Our crew was all smiles as Sue Cook snapped a number of pictures to accompany an upcoming Quill article on our new Chapter President, Phil Arnold. Along with a goodly crowd of our regulars we welcomed Sara Efird, a friend of Nancy Parker. Among the distinguished speakers and workshop leaders at this year's SCWW Writers Conference will be our own Gene Fehler, leading a hands on session: Developing Snapshots -- Building a Poem.

Our chapter now has it's own web site, featuring an archive of the editions of Printed Matters which have gone out by e-mail. You can catch up on any issues you've missed and pass along the link to others who may be interested.

If one writers conference isn't enough to quicken your quill, you might want to check out the North Carolina Writers' Network 19th Annual Fall Conference November 14-16, 2003 at the Hilton Wilmington Riverside, Wilmington, NC. Complete details are available on-line at http://www.ncwriters.org/

Michael Garrett, Steven King's first editor, will be offering five workshops for writers at Tri-County Technical College, Pendleton, SC, October 17-19, 2003. For more information, call 864-646-1700 or see his web site.

Calling all "ghost" writers! It would be a fright to miss our next meeting, 6:00 p.m., Thursday, October 2nd at The Open Book.

Lizards, Bats, Tadpoles, Fireflies, Humming Birds. Once again Kami Kinard's children's verse delighted the group. Choosing common creatures kids could see every day, her poetry frames the bugs' random activities and displays them with a dance of words.
The group had a few suggestions on fine tuning her work and the consensus felt the firefly mating ritual not too racy for kids. Kami's poems had excellent visuals. You could see the children's book illustrations in your mind's eye as the poem's were read.
The poem 'Ma' stirred different reactions. What was in the box and whether or not it was a coffin caused confusion that needed to be cleared up. The Double Dipper doesn't get poetry at all but he's beginning to look forward to Kami's next reading.

Chapter Fourteen of Gene Fehler's book Never Blame the Umpire centered on a daughter's reaction to her dying mother. Gene needed help in the Christian Bible outlook on death and heaven (lord knows he doesn't need much help with his writing.) Folks who knew those teachings told him he needed more discussion about resurrection in the body, not in the spirit and needs to check his Bible references. The reunion of the mother and daughter in heaven needed more emphasis.
The group pointed out how the dying usually do the comforting and would like to see that in the mother's conversations with the daughter. Gene's use of bolding and typeface was very effective. Never Blame the Umpire is another sensitive piece written by the chapter's most published author.

Carolyn Beaudrot / Untitled Article

Carolyn read half of an article she has written as a treatment for a book chronicling her ten year fight with liver disease. Starting and ending with her doctor's statement, "I want you in Charleston as quickly as possible to meet with the transplant team," Carolyn took us back to her first trip to the hospital and described the eight years of roller coaster ups and downs that she endured before finally being diagnosed with a rare liver disease and scheduled for a liver transplant.
The group found the article to be excellent and extremely well written. There was a little confusion about the chronology of events, which some felt would be clarified by using the actual year instead of "seven years earlier." Half of the room thought that using first names for the doctors was unrealistic, while the other half thought it was perfectly OK. They also felt that her struggle to get disability coverage would be a valuable addition to the story. Carolyn's article was found to have good visuals and a compelling story line which clearly showed the personal impact of illness on her life - all in all, a "good read."

John Kingsbury read Chapter One of Trailer Trash. We've heard excerpts from later chapters, but this one is set in Marshall Pickens Hospital. It takes the reader on a journey into the minds and lives of patients in a mental hospital. It is vivid and riveting to be there with patients. "No one will talk to you unless you smoke." Therefore a non-smoker puffs on a cigarette without inhaling. It sets us up for the rest of the story, but to me it was a look into a world I never knew before. It is important for the average reader to see how a patient lives, if only to make us feel the trauma such a patient endures. I'm glad to hear John say that the first third of his book is set in a mental hospital. We need that education.

John Migacz finished his story, "The Table." The protagonist offers to sell the table, got no takers. He hears a message that it is time to be rid of the table. John torches the table with twenty gallons of gasoline. In the flames he sees the faces of the former owners. A ghastly ending that rivals that other horror writer! The listeners questioned using twenty gallons; five would do the trick. I had a question, "Which character was the protagonist, the table or the man?"

"Article - Part One" by Carolyn Beaudrot

The subject of a personal battle with chronic illness was written about with grace and style. This article quickly builds to a level of interest that draws in the reader. It contained good visuals giving the reader an understanding the difficulties experienced. Some flashback confusion dealing with the sequence of events, dates, and year needs attention. This was a very interesting read and we are looking forward to reading Part Two. It's obvious Leland is not the only writer in their household.

LR210 by Henry A. Danis

This is a good start to a science fiction husband-wife story about living in their LR210 while building a new colony on the moon. It contained good dialogue and flow into the story leading up to the importance of naming the LR210. It was generally agreed that there needed to be a better description of the type of vehicle or facility the LR210 really is. Is the naming enough of a hook to generate interest in the continuing story? We'll look forward to the next installment to find out.

First-person addressing second-person/deceased. That's the scheme of Kevin Coyle's science fiction novel, A Cool Dry Place. It's always a little un-nerving to start one of Kevin's readings, but once Der Tubemeister gets a page or two in, it starts to seem pretty natural to hear the narrator talking to his murdered girlfriend, recounting their brief life together in a future New York City. D.T. hopes this continues to work over the course of a whole novel. Kevin always gets the science right; makes it seem natural and weaves it into the story. A description of a former resident of Mars "going native" by refusing to follow an elaborate system of exercise, weighted clothing, and steroid treatments to compensate for Mars' reduced gravity, is a good example. D.T. also liked a scene where the narrator uses a description of jiu-jitsu moves as a pretext for a very sexy exploration of the girlfriend's anatomy. Is a sex scene next? Stay tuned.

Standing on Holy Ground: A triumph over Hate Crime in the South by Sandra E. Johnson must be a wonderful book because Pat Stewart reviewed it. This is Pat's first effort as a book reviewer, and the members of the workshop had many kind and encouraging words for Pat. The main purpose of a book review is to interest a potential reader in the book. This review opened my eyes to a book worth reading, something that is often difficult to do in this age.
The idea of a Baptist Church helping a Roman Catholic Church rebuild seems so right and so South Carolina. This book was awarded a Christopher Award which is based on the idea that "it's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." Pat's writing certainly deserves a Christopher Award because month after month she comes to workshop meetings and illuminated a part of the world that would remain in the dark. This is the essence of good writing.

Dr. Annabel Cramer becomes a woman with a past, a character who has lived before the story begin, in Cindy Kay's Dance of the Water Spider. Annabel becomes more real with the revelation of a past love affair. This affair adds fire and life to the story. Cindy's description of Annabel "scampering sideways" so she can walk and talk with a man is so well crafted. It says so much about Annabel as a woman and a person. Cindy's creation of James Martin Stephens as a religiously conflicted person is well drawn. The idea of learning Baptist theology and the Rosary as a child so aptly foreshadows where the character is going to take himself and Annabel.

As the Muse of Comedy, I love a happy ending. And that we have in Steve Heckman's "24 Hours of Adrenalin." But his personal essay begins on a decidedly unhappy note: "Carol... had moved to Harrisonburg, 150 miles away, after the divorce, and had taken Lee with her." A reunion on the occasion of Lee's high school graduation fosters more mingled emotion. He does make the grade, but spends too much time partying with his pals to make the ceremony. After a motorcycle accident leaves him with injury and without a licence, Lee turns to a bicycle for transportation. After a few more false starts, he takes up mountain biking and his life takes off in a whole new direction.

"What really saved his life, literally saved his life, is the bicycle." Lee's mountain biking gets into high gear when he begins participating in grueling competitions. A local first place finish qualifies him for the 24 Hours of Adrenalin, riding a single speed bike through the Canadian mountains from noon to noon. His efforts are rewarded with a spot on the podium and his picture in the web. "His real triumph plays out every day... when he gets up and goes to work, or gets on his bike for a training run, or goes to a party and doesn't drink.... I celebrate that more than a third-in-the-world finish." We,too, celebrate Steve's sharing this very personal essay of human triumph.

In last month's first installment of this series on critiquing tips for new members, we covered basic critiquing etiquette, and I forgot the most important rule for critiquees! It is:

Trust yourself. One of my rules said not to waste your valuable critiquing time defending yourself. That doesn't mean you have to agree with every suggestion. Ultimately it's your work and your writing style, and if you believe in what you've written, go with it, in spite of what somebody may have said. The critiquers don't know everything.

Now, on to this month's subject, which is point of view, or POV. The simplest way to describe point of view is to ask "whose head is the reader in?" Jack looked across the table at her. Any observer of the scene could make that statement, so it's a neutral POV. He found himself staring into the bluest eyes he had ever seen. Now we have entered Jack's consciousness. Nobody but Jack could know that he had never seen eyes so blue, so we are seeing the scene through his eyes, from his POV.

Fran looked away, fiddled with her cuticles. Something about the directness of his stare reminded her of Uncle Mike, of things she would rather forget. So now what do we have, besides bad writing? It's called a universal or omniscient POV. It makes me dizzy. First we were in Jack's head, and now we are in Fran's. If Bob walks in, are we going to know that he thinks Jack is cute? I suppose that omniscient POV is a legitimate writing technique, but I don't like it, and neither do most of the Greenville chapter members.

Having said that, I have to admit that some very successful writers use omniscient POV. Here's an example of the hazards they face. It's from Night Sins, a best-seller by Tami Hoag, who has a long list of best-sellers:

Mitch's response to her was elemental, instinctive. She was a challenge. He wanted to crack the tough-cookie facade. He wanted . . . and that surprised him. He hadn't wanted a woman since Allison. He had needed and he had succumbed to that, but he hadn't wanted. It amazed him to want now, to want her.

"Yeah, the job suits you," he murmured. "You're a tough cookie, O'Malley."

Megan lifted her head a proud notch, not taking her eyes off him. "Don't you forget it, Chief."

He was standing too close. Again. Close enough that she could see the shadow of his evening beard on his hard jaw. Close enough that some part of her wanted to lift a hand and touch it... and touch the scar that hooked across his chin....

This scene begins in Mitch's POV -- very deeply in his POV. The reader is aware not just of his observations, but of his inner-most feelings. When we read that he was standing too close, we might assume that Mitch thought he was standing too close. But no, this is Megan thinking, and we go on to learn of her attraction to Mitch. This POV shift is not only jarring, but it stops the reader, makes him go back and figure it out. The good writer never stops the reader, never confuses him, unless it's for some intentional purpose. Two paragraphs after the clip above, Night Sins is back in Mitch's head. If you're Tami Hoag and have been on the New York Times list a few times, you can get away with this, but if you bring something like it to the Greenville Chapter, you're going to get hammered.

A couple of editors in our group have espoused a rule of thumb that you can shift POV once in a scene, but then you have to stay in the new POV for the rest of that scene. If you have a good reason to do that, okay, but to me, it's the same sort of intellectual laziness as omniscient POV. If you're going to go into Jack's head, figure out how to describe the whole scene from there. POV shifts are not only confusing and distracting to the reader, but they lessen the power of being inside a character's consciousness in the first place.

That's not to say that your whole novel, or even your whole short story, has to be from the same POV, just that you should be consistent within a scene or chapter. Go ahead, let us see things from various characters' eyes, even revisit a scene from a different POV, to emphasize your characters' differences. Giving a character "POV" scenes is a good way to lend him importance. It lets the reader know that this is a character he should pay attention to. You can make your villainess a POV character to give her a human face, or show what your protagonist is up against.

Of course, if you write in first person, then every scene must in the narrator's POV. Be sure you don't describe things the narrator couldn't know. Make the reader figure things out through the narrator's eyes.

Now, if Tami Hoag would just come to a couple of our meetings and go home to ponder twelve copies of her reading with "POV's" scribbled in every margin, she might crack the Number One spot on the Times list with her next novel.

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 and news reporters: John Migacz, Marcia Migacz, Pat Stewart, Cindy Kay, Steve Heckman and John Kingsbury.

Copyright 2003 by Leland Beaudrot, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.