Chapter Three Newsletter issue #56 (01/26/2021) 😃

COLA III Meeting Recap for 01/26/2021

Seven of us made it to the meet. Four read for critique:

Our core group was back this week and we did some good work. Everyone was well and I hope some others will join us in the coming weeks.

SCWA ZOOM

We began our meeting with a ZOOM call from SCWA board member Nancy Allen-Mastro who is the Director/VP of Membership. Nancy mostly wanted our opinion on how well SCWA was meeting their needs and suggestions for improvements. Oddly, though, she said she wasn’t aware that COLA3 existed until recently (WTF?).

We responded with favorable comments on the SCWA’s revamped website and questions about when dues were due and how much (they are all due in April and everyone should get individual email reminders).

Nancy noted that the board decided to not bring back family discounts.

Our groups biggest request was for help/info from SCWA about publishing our work and promoting it. Nancy noted that as something for the board to consider.

With that, Nancy bid us goodnight, and we got to work.

READINGS AND CRITIQUES

In our readings, Larry read his final chapter of The Letters, making another COLA3 milestone. Danielle read her poem, A Resolution to the Woods, which everyone found readable with satisfying imagery. Dea read another chapter of Desert Courage that included an action scene that everyone found compelling. I read a J. A. Drummond journal entry from Power of the Ancients that will most likely be my last read from that work, since I will be self-publishing it on Amazon in the coming week (this is done).

PROOF

After our readings, I showed everyone the Proof Copy of my novel, noting some of the technical work I went through to create it on Amazon (i.e., Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP). We talked about it for a while. I hope everyone took some insight from our discussion, especially if they’re thinking about self-publishing with KDP (see also “Publishing My Novel” in this newsletter).

SPECIAL NOTE: I will soon terminate my “rayfoy.com” and “arbordinparkpress.net” websites for the sake of cutting expenses. This means our meeting status page, COLA3 page, and Chapter Three pages will go away. I don’t expect to recreate those pages anywhere else. My personal, primary web presence will be on a WordPress blog page: rayviews.blog. This will not affect the sign-up page for Chapter Three nor its functioning as a newsletter.

COLA3's next meeting is scheduled for February 9th.

Ray

PART I: STORYTELLING

LESSON: 13 MEMORY

PRINTED BOOK PAGES: 19-20

READING EXCERPT: Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin

…The way I always see her is the way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon, say, when the old folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always see her wearing pale blue. She’d be sitting on the sofa…Maybe somebody’s got a kid in his lap and is absent-mindedly stroking the kid’s head. Maybe there’s a kid, quiet and big-eyed, curled up in a big chair in the corner. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frightened the child obscurely.

MY NOTES ON THE LESSON

This lesson is about making use of you memories to express something—a mood, ambiance, setting, etc. Memories are grist for the writing mill. The reading excerpt is an example of how a memory can be manipulated to produce a “lazy Sunday afternoon” effect with a darker undertone. We can’t see the passage in it’s contest without reading the entire story, but it’s emotional effect is one that could be applied as needed to a larger work, whether fiction or nonfiction. Examining our memories and writing about them in our notebooks, creates a store of literary spices to be used in our writing as needed.

MY ANSWERS TO THE WRITING POSSIBILITIES

1. Write down…(your own) memory in loose phrases and words. Be as precise as you can about what you remember, but don’t worry about making good sentences.

As a preteen, I spent Sunday afternoons with my mother, grandmother, and brother at my aunt and uncle’s house in the country. After dinner (midday), I liked to lounge on the small couch in the back of the house beside the double-windows that looked out on the farm. While the adults visited, I would peruse books in the small bookcase there, or the magazines my aunt subscribed to. It was in that place, I read the Look magazine excerpt of John Fuller’s “The Interrupted Journey.”

2. Use the words Baldwin used to translate that memory onto the page. Begin:
The way I always see (person, place, event) is the way (he/she/it) used to be…I always see (him/her/it)…(He’d/She’d/It’d) be…Maybe somebody’s…Maybe there’s…

The way I always see (my aunt and uncle’s farmhouse) is the way (it) used to be on Sunday afternoons…I always see (it) warm and sunlit after the noon meal…(It’d) be filled with the energy of visiting family…Maybe somebody’s finishing a dessert or relaxing in a recliner before the TV…Maybe there’s snippets of low-key conversations barely reaching me as I sit warm on the couch, immersed in Look Magazine’s excerpt of “The Interrupted Journey…”

3. With the exception of the word ‘silence,’ this memory is all visual. In a few paragraphs, describe a memory in terms of another sense: hearing , smell, taste, touch.

My aunt and uncle’s country house smelled different than my own house. In a time before air conditioning, smells of past meals—roast beef with mashed potatoes and green beans—lingered. The musty ambiance of old dogs, many cats, and a childless older couple permeated the house and lent associations of quiet Sundays to a suburban-raised child. In this place at Christmas, the smoky wood-fire scent embraced my excitement as a child over gifts offered in the delicious, dark night.

COLA III Meeting Recap for 01/26/2021

CALENDAR