WRITE AWAY, DEAR!

SUNFUN And The Paper Chase

Greetings, Fellow Authors,
     Picture the typical writer: gray hair, balding, moustache, 
smoking a pipe and wearing a tweed sports coat with leather
patches on the sleeves.  Well, I happen to know quite a few
writers and none of them look like that.  Come to think of it,
one of them does, but she IS a little strange.
     Writing is hard work.  Getting your ideas from brain to
paper is an inexact job, at best.  Personally, I blame the
fingers, which are always in the way.  Every author seems to
believe deep in their soul that they are a combination of
Shakespeare, Hemingway and Updike - or just as good - only with
the sales potential of Jackie Collins.  Reality can be such a
disappointment.  Those wonderful words you've just written never
seem nearly so good when they stare back at you from a printed
page.  In reading something you wrote, it's always sad to see
those poor little letters stranded on a desert paragraph without
a single good though or phrase.  It's almost enough to make you
want to give up.
     But not quite.  So you revise and try to knock off the edgy
thoughts that don't fit.  And try again.
     We write for many reasons - because we have some deep need
to get the ideas out, because our jobs require it, or even, 
because we enjoy it.  But true, professional writers all share
one dark secret - they're in it for the money.  Not that it pays
all that much, but if authors had another way to get their daily
bread besides scratching out pages for pay, the world's libraries
would be as empty as Enron's checking account.
     Thanks as always to the fine folks who write to us, and send
along ideas and encouragement.  The folks who have written to us
this week include:  Carol J. Becwar, Eva Lu YuHwa, Bruce Gonzo,
Jerry Taff, Tim McChain, Wallace Adams, Charles Beckman, Bernie &
Donna Becwar, Susan Will, Major & Judy McCallum, Peter J. Adler,
Jan Michalski, Bob Martens, Jack & Sherrie Gervais, Kerry Miller,
Yasmin Leischer and Anna Macareno.  Every author dreams of
inventing phrases that people remember, even the unnamed
political speech writer who invented the phrase to refer to
President Reagan's plan for anti-missile defense.  That shows the
value of being first, as the unimaginative "Star Wars" is still
in use.  I much preferred another writer's take on it, calling it
"Ronald's Ray Gun."
     Have A Well-Written Week,


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THE FIRST LAW OF SERIOUS WRITING:
--------------------------------
     If you've nothing to say, say it any way you like...


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BOOK 'EM!
--------
     The BookMine is a well-respected book store in California's 
Old Sacramento that specializes in used and collector books. 
Almost before they opened, they began to have odd and often funny
exchanges with customers.  So funny that they started collecting
them.  I'm not sure if this means we are all doomed, but there
certainly do seem to be some folks who need a clue:


  - A deal-making customer on the phone:

     "You have a book I want, but it's $30.  Would you take
     less?  I just want to look at the pictures."


   -----

  - A customer who filled out a book search card looking for
     something on "16 Chapels":

     "Oh, you're after books on European Churches?"

     "No, just books about the 16 Chapels."

     "16 Chapels?"

     "Yea, you know the one with the big painting on the
     ceiling."


   -----

  - Another  customer on the phone:

     "Hello, is this the BookMine?"

     "Yes it is."

     "You were kind enough to locate a book that I had been
     looking for.  At the time I decided I didn't want it, but I
     have changed my mind.  I want to go ahead and order the
     book."

     "Great!  How long ago did we call you?"

     "Well, let's see.  It would have been about three years
     ago."


   -----

  - A customer on the phone who was interested in selling a book:

     "Hi, I have a book that is really rare."

     "What do you have?"

     "It is called 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', but it's
     not the one by Mark Twain."

     "Really!  Who is it by?"

     "This one was written by Samuel Clemens."


   -----

  - Another call from a book lover:

     "Hi, are you hiring?"

     "No.  Not at this time."

     "I like books."

     "So do I."

     "I promise not to get in the way.  I could just read or
     something."


   -----

  - Reference on request?

     "Hi, I am looking for an old book."

     "What's the title?"

     "I don't remember."

     "OK.  Who is the author?"

     "Sorry, can't remember that either."

     "OK, you are making it a little tough here.  What was it
     about?"

     "I don't remember.  But it was my favorite book when I was
     little."


   -----

  - A woman customer, in her mid-30's:

     "Do you have the 'Titanic' Book?"

     "No."

     "I'd like to read it."

     "Uh-huh..."

     "Did you know it's a true story, except for the romantic
     part?" 
          [ This is worse than I thought! ]

                            - From the BookMine store in Old
                              Sacramento by Steve Mauer


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ADVANCE SALES?
-------------
     On the Amazon.com website last March, here was a blurb for
their upcoming books:

     Coming Soon
     We Can't Wait for...

          Barefoot Contessa Parties! by Ina Garten (March 27)

          American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma
          City Bombing by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck (April 3)

          A Common Life: The Wedding Story by Jan Karon (April 9)

          Suzanne Somers' Eat, Cheat, and Melt the Fat Away by
          Suzanne Somers (April 17)


     More Not-Yet-Published Bestsellers

          [ Bestsellers that haven't yet been
          published?  What?  Reservations? 
          Hallucinations?  A time warp, maybe? ]


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JUMP IN WITH BOTH FEET...
----------------------
     Plain English Campaign of London, England (where else?) has
become famous for their yearly list of the most extreme examples
of garbled language recorded.  Lawyers and financial institutions
were given the lowest marks for plain language, mangling the
mother tongue even more than sportswriters.
     "Last year we edited more than 1,000 documents into plain
English and there is still a lot of tripe out there," said
campaigner John Lister.
     And he should know.  One of the submitted documents was a
government order from the Tonbridge Borough Council which read:
"... a copy whereof together with the map included therein is 
enclosed herewith."
     You betcha, dere hey, guys!  
     Another language award went to actress Alicia Silverstone,
who said in an interview:  "I think that the film 'Clueless' was
very deep.  I think it was deep in the way that it was very
light.  I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if
it's true lightness."  (Reuters)
          [ ... Or, was that logic "lite." ]


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IMPORTANCE OF CORRECT PUNCTUATION
---------------------------------
     Here's an example of why grammar is important for clarity. 
A writer put this one into the dedication of his book:

     "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and
     God."
          [ Now there's a writer with attitude! ]


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AND NOW THIS WORD FROM THE AMERICAN HYPHEN SOCIETY...
--------------------------------------------------
     The American Hyphen Society is a community-based,
not-for-profit, grass-roots consciousness-raising
/education-research alliance that seeks to help effectuate the
across-the-board self empowerment of wide-ranging culture-,
nationality-, ethnicity-, creed-, gender-, and sexual-
orientation-defined identity groups by excising all
multiculturally-less-than-sensitive terminology from the English
language, and replacing it with counter-hegemonic, cruelty-,
gender-, bias-, and, if necessary, content-free speech.
     The society's motto is, "It became necessary to destroy the
language in order to save it."
     The American Hyphen Society's headquarters are in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.


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INSPIRATION STRIKES HOME...
------------------------
     Bruce Barton, who made a name for himself years ago as a
writer and advertising man, was talking to a class of students
about writing one evening. One of them asked him how he got his
inspiration for his magazine articles.
     "Well," Barton replied, "picture me sitting at breakfast in
the morning.  As I sip my coffee, my wife glances down at the
floor and observes, 'Bruce, we really need a new dining room rug. 
This one is wearing out.'  Right there I have the inspiration to
write another article."


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LAW WITH BOTH REASON AND RHYME...
------------------------------
     There certainly are professions that seem to attract serious
writers, but one job that rarely seems to be blessed with
literary types is that of policeman.
     Which makes the appointment of Police Constable Ian McMillan
of the Humberside Police Force in England doubly newsworthy.
     PC McMillan is the force's first official poet-in-residence. 
     The poet said that his time with the force will help bring a
new understanding of the police's work and aid his mission to
make poetry a part of everyday life.
     "We are on the edge of a cultural renaissance.  More and
more organizations will think about the cultural thing.  We could
have more poets-in-residence with other police forces," he told
reporters.
     McMillan, who has been a poet for 21 years, said he hoped
his appointment would help break down some preconceived images of
the police.
     One of his patrol poems begins:

          "Here's PC McMillan on the beat,

          Policeman's boots on his poet's feet,

          PC stands for Poetic Chap

          And on his poet's curls there's a copper's cap." 
                                                       (Reuters)

     [ He's presently working on one that starts, "You have
     the right to remain silent... " ]

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GONNA SIT RIGHT DOWN AND WRITE MYSELF A LETTER...
----------------------------------------------
     Get any Valentine's Day cards?   A recent study in England
suggests that you did, but that there's an astonishingly good
chance that you know the person who sent that card or note.
     You.
     While it may be the most romantic day of the year, V-day is
still D-day for the seriously unattached.  One in nine love
missives received on Valentine's Day were sent by people to
themselves "to save face on the dreaded V-day," according to a
survey released by online retailer amazon.co.uk.
     Amazon questioned more than 1,000 people in Britain, France
and Germany, and found that one in three cards was received by a
parent and one person in 10 admitted to stealing a card from a
sibling or housemate.
     The study, conducted throughout Western Europe, found that 
Germans were the least culturally cuddly, with fully 69 percent
saying Valentine's Day was unimportant, compared to 54 percent of
Britons and 46 percent of French.  The French put their money
where their cards went, too, with one in three French lovers
shelling out between $42 and $84 on a gift, and 11 percent spent
more than $84.
     The most common romantic gift in Britain and Germany was
flowers.  The French were more likely to opt for a romantic
dinner or other surprise at home.  (Reuters)
          [ And for you cheapskates out there, no,
          getting nothing does not count as a surprise
          at home. ]


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CREATIVE WRITING 101...
--------------------
     Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Hopkins ran up a
terrible record of forecasting for the TV news program.  He
became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a
record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost
three hundred times in a single year.
     That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired.
     He moved to another part of the country and applied for a
similar job.  One blank on the job application called for him to
write the reason for leaving his previous position.
     Hopkins wrote: "The climate didn't agree with me."


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     "The great art of writing is knowing when to stop."
                            - Josh Billings, writer (1818 - 1885)


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