(Thanks to Michael Forbes, Spartanburg Chapter, for the quote.)

SCWW will have a display table at the 10th Anniversary SC Book Festival in Columbia on Saturday, Feb. 25 and Sunday, Feb. 26 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, 1101 Lincoln Street, Columbia (803)545-0001. Information on the Festival may be found at www.schumanities.org/bookfestival.htm.

The Greenville Chapter has agreed to provide coverage on Saturday from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM. "Providing coverage" means to have at least two chapter members at the table during the time slot to pass out SCWW informational brochures, sell anthologies, and to respond to general questions about SCWW. There will be a price list and general instructions.

If you would like to help out, please talk to John Migacz, send him an e-mail (migaczmarjon@prtcnet.com,) or call him at (864) 884-6217.

Bob, Susan and Sarah will be representing our chapter at the first SCWW Board meeting of the year on Saturday, February 4. If you have any ideas, questions or suggestions, please bring them to Thursday's meeting or send an e-mail to John Migacz at (migaczmarjon@prtcnet.com)

17th ANNUAL WRITERS WORKSHOP sponsored by Foothills Writers Guild
Meeting at Anderson College February 17-18, 2006

Speakers will include:

Early registration ends Monday, February 13. For information about the Foothills Writers Workshop call (864) 225-1751 or (864) 231-6666 or e-mail webbtex@charter.net or wrightwriter@aol.com.

On Friday, January 27th, at 7:30pm, Curtis Sittenfeld will be reading. She's the author of Prep, a bestselling novel that the NY Times named one of its Top Ten Books of 2005. The reading will take place in Smith Recital Hall on the Governor's School campus. Admission is free.

Coffee Underground's ad says, "Enjoy regionally renowned poets - from slam champions to poetic professors! Events also include themed slams and open mic slots... Plus monthly poetry workshops."

John Helfrich has appeared there, and others from our group may perform in the near future.

If interested, Theatre Doors/Sign-up open at 7:00 PM, and shows are from 7:30 to 8:30 each Sunday. $5.00 cover charge. 1 East Coffee Street, Downtown Greenville. witsendpoetry.com

Formerly active SCWW member Ray Lewis is currently being represented by fiction agent Susan Graham. Ray says, "She is a wonderful person and she really knows what she's doing."

Susan, together with independent editor Bobbie Christmas, are holding a workshop on Saturday, February 4, 2006, 9:30 - 2:30 called "WRITE IN STYLE AND SNAG AN AGENT!" "Benefit from a one-two punch! A literary agent tells you the secrets of how to get published, and an independent editor shows you how to add power to your prose."

For more details see: http://writers.aboutwords.org and http://www.zebraeditor.com.

"Ana" is one of the chapters in John Helfrich's longer work, Stories From The Rooms. It recounts an episode of another young, bright teenager going through the downward spiral of drug abuse. Ana's parents, Joe and Josie, experience sequential stages of reaction to the changes in their daughter - ignorance, concern, and denial. When they realize the truth, Joe is hurt and disappointed, and uses anger to disguise his true feelings. Problems occur when Josie seeks counseling help and Joe refuses to accompany her.

Critique time was short and centered on the work's lack of dialogue. The group felt additional dialogue would add interest and readability to the story. John wasn't comfortable creating it, preferring to express through narrative what had been told to him as a drug counselor.

This reviewer agrees with the group. We've all heard stories about the horrors of drugs and how abuse can affect addicts and their families. There's a certain sameness about them. Creative dialogue could help distinguish "Ana" from a host of other stories, enhance its appeal - and, hopefully - its desired effect on the reader.

In her article, "Search and Rescue," Susan Boyer bared her soul to all of us. She told of her encounter at age thirteen with a "fire-breathing preacher". He conned her into his audience with cold pizza, in short supply. After he barricaded the doors with football players to keep her inside, for an hour and a half he cited biblical passages to make sure the teenagers understood how near they were to hellfire.

Susan felt especially vulnerable since she had never been baptized. She figured her baptized Baptist friends had an inside track that was denied to her. She was traumatized for months about the imminent end of the world.

She did find redemption at the end. At North Myrtle Beach two mysterious strangers spoke to her in tongues and baptized her in the Atlantic Ocean. Now she feels safe in her Episcopal church home.

I really enjoyed her story and found her style of story telling compelling. Be sure and send this off to "Catfish Stew" and a religious magazine like "Guideposts". They have a feature called "Angels on Earth," true stories of everyday miracles www.angelsonearth.com.

As I read this I traveled in time back to my days of impending hell, Catholic school and mortal sins that had to be confessed and forgiven to access heaven. The Baptists don't have a lock on determining who gets into heaven!

Elizabeth Eldering began her short story "Magic Movers" with a promising opening line - except for using "Something" as the first word - but then gave us a page of background and four pages of mostly girlhood reminiscing.

Elizabeth must discover strong, colorful verbs. The following dull verbs from the first two paragraphs didn't encourage the reader to pursue the magic: made, had come, was trying, is, decided, come, was standing, heard, move, were, and was seen.

The content tended to be repetitive, as illustrated by this sentence: "It was late, in fact very late, as the clock had just chimed midnight."

The beginning mentioned a mysterious noisy box but we received no description of the box and the sound was a thud. I searched the story for tension and conflict. The two conflicts I found were 1) a repeatedly stated fear of finding an animal in the box versus a calm search for suspected animal and 2) a lack of writing deadlines versus a fear of being bitten and missing those non-existent deadlines.

I peeked ahead at the ending to see where the story was going. The plot has possibilities for a children's story, but the magic was missing.

Again, John Migacz has shown that he is the master of the short story. In "Rite of Summer", John transported us to our boyhood days with a nostalgic trip to a pick up game. Although a stickball player from the city, it hit all my senses. Reminiscent of Stephen King's The Body, it is a look back at the seemingly simple, yet complex, relationships of boyhood while not losing the freshness of youth.

It wasn't just all fluff. There was also the somber realization, in retrospect, that all this was a preparation to life. I'm tempted to go to the library and reread The Body or, at least, rent out the Stand By Me movie adaption.

I don't mean to whine, but it's hard to review Phil Arnold. You can't impeach the man's facts-he's an established expert on his subject matter. His grammar is solid, and his weekly blog entries are always entertaining, even to those of us who are not certifiable Elvis freaks. As usual, the group last Thursday night had to scramble for something to say besides "Good work."

Among the nits we found to pick was a discussion on how the ages of the remaining members of Elvis's entourage should be presented. One suggestion was that Phil list them in age order and condense the sentence: "Ray and DJ are 71, Scotty 74, and Gordon 76." Another idea was to not list the ages at all, but simply note that all four men were over 70.

There was some confusion about Phil's wish that Scotty, DJ and the Jordanaires could make Elvis week "next year," followed by his statement in the next paragraph that the odds were good that they would be there in 2007 for the 30th anniversary. Phil pointed out that the blog entry was dated in 2005-we just happened to be reading it in 2006.

I'm no expert on the world of blogging, but it seems to me that if you're into Elvis, Phil's website is the place to go for obscure tidbits of information you'd never find anywhere else, a chuckle, and the chance to connect with a kindred spirit. I bet he even has a pair of blue suede shoes.

Bob Strother's story, "Carol King and the Roller Derby Queen", brought us back to those thundering days of the late 1970s when roller derby ruled the sports scene. This was a well written story.

The premise of the story was that Racin' Racine seemed old for the sport and wasn't performing her best. So, after a few rounds at the local bar and a nice chat with the bartender, James, she comes up with a gimmick to bring in the crowds and draw the attention back to her. Her plan is to come out making a statement, and boy did she ever. When the crowd heard Carol King's song, "I Felt the Earth Move Under My Feet", they went wild. Racine admitted that this was an appropriate song as she really does feel that the earth moves when she is skating around the rink and performing.

Other than the names of the characters all being similar, everyone felt this was a very good story. Well done, Bob. Keep up the good work.

Phil Yanov's latest tech piece on computer backups called "Backing Up is NOT Hard to Do" brings up a subject near and dear to Fatz's lard laden heart. Just the thought of losing a precious word of Fatz's prose sends him into a fit of paranoia like Dick Nixon on amphetamines.

Fatz has every keystroke that has flowed from his chubby fingers backed up on hardcopy, three computers, two jump drives, and burned on several CD's (with one of those in a safe-deposit box.) When Phil began to read his piece the information seemed like it could be a panacea for a paranoid - but alas, it quickly deteriorated into something that might have been written by Microsoft.

Vague references about "clicking in the right spots" and a magic "blue button" confused Fatz's and had him envisioning the giant red "Easy" button from the Staples ad. While the Maxtor backup drive sounds like a nifty idea, the piece never stated how much data it could hold or the cost of this wonder.

Although filled with a nice mix of technical data and humor, the details of Phil's own backup scheme and idiot salesmen stories detracted from the message.

During Phil's reading, Fatz - a recovering IT person - experienced fearful flashbacks and that might have detracted from his objectivity. If so, mea culpa Phil, and may the Open Source be with you.

Bernard Dewley attended his first meeting, and brought with him a poem called "In Her Wake." For a group that normally gives a luke-warm reception to any and all poetry, Brian managed to light a fire of enthusiasm under our collective butts. Folks loved the strong emotional images in Bernard's nineteen line free-form piece dealing with a dysfunctional family. Comments ranged from "Wow!" and "This says a lot," to "Really good!"

There were just a few suggestions for changes: repetition of the line "She wanders off" was felt to be unnecessary; and the idea of the subject owning a brand new car didn't seem to fit with the low-income image portrayed throughout the rest of the poem.

Other than that, there was nothing but praise for Bernard's work from our poetically dysfunctional group. People who normally go deaf and "just don't get it" with poetry did get it and found that they liked it. No small feat, Bernard!

Each person has limited time available at our meetings, so we read our work fairly fast to save time for the critiquing. However, when we take someone's work home to do the Printed Matters review, we get to read it at our own pace - in my case, much slower. I am often pleasantly surprised at how much better the writing seems this second time.

Such is the case with The Widow Dunn by Jim McFarlane. There is a beauty to the style of his words, particularly the quotes. We get the sturdy, proper language of the central character, Laura Ann Dunn, and that wonderful brogue of Angus, who surely seems destined to be her love interest. Every time he speaks, I see Liam Neeson in my head. This writer has been properly admonished for having all my characters sound the same (like me), but Jim has nailed down splendid distinctive styles for his.

Having said that, I agree with someone in our group who suggested more beats to open up the long passages of dialog. This time, Jim's five pages contained almost no action, and none of the tense, exciting type in early installments of the story. Hopefully, we will get more of that next meeting. If not, we'll just have to be satisfied with beautifully crafted exposition and dialog.

Pat Stewart read from "Keep Your Hands Off Other People," a story about the law she laid down with her children. The top-ten list is as follows:

• 10. When you get something new, you must throw away an equal amount of junk.
• 9. When seated in the car, those by the windows must touch the wall. Those in the middle must not touch the sibling on the other side.
• 8. Don't blow out anyone else's birthday candles.
• 7. Don't lean back in your chair.
• 6. Don't cry unless you're bleeding.
• 5. If you accidentally belch, you must excuse yourself in a tone at least as loud as the belch was.
• 4. Don't flip your spoon around the table.
• 3. At the dinner table, keep passing things to your right to maintain a counterclockwise direction.
• 2. No unnecessary mouth noises.

And the Number-One Rule of the Stewart House is:

• 1. Keep your hands off other people.

While there is little question about the wisdom behind each of these rules, leave it to a lawyer to find some loopholes. For example, Pat explained that Rule Number Three was intended to keep things moving around the dinner table. Of course, if someone wanted to gum up the works, they could still do so by passing the biscuits and gravy either too slow or two fast so long as the direction remained counterclockwise. In addition, Rule Number Five could be avoided entirely by claiming that a belch wasn't "accidental," although arguably Rule Number Two about "unnecessary mouth noises" might be triggered as a result. And of course, limiting Rule Number Four to "spoon flipping" leaves all sorts of things a naughty child could do with his or her other utensils. Ah, the joys of parenting!

Kevin Coyle's "Puck Magnet" drew gasps and puzzlement at our reading session. Kevin's spot on descriptions and razor sharp dialogue all led to more questions that answers. What does "Puck Magnet" mean? What is that huge welt on the otherwise pretty lady's face? What intention does the protagonist have toward the pretty lady? None of these questions were satisfied in the brief five pages we heard at the meeting, but they were all still pressing.

That said, Kevin may have created some puzzles he didn't intend. Why was the team a Greenville hockey team, but not named for the mascot we know so well? Do the father and son have a strained relationship? What flavor ice cream did Ethan drop in his lap? Some of these details left us scratching our heads but not for long. We were thoroughly engaged in the larger mystery of the story.

Smaller points of encouragement offered by the group included keeping the point of view consistent, slowing down the action just a bit, and certainly finishing the story. We all left the room looking forward to Kevin's reading of the next five pages.

At our January meeting, Bob Strother began at the beginning of his revamped novel Burning Time. The chapter is from the point of view of six-year-old Louise during and immediately after the birth of her baby brother. Louise sneaks a peek from her bedroom door and sees her drunk father Will, asleep in a chair in the parlor, as Jesse, "the colored woman who worked for Granny," wakes him up to see his new son. Will's comment is, "What's wrong with its ears? It looks like a goddamned rabbit!" Jesse brings the baby to Louise for her to see, then sends her to bed, telling her she needs to be "bright and fresh" in the morning so she can help her momma with the new baby.

Kevin Coyle finished the second half of his story, "Puck Magnet". Through a play-by-play of the ice hockey game that the narrator and his son Ethan are attending, Kevin shows us the fanatical devotion to the game possessed by the woman in the seat next to them. She screams, she swears at the referees, she bangs on the glass till her fake fingernails fly in the narrator's face. When a puck finds its way over the glass and between his feet, his zealous neighbor dives between his legs to retrieve it. Son Ethan starts to make his own power play to charm the puck from the woman, but the narrator stops him in his tracks, stating "She deserves it more than we do."

In response to a call for items to include in an anthology about baseball, Elysabeth Eldering wrote an essay titled "Rules for Whom?" Elysabeth discusses the way Little League was when she was growing up: "a sport to keep [kids] out of trouble ... [and] to teach them coordination skills and how to play well with others." These days, she finds that most of the rules of Little League are aimed at the parents and how they should behave, reminding them not to swear at the coaches or umpires, and to leave their alcohol at home. With at least two uniformed police officers at every game, Elysabeth feels that "it's sad that parents can't conduct themselves properly and be role models for their kids."

In Jim McFarlane's novel The Widow Dunn, heroine Laura Ann is still entertaining the Scots Canadian Californian carpetbagger Angus McFarlane and her brother-in-law Hampton. The two men discuss their relative roles in the recently ended war, with plenty of silent commentary inside Laura Ann's head. Laura Ann decides to throw a dinner party that night to show her gratitude to Angus, and to teach little Dora how to wear a hoop, dance, and be a hostess to guests.

Bernard Dewley read a poem called "Demarcation (in three steps)" which dealt with coping in a dysfunctional family.

"Toxic Waste" by Susan Boyer opens with Lauren Harper and her husband Warren hanging out in a hammock on their screened porch telling each other stories from their childhoods. As they talk, it becomes apparent that Lauren has only sketchy memories of her childhood, and she doesn't know what sequence they go in. She finds this disturbing on some level, although she hasn't really thought about it much in her busy adult life. The selection ended with a description of Lauren's young childhood as far as she could remember.

John Migacz shared the first chapter of his second book in The Dieya Chronicles series, called The Beginning. He introduces us to several members of a cave-dwelling tribe whose population is just starting to recover from years without a single pregnancy or birth. Danart, a hunter, is drawing a scene from the day's hunt on the wall of a cave. His three-year-old son, Lonni, comes to watch him, then his mother, Sucha, whisks him away to help scrape the skin of the wattalo killed on the hunt. Since the whole tribe is involved with the upbringing of each child born to it, Lonni ends up "assisting" tribal leader Angarak as he roasts the wattalo meat on a spit.

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

• Thursday, February 2 - First Thursday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book
• Tuesday, February 21 - Third Tuesday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book

All genres welcome at both meetings. Suggested limit for reading selections is five double-spaced, typed pages, although longer selections may be possible if time permits.

The Open Book, 110 S Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter of South Carolina Writers Workshop.

Please forward critiques, comments, ideas, and submissions to Printed Matters Editor Marcia Migacz at marciamigacz@prtcnet.com.

Thanks to our contributing writers and news reporters:
Bob Strother, Pat Stewart, Jim McFarlane, John Helfrich, Susan Boyer, Elysabeth Eldering, John Migacz, Marcia Migacz, Phil Arnold, Kevin Coyle and Phil Yanov

Copyright 2006 by Marcia Migacz, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.

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