Chapter Three Newsletter issue #91 (07/26/2022) 📜

COLA III Meeting Recap for 07/26/2022

7 of us made it to the meet. 3 read for critique:

Greetings COLA3 writers and friends! Our attendance was down this week due to conflicting activities, trips, and sickness. We had 7 writers participating and 3 of those reading for critique. These were especially good reads, I thought.

With a smaller attendance, we finished early—about 7:10 pm. So we spent some time in fellowship, swapping stories and observations on nicknames, euphemism meanings, publishing experiences, and such. Overall, a good meeting.

I mentioned that our chapter anniversary (12th) is only three meetings away (Sept 13th). We traditionally celebrate our anniversary with snacks and reduced readings to allow for some fellowship time. I’ll go over this some more in a future newsletter to acclimate our new writers.

I began putting out this newsletter since 2018 with the intent of providing a journal of our chapter work, as well as a platform for expressing the voices of our participating writers. Meeting the latter intent has been more sporadic than I wanted, but I’m hoping to do better by posting links to our writers’ recent blog posts and publishings. You’ll find these in the ARTICLES AND OTHER WORTHIES section.

Several of us have significant blogs and are pretty regular in our postings. So I thought it good to provide links to these posts and give Chapter Three readers a selection of our writer voices to follow. This issue marks the fourth such postings and Mail Chimp reports indicate our readers following those links.

Our publishings are also an expression of our writer voices, so I want to include those as well. I’ve usually noted when one of our writers publishes something, but I want to do a better job of that. So in this issue, I’ve noted Phil’s short story (Four Dead Bodies in a Cornfield) publishing in the Black Cat Weekly e-magazine. I think it’s especially neat when we publish something we’ve read for critique in our COLA3 meetings. That’s the case with Phil’s story, allowing us to see a successful “conclusion” to our work.

I also want to showcase books our writers produce, and so I have a link (in the WEB LINKS section) to a “shelf” I put together on Goodreads of all the books I know about published by our participating writers, past and present. Goodreads provides blurbs and info about each book, with links to Amazon where the books can be purchased.

So, to our writers, please make me aware of blogs you maintain and anything you publish. Also let me know about any promotions you do for your books (or other publishing). This makes for entertaining content for those Chapter Three readers who are not among our participating writers.

I would like to enhance this newsletter some. Not sure how. I want to promote our writers’ work in some way that is fun and valuable for our readers. Giving it some thought.

Our next meeting will be on August 9th.

Yours in Literature,
Ray

PART II: CHARACTER

LESSON: #47 CHARACTERS WHO IMAGINE

PRINTED BOOK PAGES: 59-60

READING EXCERPT: Masse by Leigh Allison Wilson

But I began to imagine bank shots with my car. I began to figure out at exactly what angle I would have to hit a telephone pole in order to bank the car across the street and into the pole on the other side. Then I began to do it with buildings—double banks into doorways, caroms off two fireplugs and into a brick wall, a masse around a parked car and into the plate glass of the corner drugstore. By the time I parked at my apartment, the knuckles of my hands were pale on the wheel.

MY NOTES ON THE LESSON

What a person imagines can be a major insight into his personality and motivations. That is the point of this lesson and the reading demonstrates how such imaginations can be effectively used to bring out a character’s torments. I think they can also bring out a character’s aspirations, even adding a touch of pathos. It is another tool for the writer. Consider it when you are looking to emphasize a connection between a character’s psyche and a story’s action.

MY ANSWERS TO THE WRITING POSSIBILITIES

1. Wilson’s character is imagining bank shots with her car. List ten consuming pastimes, such as shooting pool, that could stimulate imagination.

a. running computer upgrades       b. hiking
c. sky-diving               d. bowling
e. card playing               f. running
g. basketball               h. softball
I. camping                   j. bicycling

2. Wilson’s character is driving. List ten places or activities that could free a character’s mind to imagine (dozing, jogging).

a. stuck in traffic           b. waiting in dentist office
c. driving the morning commute   d. giving blood
e. lounging at the water park       f. smoking on the back porch
g. watching a boring movie       h. mowing the grass
I. washing the car           j. morning walk thru neighborhood

3. Now look at your two lists. Find a connection that interests you…Pick a pairing and write a paragraph in which you open up your character’s imagination. Use the first person for simplicity.

I began to look for “difficult” passages through the neighborhood: through yards, down drainage ditches, over fences, through copses, whatever I could spot. Then I began to stitch these difficult stretches together in my mind into a “strenuous” level trail.

4. Allow your character’s imaginings to build to a crescendo and then allow your character to find a way to stop what she is doing.

I took detours along these difficult stretches of neighborhood. A deep drainage ditch became a mountain river, wooded back yards became expanses of forest hiding packs of wolves, steep banks were Andean elevations to scale, sprinklers creating a stream in an expansive yard were a ford across the Orinoco. By the time I returned to my house, my usually dormant adrenalin was pumping hot, ready for days on the Inca Trail…

COLA III Meeting Recap for 07/26/2022

CALENDAR