"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat all subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
- William Strunk, Jr., in The Elements of Style

The statewide SCWW Board of Directors met for the first time this year on Saturday, January 22. At the meeting, Leland was elected Chapter Liaison as well as Quill Editor.

Also elected at the meeting were our new SCWW officers:

Congratulations to Leland, as well as our new and continuing officers.

The following is some information from a flyer we received about the workshop:

16th ANNUAL WRITERS WORKSHOP sponsored by Foothills Writers Guild
Meeting at Anderson College February 18-19, 2005

Writing for Publication: >From A to Z

Friday, February 18	4:40 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, February 19	8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Speakers will include:

Heather Magruder, creative nonfiction writer

Vonda Skelton, inspirational writer

Jane Friedman, editor for Writer's Digest Books

Michael Cogdill, new anchor, WYFF, and children's author

For information about the Foothills Writers Workshop call (864) 225-1751 or (864) 231-6666 or e-mail webbtex@trivergent.net or wrightwriter@aol.com.

The next meetings of the Greenville Chapter of SCWW are as follows:

• Thursday, February 3 - First Thursday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book
• Tuesday, February 15 - Third Tuesday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book (all genres welcome)

Jim McFarlane shared a closer look at one of his characters, Catalina, in the latest installment of Penelope, As Good As Dead.

Catalina gives a particularly interesting and poignant account of her courtship with Claes and their subsequent nuptials. The story is related to her companions, Penelope and Trijn, as the threesome emigrates from Amsterdam to Manhattan.

We were drawn in by Catalina's character and felt the story was intriguing. Between the first and last pages, there was a very long section of monologue, where Catalina explains her relationship with her family and suitor Claes. The group felt it could be improved by breaking up the recitation with descriptions of the girls' surroundings, historical references, or interruptions from Catalina's companions.

Other suggestions included cutting back on some of Catalina's "French" speaking patterns and removing a few anachronistic phrases such as "skinny", "fatsos" and "pardon my French."

While historical novels are not exactly my cup of tea, I find myself becoming more and more interested in seeing these characters develop. Catalina's sense of humor and witty repartee has certainly helped.

In A Second Chance, John Migacz takes in hand a challenging character: a six year old boy with the mind of a thirty-four year old. Now I do know a fifty-two year old with the mind of a thirteen year old--but we won't go there for now. John isn't the only one having a struggle with the young/old inner conflict. His character, Jon, often called by his adult nickname "Jolly," has recently revealed to Tyler and Martha, his adoptive parents, his unique man-child status and proves it by relating to them twenty-eight years of future history.

Fortunately, Tyler and Martha are intellectual and open minded enough to entertain the possibility that their selected son is all they expected, and more. They are also astute enough to warn Jon not to treat the truth about himself too casually: "Martha interjected. 'They might take a six-year old away from us if it got out he thinks he is from the future.' Jolly hadn't thought of that.... 'It stays in this room.'"

At critique time, we wondered if Jolly's adult mind would age at the same pace as his young body, bringing him near to retirement age by the time he caught up to his familiar era. We concluded that the story illustrated more of a maturing process, Jolly growing in wisdom through his relationship with his new parents: "He learned more from watching the Skyes than from any tutor.... The Skyes became a role model that even his thirty-four year-old mind strove to emulate."

To the Great White North,
Michael Gibb is on his way.
He leaves behind him
His friends in Amerikay.
Maybe he will come
Visit us on holiday.
All goodbyes have been said.
There is no more to say.

I won't sing "fiddleeee diddleeee deidelydee." But I'm sure to drink a pint in his memory.

All terrible poetry aside, Michael's swansong - entitled "Shade" - was well received by the group. This short piece tells the story of a man and his unfortunate encounter with the bumper of a car. The narrator is forced to linger in a shady realm of sights and sounds but no smells - his favorite sense as a chef - while his body ticks away on life support. Creepy.

My only criticism concerns the final few paragraphs. The ending is unclear as to the geographical confides for the man's "shade." He mentions the hospital bed that his body now occupies, then says that "[t]he worst is that there's a cafÈ on the corner. I can see the food, but I smell nothing." For a moment, I thought the "corner" was the intersection where the accident happened, which left me wondering how far his shade could wander. But Michael explained that the corner is one near the hospital, visible though the window. If the shade is tethered to the body, as Mike suggested, the ride in the ambulance should have been mentioned, if only briefly, maybe as an inexplicable tugging sensation. Plus, to highlight his desperation at the loss of his sense of smell, the narrator could pine away for the even the unpleasant smells of a hospital room. In any event, with the hospital-room window closed, he shouldn't have been able to smell what was cooking at the cafÈ.

Good luck in Canada.

Bob Strother's short story, "Burning Time (Redux)" is about family coming together - and that's not always a good thing. Little Bob is the eyes and ears through which the reader learns of an attempt at a reconciliation of family members. The bad blood runs deep and has "carried over to extended family." The title comes from the best line in the story. When the father mentions he did something nice for the mother, he is told, "That'll cut down your burnin' time in hell." Great line, good title.

The story had good visuals, but the names Ma, Grandma and Great Grandma became confusing when mixed together in a conversation. (Is it true that Great Grandma is really Grandma's Ma and Ma's Grandma is Grandma? Who's the Grandma on first?)

The "I" in the "Who am I" disclosure comes way too late to allow the reader to get into the character's head. The group also felt that the tension needed to be ratcheted up between Kaye and Grandma before they break down the walls and have a serious discussion of their problems.

The Redux in the title comes from Bob's first try at writing this story. The first attempt regarded a series of letters between two warring people and how they came to understand each other's point of view. Fatz liked Bob's first attempt better; it felt as if you had stumbled onto a stack of old letters and, as you read, became involved in the tales told by both parties. Fatz had felt he was holding the letters in his hands and the brown, cracked parchment became a gateway to people and times long past.

As a writer, it is difficult to change from the third person to the first when creating a tale. Fatz knows, he's tried and failed at several attempts. Bob has shown courage by taking his first try and going in a different direction. Bob, as Rudyard Kipling once uttered after his seventh Guinness stout, "You're a better man than Fatz."

Continuing his rewrite, Leland Beaudrot presented Chapter three of his novel, Church Bizarre. Spending close to one and a half pages on the dissection of an orange while Daphne interrogates Matt about his interview with the minister and elders of the church, it was decided there were too much time spent on the orange.

At one point in the story, Daphne, shocked at the news that Matt might take on the ministry of a church in Alabama, "worked her mouth like a landed fish" and "clutched her stomach as if her umbilical cord, long grafted to Matt was stretched to the breaking point." It was felt these two descriptions did not go together well. Just a little rewrite on this should satisfy the masses.

On the flipside, Leland is well known for giving his readers good descriptive visuals of the scene unfolding. Once again he did not disappoint us. It brought a mischievous grin to Leland's face when a sexual tension between the two characters was noted. There was no actual sexual relationship written into the story, but there was that mischievous grin to leave us wondering what future chapters hold.

Marcia Migacz read her Christmas poem at the Christmas party and at the regular meeting. We all agreed that it was an excellent poem, the proof being a single suggestion to change one word.

It was much more than consistent structure and un-forced rhyming (AABCCB) that impressed us. It was the message.

Why do Americans so emphasize at Christmastime what we should be doing all year long--being joyful, sharing cheer, giving to others? Is it the contrast between eleven months of selfish materialism and one month of selflessness that makes Christmas such a special time?

May the spirit of Christmas live within you each day!

The Tuesday meetings are picking up momentum. Eight members and a new guest attended the meeting on Tuesday, January 18th.

John Kingsbury read more of his book, Trailer Trash. John's protagonist, Jake, is at a Chick-Fil-A talking with another mental institution patient who calls himself "The Apostle." The Apostle explains that the theory of evolution is contained in the Bible, and proceeds to go through the sections of the Bible that he feels describe evolution.

Jim McFarlane continued with his book, Penelope as Good as Dead. This was a rewrite of the section he shared earlier where Catalina describes how she met and married her husband Claes.

Bob Strother returned to his novel, Love Among the Greeks. Bob has changed the name of his protagonist to Johnny Chase in order to distance himself from his fiction. In this excerpt, Johnny and his girlfriend, Randy, profess their love. Johnny gives Randy his fraternity pin (a precursor to engagement,) but they have to wait a week to announce it because of the rules of conduct dictated by Randy's sorority. Randy secretly wears the pin under her blouse anyway.

Leland Beaudrot shared another chapter of Church Bizarre. In this chapter, Matt is still on his job interview. After spending the day with the church elder, Billy Brazelton, they go to Billy's mother's house to have dinner and spend the night. Matt calls his cousin Daphne to fill her in. Matt and the Brazeltons have an Alabama dinner (venison) before turning in. Leland describes Matt having a vivid dream, only to be pulled out of sleep by someone getting into his bed and then screaming as she discovers Matt there.

John Migacz went back to his novel A Second Chance. A visitor of Jolly's adoptive parents named Imuro Sakisama has peaked Jolly's interest. He quizzes Tyler Skye about their distinguished Japanese guest, then joins in Tyler's and Imuro's discussion of their jointly owned Japanese business. Jolly surprises Imuro by suggesting some radical changes they could make to their operations to obtain a share of the American market. Martha comes to get them for dinner, and the four of them enlarge upon Jolly's new concepts late into the night.

JoAnn Mathias is a new member of our group. The excerpt of her novel The 12th Gift was read by her husband, David. In the prologue, we are introduced to Mary Jane as she looks forward to an end of the heartache and loneliness caused by having "the twelfth gift." Chapter One takes place in Mary Jane's bedroom three months earlier as she realizes that her husband is having a heart attack. She places her hands on his chest in an attempt to save him with her gift, but realizes she has already healed eleven people and only has the power to heal one more person - and that last person must be a woman. She sees too late that she could have reserved one gift to save her husband, and stands by helplessly as the paramedics treat him and head for the hospital.

Carol Isler came for a first look at the group, and brought a selection from her novel Reunion Fire. It is narrated (first person) by a girl whose name we never learn. Sitting on the front porch of her cousin Eddie's house, She and Eddie discuss why he's been avoiding her. He thinks she has changed since she went away to college - that she's talking down to him and trying to make him look stupid. She says she's just excited about the things she's learning and she wants to share those things with him. She tells Eddie that he's the best teacher she's ever had.

The quote at the beginning of this issue was taken from a small book called The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. The book was initially written around 1919 by William Strunk, a professor of English at Cornell University. It was "his attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin." E.B. White was one of Strunk's students. It fell to him to revise the book for the general public in 1957, and most recently in 2000. Today it contains "seven rules of usage, eleven principles of composition, a few matters of form, and a list of words and expressions commonly misused."

The opening quote came from the Fifth Principle of Composition: "Omit needless words." Professor Strunk continues by giving examples of phrases that could be shortened: "the question as to whether" could be shortened to "whether"; "in a hasty manner" could be "hastily"; "call your attention to the fact that" means to "remind you."

As E.B. White says in the introduction, "Style rules of this sort are, of course, somewhat a matter of individual preference, and even the established rules of grammar are open to challenge." So, as with everything else that SCWW has to offer, take these thoughts, mull them over, keep what works and discard what doesn't.

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter, SCWW, which meets on the first Thursday and third Tuesday 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:
Bob Strother, Leland Beaudrot, Kevin Coyle, John Migacz,
Faye Tollison, Howard Lewis, and Jim McFarlane

Copyright 2005 by Marcia Migacz, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.