By the time you read this, there will be a week or less remaining until the April 30 deadline for submissions for the 2001 Horizons. This is it folks. If you haven't mailed those wonderful samples of your writing yet, let's get on the ball.

There's not too much new to say after three previous columns, but here are a few odds-and-ends. If you have never seen a Horizons, you may not know how impressive a book it is. You will be proud to see your work in it.

Seven years ago, Horizons was a skinny little book, just over 3/8" thick. Last year, it had grown to a more robust 5/8", and it contained 15 works of fiction, 23 essays, and 30 poems. Horizons now comes with color artwork on the front and back covers, and black-and-white drawings at the start of each section. It is not a low-budget publication.

The anthology coordinators do a great job of recruiting established writers to serve as judges for the competition. There are three for each type of writing, to insure a good mix of opinions. As I mentioned last month, they give each entry a numerical rating, and the average determines where a work ranks among the submissions.

Here's some good news. Your odds of getting in Horizons are much greater than with any other publication you might submit to. This is not like trying to get your work into The New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly. When I viewed the complete results a few years ago, approximately two-thirds of all submissions made the cut.

If the trend of the past few years continues, the best odds of getting selected will be in the fiction category. Essay submissions seem to grow each year, but only fifteen works of fiction made the 2000 Horizons. That's not many for a statewide organization with ten chapters. The competition coordinators will be happy if they get swamped with fiction submissions this year.

That's it; I will say no more, except to ask for a show of hands at the May meeting to see who entered the 2001 Horizons anthology competition. I want to see your hand in the air.

A punctuation delima deciphered: "Italicize titles of newspapers, magazines and books. Titles of smaller works within these, such as stories, articles, and poems, are preferably put into quotation marks."
A Concise Guide To Composition

• Scratch my head as I might, I haven't figured a way to flush a $200 door prize out of the woodwork for the October Writers Conference. Or a $100 prize. Or even 3 prizes under $100. Keep thinking about this, y'all.

• Randy the Recruiter welcomed some visitors from his writing classes at Greenville Tech. It was nice to have Linda Elmore, Pam Lawrence and Alissa Gross with us.

• Congratulations to Leland for winning first place in the recent Quill contest, short fiction category. This issue also published a short poem by Faye Tollison. Well done, guys!

• Need instructions for submitting ASCE text to the anthology? Visit http://www.4BNC.com/users/scww/howtortf.htm

• Whoops! Some of us are expired. Remember to pay your dues so you can submit material to the annual anthology.

• We all send best wishes to John Kingsbury. Hope to see you back with us in May, John.

• Workin' 9 to 5. That's what Nancy Parker is doing these days at Greenville Hospital. Enjoy your new editorial job, Nancy. No one can do it better.

• Speaking of Nancy, she's been invited to share her "Writing for Publication" tips at an upcoming writers' conference sponsored by Decision magazine.

• Maybe the biggest news of the night: Phil Arnold's work will soon be in Elvis International Magazine. Phil broke the mold; this is EIM's first venture into fiction. Way to go, Phil! Wait, wait, there's more. Phil shared news of coming attractions already in the works. Stay tuned, folks!

• Here's a tip from a conference I attended recently: "Articles set in 'serif' typefaces are five times easier to comprehend than the same text set in sans-serif typefaces. Sans serif types like Helvetica can work on very short pieces or on the web. Don't use them for your manuscripts."

• See you May 3.

Deborah Cohan's characters continue their playful, sexy repartee over garlic, olive oil, and martinis. (I licked my olive suggestively....my body hummed like a car after a tune up.) Deborah's easily-paced dialog creates a happy, intimate scene of two lovers in a deepening relationship. Words pass smoothly back and forth, and we never wonder who's talking. The conversations are bright, rhythmic and believable. An especially nice line, "We wondered together," shows there is more to love than life under the sheets. Some of us complimented Deborah's flashbacks. Some saw the female as too pretentious (Perhaps this is her fatal flaw.) All of us agreed, "Nice writing."

Faye Tollison gets her murder mystery off to a perfect start. We've got a dead body in the first three pages. We've also got love and jealousy. We've got motives. And we've got a puzzle: even though we were right there in the room with the killer(s), we can't say for sure who pulled the trigger. Nice start, Faye. We suggest that Faye use either John or Juan for her character's name, not both; and Nancy, who was on "eye-patrol" caught a few too many glances and gazes. Altogether, though, we're ready to read on. Bring us the next chapter, Faye.

Phil Arnold just tickles me. You've got to love a guy with so much joy in his writing. We enjoyed Phil's reflections about his anthology submissions; we felt sad when those mean old judges dissed his poetry parody; and we were inspired by Phil's continued faith and hope and anticipation in the publication experience. Phil's already a winner in our minds. Since even winners can do a little fine-tuning, we suggest he replace some of the is, was, had words with more interesting verbs. Too many was's. (Okay, now, folks. Did Phil get your competitive juices flowing? Send in your entries today. Do it for the Greenville Chapter. Do it for Phil!)

Russ Burns continues to amaze, not only with the power of his story, but also by how darn good he looks. D.T. has been thinking about getting sick, just to have a reason to read Russ's book and to have an excuse to try his cure. Few writers could make a combination of meditation, Reiki and chemotherapy sound like a reasonable course of treatment, but Russ manages to pull it off. He describes procedures that would sound flaky coming from anybody else and makes them sound reasonable, even logical. He doesn't hesitate to point out the failings of modern medicine, but has the sense to seek out the most modern treatments to complement his ventures into natural healing. Glad you pointed out those cliches, Russ, 'cause we sure couldn't find anything. Yeah, get 'em out of there. And keep writing -- other cancer survivors need this book.

A murder mystery-cum-poem. This concept may sound Poe-ish, but it comes from Carol Jellen. A rhyming free verse, Carol's poem has lots of good images. Of a tree, she says "I nestle my body between her massive toes, pressing against her sun-warmed skin and this she knows." And later, after she cuts down the tree, "I have lost my breath, my nourishment, and my shelter. She has lost her life." And while these sentiments have been expressed before, as several critiquers pointed out, the approach is fresh. Now, about that rhyming free verse . . .

"Turning Point," an essay from Barbara Elkins, is a lovely and poignant piece. From the opening image of land inhabited by no one but Indians before Barbara's great-grandparents moved there, it carries us through many stages of Barbara's life. Finally, she is faced with a decision about moving to a new city, and more strong images carry us through that process. Unexplained lights in the mountains and an unexplained hymn from her CD player help her make the decision. Ultimately the same hymn confirms the rightness of that decision. Connect the beginning and the ending a little better, Barbara, and give us more of your feelings of not belonging as a child, and this will be even stronger.

From the woman who brought us Grossmutter (who broke off her gangrenous leg and threw it under her hospital bed), now comes a collection of children's rhymes. Pat Stewart sings her grandchildren little ditties like "My mother has tuberculosis, My father has only one lung, They sit and spit blood in a bucket, They dry it and chew it for gum." Other cute rhymes from this set deal with death, nudity, and cannibalism. One, about ears hanging low, reminded Randy of a bit of doggerel from his own youth. He wouldn't say what it was that hung low in that one. Grandma as subversive! We all loved it. Gramma never sang D.T. any of this s#!+.

Aside to John: Get well, man. We love you, and we need you back.

"I shouldn't have saved that woman." Bryan Black, in the middle of a James Bond thing on a rooftop, took time to save a beautiful woman's life. Now, with the young beauty safely sheltered in his apartment, he's booming to Dallas and back to Phoenix in a luxury executive jet, picking up black bags, memorizing photographs, destroying the evidence with acid, and sensing that when it's his time to go, a woman will be behind it. The Sheriff senses it could very well happen that way but meanwhile if, as the author Dick Taylor has told us, Mr. Black is not the main character of this intriguing story, the main character had better show himself (or herself) soon. Otherwise, the readers may get too attached to the supporting cast to care.

Also from the Sheriff's Office: "She tapped him on the shoulder and giggled, 'Do not turn around. I am naked.' Dexter passed her the clothes over his shoulder. In a moment, she stepped from view. 'Better?'" "Awesome! But you'll need to wear the pants, too."
With scenes such as the one above between Dexter, the Geek in the Creek, and Chrysanthemum, the water nymph, Leland Beaudrot's tale of three creative teens in the Governor's School for the Arts moved smartly forward. Later, Dexter and the Damp Damsel (now completely dressed) join Dexter's friends Kristin and Abbie for rehearsal of a play about wizards and fairies, the girls apparently unaware they have the ultimate technical advisor in their midst. The Sheriff's never had a water nymph in his town, so can only guess at the accuracy of this tale, but the plot moves and the characters hold my interest better than a Miss Kitty and a pile of drunken cowboys in a smoky saloon.

Now you want to write a best seller. Easy. The population of the United States is about 300 million people. If 1/3 of one percent of that population purchased your book you'd sell a million copies, which in hardback, would earns royalties around five million dollars or on a five hundred page manuscript about ten thousand dollars a page.
So here's the trick. All you need to do is write a book for the 1/3 of one percent of the population of the U.S. that doesn't like Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steele, and Janet Daily. Seems simple enough to this Pigg except I don't know who Janet Daily is.

Mason Pigg ; 8)

It is difficult to jot a story and maintain total control, such as by holding that most vital alpha symbol at bay, vanquishing it from your vocabulary. To do this is apt to warp your mind. Just think of trying to go for just a scant count of words without it. It would halt that troubadour within you who longs to sing through your hand.

So if you want to plant your mark in this world, lift your quill and scratch a word or two. But do not omit that most worthy aid, or you will find it hard to fulfill your aim. But with dutiful hand, allow ink to flow mightily and, no doubt, you will know joy through your spit and polish work.

But wait! What did I just say? And, most importantly, how did I say it all without using a solitary you-know-what. May I confirm, it was no light task! In fact, looking back at it, it was downright moronic. How could I do without it? Know this, I will try not to do it again. Not soon, anyway. Though, it was kind of fun.

Your monthly columnist ;-D

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter, SCWW, which meets on the first Thursday of each month at 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book, 110 S Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC.

Thanks to our contributing writers & news reporters: Phil Arnold, Sue Renault, Steve Heckman, Randy Crew, and John Kingsbury.

Copyright 2001 by Leland Beaudrot, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.