Writing Women of Zurich Now

The much anticipated new website for the Women's Writing Group of Zurich has launched! I'll keep this blog up for a while, but for new stories and news about the group, check out writingwomenofzurich. 

I have my fingers crossed that the group won't be shy and will post frequently so that exiles like me will always have a link to all the creative friends I left behind.

Kathy
Seattle, WA

Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. —Nora Ephron

Blog Love

Did you know that a thriving group of local bloggers covers everything from their personal journeys as expats to local politics to food and wine? I follow many of them and link to them from my own blog, Two Fools in Zürich. Not only do they provide insights about living in Switzerland, but some of them also offer a great opportunity to publish ("guest post").

If you're interested in guest posting, the key is to study the blogs, looking to see what topics they cover, the tone and style of writing, and whether they accept guest posts. (Hint: I accept guest posts and my blog covers food, wine, travel, expat life and Swiss culture.)

Here are a few of my favorite local blogs.

(Not) Weekly Roundup

Here it is: the (not) weekly roundup of links to stories and news for writers. If you find a story online that you think other writers in the group might like, be sure to send it to me (kathlyon at gmail dot com).

Short Fiction: Hot Dogs

Scrumpy hated the circus. He nearly pulled my arm out of the socket with the fuss he kicked up when we passed by. I was no big fan either. Their presence in our clean wholesome little town created a small rank cesspool  on the village green. I thought the mayor must have lost his mind to allow them to set up there but he had made a big public statement about the old fashioned quaintness of this kind of family entertainment and anyone who said anything to the contrary just looked like some kind of child hating jerk.

Lose the Flab: The Writer's Diet

It's too hot to move, almost too hot to think. But it's never too hot to procrastinate.

In order to avoid completing my first developmental editing assignment, I'm playing around with The Writer's Diet, a fun online tool that analyzes a sample of your writing for flabby prose. The tool identifies the overuse of "to be" verbs and passive constructions, abstract nouns and nominalizations, longs strings of prepositional phrases, adverbs and adjectives, and "waste words" (there is/are).

Just for fun I created a speech given by rotund little man to an admiring audience of townsfolk, who I imagine as all quite pleased with themselves. In addition to circuitous phrasing, nominalizations, and general pomposity, I gave him a pronounced fondness for speaking in capitals. His speech was scored "flabby" by the Writer's Diet, and I agree.

If you'd like to see the tool in action, you can cut and paste the text below into this link. Click on "See the full diagnosis" to get complete results.

The tool is not designed to tell you if your writing is good. Good writing, as the Helen Sword notes on The Writer's Diet, can use all of the elements tagged in the tool and can use them well. But more often, especially in academic or corporate writing, too many abstractions and passive constructions lead to some mighty snooze-worthy prose.

Curious about your own writing? Give it a try. To see my sample text, click on "read more."

Summer Reading

Summer is flying by, but we still have a few weeks left for a leisurely read. A good thing too, since I've been remiss in posting Wendy's review, which was sent in just as I left for the US a few weeks ago.

—Kathy

***

Anticipating the long lazy days of summer, I optimistically downloaded eight books onto my Kindle before heading west to the Island of Noirmoutier in the French Atlantic. Of the eight, there are three which I would recommend as great summer reading: good writing, interesting plot, not too heavy.

Show and Tell

We've all heard "Show, don't tell," but what does it mean in practice? Here's an example of telling (and of using the editor's bête noire, the manner adverb):

"I think we've gone off course or else I'm reading the chart wrong," Dahlia said nervously.

By you don't need to tell us that the character is nervous; you can show us.

Dahlia tapped a staccato beat against the chart table with a pair of brass dividers. "I think we've gone off course or else I'm reading the chart wrong," she said, gnawing at an already ragged thumbnail.

OK. Not great writing, but you get the idea. We're in the scene, observing the details, and we can draw our own conclusions.

Showing invites the reader into the story. Telling dumps information into the reader's brain. But of course you still need to tell some things. So what should you show and what should you tell? Writer/Editor Jason Black explains, 

You’re allowed to tell is anything that would be visible (audible, smellible, et cetera) to the reader if the reader were a fly on the wall in your scene, plus the viewpoint character’s inner monologue if you’re using that. All the stuff that’s directly manifest in the world of the story. Everything else, all the invisible stuff you want the reader to know, everything those flies on the wall would have to infer on the basis of what they observe, is what you need to show. Here’s the cool part: you show the invisible stuff by telling the visible stuff.

I'm a big teller in first drafts, and I always have to revise to show the story. How about you? Are you a teller or a shower?

—Kathy

Poetry: Goodbye, Dear Ladies

When we join plots, themes, thoughts and notation, out comes our own Swiss Confederation!

In sync we devise, scheme, and spin out a tale, with six, eight or more parts, we always prevail.

Our collected troupe crafts and composes each line, where evil and pure in our story entwine,

intrigue ensues quickly as features unfold, with narrations winsome or silly or bold.

Our narrator reads in a humorous tone, then we share hearty laugh or sometimes a groan.

Your Turn

Thanks to all of you for reading the blog over the past couple of months. I've had my say in over 40 posts. Now it's your turn.

Do you know of a resource that might benefit the group? Do you have a story to share about your writing or reading life? Do have a tale of woe or a success story about getting published? Have you written poetry, short fiction, or essays?

Don't be shy. Step forward and share it on the blog. (For right now, posting to the blog means sending your material to Ellen and me in an email.)

If you're comfortable with computers and email, please volunteer to help administer this site. In just the few minutes each month it takes to publish "Our Stories" and homepage blog posts, you'll be making a huge contribution to the writing group.

Heading west and signing off for now.

—Kathy

Wattpad: Social Writing

There's a new (well-financed) platform out there that helps aspiring writers connect directly with readers: Wattpad. The online social reading/writing platform already has over 5 millions stories posted, and millions of viewers visit each month. Investors see it as the YouTube of writing.

The service is free, and by joining Wattpad, writers can upload their novels a chapter at a time and get comments from readers. Some stories have had tens of thousands of views and comments. Readers get to have a participatory role in the creation of stories that's rare outside of writing groups and the publishing industry.

Weekly Roundup: The Craft and the Business

Conferences
This fall, local Zürich writers and editors from Nuance Words are sponsoring WriteCon Zürich 2012. I love the tagline: ". . . because everyone can write."


Contests

Flash your fiction with Writer Unboxed's 7 Sundays of Summer Flash Fiction Contest. Every Sunday a new image will be posted on Writer Unboxed. Just put your story (250 words or less) in the comments section. The competition deadline for the first week has passed, but it's not too late to add your story and then continue with the new image on Sunday, 8 July. 

After revving up with flash fiction, why not submit a somewhat longer story to the Writer's Digest Short Short Story Competition? The deadline is November 15. If you're a genre writer (whether romance, crime, young adult, or science fiction), check out the competitions in these categories (deadline September 14).

It's Better to Look Good

You've finished writing your novel, it's been revised and proofread to the point of perfection, and you're ready to send it out. Stop! Don't send your baby to the ball in raggedy jeans. Make her look pretty: Format your manuscript to professional standards. 

Weekly Roundup: The Craft and Business of Writing

Constance Hale wraps up  her New York Times series on writing with The Voice of the Storyteller.

Open Culture shares Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story.


In her Writers Don't Cry column, Susan J. Morris reminds us that "it's important to understand the tricks—and the traps—of first person narration."  

Morris also offers a few choice words on the powerful effect of punctuation and resisting the almost irresistible appeal of exclamation points, elipses, and em dashes.

And, Ben Yagoda explains why your editor may have been wrong to remove the comma following a sentence opening conjunction.

Children's book writer and editor Nina Hess reminds us that nerves and neuroses exist on both sides of the red pen.

Baltimore Sun editor John E. McIntyre points out the pitfalls of putting marketability before editing and answers the question of who is best equipped to tell an author she has spinach in her teeth.

—Kathy Lyon

What Does an Editor Do?

It seems like a simple question—what does an editor do? But there are many kinds of editing and lots of editorial titles (developmental, line, copy editor). 


The one thing all editors have in common is that they stand in for the reader, working with the author and the publisher to make sure the final text conveys the author's message as clearly and as seamlessly as possible. Good editing does not obscure or alter the author's voice. At the same time, good editing means that readers are not startled out of the story into an awareness of the text itself, whether by a sudden inconsistency in tone or by an unusual usage that does not serve the story or simply by numerous misspellings and grammatical errors. 

To keep things simple—and because many of us are working on novels or memoirs—I'll focus only on the stages of book editing for fiction and creative nonfiction.

Short Fiction: The Letter

It is right that we should part; I feel that deeply in my heart.

We are so different you and me; me and you. I have loved you for so long that even my vivid imagination cannot conceive of another person, another love in my life. We are intertwined like the twisted limbs of a rampant wisteria. At times abundant in uplifting bloom and at others with ill-formed whips waving aimlessly, desperately in the breeze; trying to form a lasting connection to grow along in tandem.

To continue is probably too hopeless; too painful. Yet we look at each other and we see a person who is akin to family. Someone we loved with every breath and someone who can bring us to rage.

Poetry: The Six Ages of Nature

Seasons come and seasons go
Yet the one thing that I know
Is how we look on nature’s gift
Depends on age for views to shift.

The small child is wild to touch and explore
Rolling in mud, grappling with the shore

A little older and nature must bend to our will
We’ll dam that creek, build a treehouse, yet still

Within a few years we’ve a billboard attention span
We want snow to ski and sun for our tan

As adults nature is no longer our friend
With the hard drive, stapler, phone and car we contend

But then a mature instinct takes flower
Our gardens, the season’s pure beauty gain power

’till finally with age wonders great and small we face
And appreciate within this bounty we have a place.

—Terri Martin

23 June

Short Fiction: Emotion

I saw him approaching the bus stop and envied him his air of golden assurance. From his neat haircut greying at the temples to his discreet cufflinks and polished brogues he gave off an aura of middle-aged success.

He sat in the bus shelter, placed his briefcase on his knees and slipped a photo from the front pocket.  Then his whole body language changed. His shoulders sagged and I caught a searing flash of raw pain in his eyes before he closed them. The low winter sun glinted off a tear in the corner of his eye. This he dashed away, then glanced swiftly either side to see if anyone had noticed. The chubby housewife nearby was busy trying to keep her many shopping bags from disarray. Meanwhile a teenage goth nodded into cyberspace to the pace of his blaring ipod.

Short Fiction: The Tube

She touched the little box in her pocket and smiled crookedly. Anybody watching Glenda would have noticed the immense sadness in her wide cornflower blue eyes or the droop of her thin shoulders, so at odds with the smile. Glenda knew, in fact, that she was quite invisible to the other commuters on the busy circle line tube, except for the two bearded men in dark clothing who were busy pretending not to look at her. They had been following her ever since she left her grim tower block flat at Elephant and Castle. It was clear to Glenda that they intended her to know that she was being monitored on this journey of vital importance to the sect.

Get Flashy: Say It in Six

I've been having fun today at Smith, brought to you by the creators of the six-word memoir. Can you really tell your life story in six words? Maybe. Some people can pack in quite a lot of meaning into six words. 


My goals were more modest. I came up with this and this. 

But I really loved this one, which is something I do at least once a day.


But if  six words are too few, you might want to try writing a story in six sentences. I thought this one was one of the best memorials I've seen for science fiction legend Ray Bradbury, who died on 6 June this year.

—Kathy Lyon

Short Fiction: Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1978

“Are you going out?” Aunt Mason sang out from the kitchen. “Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

Bodie hunched his narrow shoulders and hung his head to hide the blush rising up his neck, but he kept moving toward the front door.

Uncle Royce half levered his bulk out of a protesting Laz-Y-Boy. “You answer your mother now, Boy. And no sass.”

“Yes, sir.” Bodie slowed a fraction and said, “Going to see Leesha.” Then he just darted through the door, leaving behind the rising bellow from Uncle Royce’s chair and the shocked stares of the rest of the cousins.