didn’t mean to swear. Guess I was just—”

“Oh I know what you were ‘just!’ I’m not taking your crap anymore, Hotshot! Got it?”

 Do you sense the power the second character has assumed over the first? And she did so with nothing but that little interruption, although she used it twice for good measure. As you can see, the em dash indicates the abruptness of an interruption, and it’s an excellent way to pump up the tension in your dialogue.

You probably noticed that later in the example, I also used an ellipsis to indicate halting speech. Let’s talk about that now.

The Ellipsis—The ellipsis creates a pause as well, but it’s a pause of indeterminate length, perhaps longer than the medium-length pause created by the em dash or the semicolon, but definitely shorter than the long pause created by terminal (after-sentence) punctuation, which consists of the period, the exclamation point, the question mark, and the aforementioned colon.

Most of us know we can use the ellipsis to replace non-essential words that we’ve omitted from a direct quote when quoting a source in a scholarly essay or research paper. In creative writing, the ellipsis’ primary use is to indicate halting, unsure speech, as in the third line of dialogue in the example above.

The ellipsis is formed of three unspaced dots (periods), and I recommend anchoring it to the word that precedes it, then following it with a space (see the example above). If you form the ellipsis with spaced dots, one or more dots might well “word wrap” to the next line of text, and that would just look stupid. If you anchor it to the word that precedes it, either the whole word and ellipsis will stay on the line or the whole word and ellipsis will wrap to the next line. 

This has gone on long enough, so I’m gonna shut my pie hole now. Hope this helps. If you wanna see me really get fired up and preaching about this stuff, drop in on one of my seminars some time.

Happy Writing!

Harvey

Popularity: 10% [?]

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About the Author: Harvey Stanbrough is a fictionist, poet, writing instructor and freelance editor whose works have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He works from his home near Whetstone, Arizona.
Harvey Stanbrough's Website

On Mother’s Day
Marcel Toussaint © 2010

A mother you cannot ever forget
for she held you close in her arms
she looked at you directly in your eyes
attended to all your needs, day and night.

A mother you cannot ever forget
for she fed you to give you energy
to make you grow strong and healthy
seeing in you a young adult coming of age.

A mother you cannot ever forget
she was there your first day of school
she met you at the bus on time
to lead you home and a nice snack.

A mother you cannot ever forget
for she was there to wipe your tears
when you fell in the yard, cut your knee,
She put you back together with a band-aid.

A mother is everything to a growing child
cook, counselor, teacher, nurse, whatever
she needed to be for your comfort,
to let you grow with happiness.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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Taken on the Gulf Coast at Cape San Blas, Florida

Photo Courtesy of Gerry Mandel
Copyright ©2010 Gerry Mandel. All Rights Reserved.

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