Author Archive

Melissa Westemeier

I’m no poet.  I try.  I read poetry.   I scribble a few lines now and then.  I even submitted a few poems that made it to publication.  I believe in my heart that even if I never become a good poet, learning and trying poetry makes me a better writer.  Poetry relies on all the loveliness of language–imagery, metaphor, assonance, rhyme, rhythm–that improves any kind of writing.

But I feel rather lonely writing bad poetry.  I don’t aspire (really) to write good poetry.  Most poets I know either have their poems come easily or they make much of even mediocre poems that they write.  No one goes around talking about bad poetry or admitting to writing any.

Until today.  Today at BlogHer I got to peek at someone else’s bad poetry habits and learn two things:

a) I’m not alone.

b) Bad poetry CAN lead to better writing.  And occasionally a decent poem.

Check it out over at BlogHer:  How to Write (Better): Even Bad Poetry Can Make You A Better Writer by Schmutzie.

Melissa Westemeier

Our publishing coach, Melissa Rosati, recommended a sum total of 90 hours–an hour a day for 90 days to pitch our book project:

My recommendation is one hour per day for each author. 15 minutes “listening” in chat rooms to writer discussions; 30 minutes                        formulating new content for one or more social media applications (writer forums, blogs, facebook, twitter); 15 minutes posting material/maintaining the website.

I confess, my jaw dropped when I read that.  Perhaps it’s because I’m skeptical of how useful this approach is for writers.  Maintaining my other blogs, I’m constantly badgered by people with requests to pitch their work/product/service/blog.  These people aren’t sincere, they’re predatory in their networking style and that does not inspire me to help them out.  I generally delete these requests.  I can tell when people are in the blogosphere for the networking at when they’re in it for the relationship.  I’m blogging relationally.  And of everyone in Screw Iowa! I’m online the most. I find social networking distasteful and for the rest of our group, it’s simply not their style.

So when I read this post by Rob Eager, it justified my position somewhat.  It strikes me that there are better ways to market a book than stockpiling “friends” online and tweeting about it–there’s a lot of chatter in cyberspace–is anyone really listening?

Spill it, reader:  have you used social networking to sell your book?  Has it worked out for you?  What do you think of Rob Eager’s piece?

The short story is probably the most difficult thing to write.  If you’re ever written one, or feel the itch to begin one, here’s inspiration:  Narrative Library is holding their annual Story Contest–the deadline is July 31st.  Check it out!

Our newest “HOOK” is by:

Ann Wahlman spent her formative years in New England. She now resides in Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived for the past seven years. Ann holds a degree in Psychology from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and is planning to pursue a Masters in Writing.

When I was a boy, my family lived out in Minnesota in a town by the name of Adrian, about halfway between Worthington and Luverne, where the soft undulating hills gave way to the wide open expanse of the prairie. The grasses would rise up gold in the late summer, the autumn sun drying them out to a pale silver-gold while the wind whipped the dust up off the ground and threw it into your eyes. Old Man Winter would come hard and fast, blanketing the state and our little town in snow until the massive lands seemed frozen in time. The winter thaw always gave way to the spring, where trees would awake and bud, the grasses thrust their way out of the wet earth, and animals forego their winter hibernation. In summer it was so green you could smell it — a rich, verdant bed of grass as far as the eye could see. Each season had its own look, like the ladies in town that had a different type of frippery for each day of the week.

The country was just recovering from the Great Depression in the 1930s. Our Ma didn’t have any of the fine frocks that the ladies in town had, but that didn’t seem to bother her one bit. She had a saying that went “food before finery”, and that was one thing we could always count on – we would have food in our bellies, even if we didn’t have shoes on our feet.

Our Pa was a cattle rancher, unlike his father who had worked laying the tracks of the St. Paul Railroad Company that still ran through our small town. Pa was the silent type, as stoic as the tall juniper tree in our backyard. Its branches only wavered when the wind blew something awful, and even then the branches would only give the slightest quiver. When Pa quivered, we knew he meant business.

Things were a lot different back in those days. Like many of our neighbors, we weren’t wired for electricity yet and we lacked indoor plumbing. The outhouse in our backyard was sweltering in the summer — a stench that would make you gag even if you held your breath, and colder than a witch’s tit in the middle of winter. During those two seasons you could set your watch by our lightning fast trips to the john.

Like most families in Adrian, ours was both German and Catholic – though we were also part Irish, thanks to Ma. I was the middle child of five, smack between two older twin sisters, and a younger brother and sister. As the eldest boy in our family, I had a lot of responsibility even at the age of seven. My younger siblings — Mary, aged three, and Walter, five —fell to my care once they became toddlers. The only time I wasn’t required to look after my younger siblings was after school when I went hunting, or when I was helping Pa out on the ranch. Caroline and Hannah — both aged ten — helped Ma out with the chickens, the housework, the gardening, and other kitchen duties deemed unfit for a boy my age.

In those days, you could bring your shotgun to school and sling it right on the coatrack with your coat, and no one raised so much as an eyebrow if a young boy had a pocketknife in his desk. So it was that one afternoon in the spring of 1937, Billy and I had our shotguns slung over our shoulders as we walked alongside each other, slopping through mud and kicking stones along the path on our way to our hunting grounds — a thicket of trees nestled into the side of a hill not far from the school house. It was late in April and the weather had turned a few weeks back. The snow had melted, funneling itself into the creek bed with such speed that what was normally a trickle in late summer was now fast rapids. The first spring grasses were pushing their way out of the thin crust of snow that was left and the trees had just begun to show the first buds of spring.

Billy and I were playing cowboys and Indians, firing off imaginary rounds at each other and arguing over who would play John Wayne. Billy carelessly swung his rifle toward me, and there was a loud crack as the ammunition discharged from the barrel. We were familiar enough with our guns to know the sound, but it still scared the devil out of both of us. I’d never known what it was like to get shot at before, but suddenly I knew more than I’d ever wanted to know about it. It hurt like the dickens — a burning, searing pain hotter than the hottest day I’d ever spent fanning myself in the shade while the cicadas chirruped loudly in my ears.

“Harry!” Billy yelled, the fear rising in his voice. “Harry, are you all right?”

I hollered something awful back at him.

He dropped his shotgun as if it were a red-hot branding iron and came running at me, skidding to a stop on his knees by my side.

“Aw hell, Billy! You shot me!” I held my hand out to him to show him my mangled paw. The buckshot had nicked up my left hand and had taken off the tip of my thumb.

“Oh, sweet mother of Mary,” he breathed. “It was an accident, I swear!”

“Don’t you dare use the Lord’s name in vain. My mother’ll get a switch if she so much as hears you breathe it.”

“Oh, Harry… Oh, that looks bad,” he said, inspecting it a little closer.

“Well quit gawking at it and let me get home to my mother,” I said, a little irritably.

He paled at the mention of my mother — she had a reputation that wasn’t at all exaggerated.

“You’re not gonna tell, are you?”

“If I show up with my thumb half blown to bits, you think she won’t ask?”

“She’ll tell my mother, Harry. They’ll take my gun away!” Billy loved that gun like a girl, that is, if he had a girl — which I knew he didn’t.

I rummaged in my coat pocket with my good hand for my white handkerchief and wrapped it around my hand. Blood soaked through it almost immediately. “Don’t worry about it, Billy. I ain’t gonna tell her you had anything to do with it. I’m gonna be in trouble anyway, so I’ll tell her it was me.” I got to my feet and slung my shotgun over my shoulder, holding my injured hand out in front of me like a priest holding the Bible at the liturgical procession. I started off towards home.

“Where are you going?” he called after me.

“Home. Where do you think?” I said. “You’d better run on home yourself now. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

I left him there standing next to his beloved shotgun — lying neglected in the dirt.

Ma was in the kitchen with my older sisters. I stepped into the kitchen doorway and the beginnings of dinner wafted to my nose, making my stomach growl. They were working on some dough, rolling it out and cutting out shapes, piling the scraps back up to be rolled out again. My mother, blessedly, had her back to me.

“What took you so long, Harry?” she asked, her attention on the dough rather than on me.

“Ma, I…”

I was just working out how best to tell her when Caroline caught sight of the blood-soaked handkerchief. Her eyes went wide and I shot her a warning look that begged her not to scream — but she screamed. My mother turned around to see me standing there, silent, bloody, looking scared — and a whole host of terrible things likely went through her mind.

“Lord have mercy!” she said as she dropped her rolling pin onto the floor. It made a thud against the wooden floors and rolled to her feet. She ignored it completely and rushed to my side. “Oh Harry, are you all right? What happened?”

“I’m fine, Ma. I just…” I looked down at my hand. “I done shot my hand.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’ll need to see the doctor,” I said, trying to sound calm. “But I won’t die or nothing.”

She straightened up a little, being assured of my continued existence — though her switch might end me after the doctor had stitched me up. “Well, let’s see that hand,” she said.

I unwrapped it for her and she had a look, clucking her tongue at the shame of it all. Without a moment’s hesitation she put on her coat and her hat, ordered the girls to mind the house and finish dinner, and ushered me down the steps to the Chevrolet Six they had bought the year I was born. They had gotten it brand-new, and although it was seven — going on eight — years old, it was still running fine thanks to Pa’s careful maintenance. It was still better than riding horseback down to Dr. Adler’s house with my hand throbbing with each sway of the saddle, but as the little Chevy bounced and rolled its way down the dirt road, I was starting to think it wasn’t all that much better.

Dr. Adler’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Evelyn, met us at the door and showed us into her father’s office. I was sure she was used to seeing some pretty horrifying things being a doctor’s daughter and all, and her father having his practice out of his house, but she seemed white-faced and terrified. Dr. Adler came in, all business, and took a look at my hand. He picked out what buckshot he could and cleaned it up, but he hesitated with a frown as he looked at my thumb.

“Mrs. Persig, I can try to save the thumb if you like. But I’m concerned about gangrene. Otherwise, I’ll have to amputate the portion above the knuckle and stitch it back up.”

I didn’t understand half of the words the doctor had said, but I knew what gangrene was from Pa’s stories about the war — and it scared me.

Ma pressed her lips together in a frown and looked at me critically. “If he’s old enough to shoot his fool thumb off, he’s old enough to decide how to fix it,” she said. She folded her arms across her chest and stared me down.

Dr. Adler looked at my mother carefully. “Mrs. Persig?” he asked.

“It’s his decision,” she insisted. She nodded her head in my direction, not even bothering to look at him.

The doctor looked at me with his eyebrows raised. I don’t think he’d ever heard of a mother letting her son make such a choice. “Harry?” he asked, finally.

I looked at my mother, and returned my gaze back to him. I set my chin and gave them both a nod of my head to make sure they knew I meant business.

“Take it off,” I said.

You know the drill, reader.  Leave your comments and feedback for Ann!

This piece is an intro to a larger work by Jenn Ouellette.  You can read more of her work at her blog, Jenn at Juggling Life and Jenn’s a contributor and editor over at The Women’s Colony.  You know the drill, read it and leave her feedback!

Midlife (a stage in which I’m solidly entrenched) is the time when we start to reflect upon our lives. We are no longer worrying about becoming who we are meant to be; we are that person—for good, for bad, for real. Which is not to say that we can’t or won’t change in some ways; but we probably are not going to become an astronaut after all.

So we reflect, look back and measure.

How does a 46-year old woman, long-married, mother of four take the measure of her life? There are so many possibilities—education, career, husband, kids, volunteer work, hobbies, future dreams.

For an extroverted person whose milieu has always been interpersonal skills my focus lately has been on friends.

Up until about age 8 the memories are either a blur or known to me as a story told by my mother.

I know that when I was born my mother had a friend who had a baby about a month older than I was. We were playpen pals for about a year. I don’t believe there exists a photo of the two of us. I do know that my mother retained a lifelong bitterness that she couldn’t use her favorite girl’s name, Jill, for me because her friend’s baby was named Jill. Then the friend had the audacity to move away—making the accommodation all for naught.

The first friend I actually have snatches of memory about was from kindergarten and first grade. I don’t remember her name and I can’t ask my mother because she is dead. I do remember that small friend and I were the best of friends and the worst of enemies. I remember clinging hugs, hair-pulling and racing down the sidewalk on training wheels– knobby skinned knees pumping furiously and stringy, dishwater blonde hair flying behind us.

Between kindergarten and third grade we moved three times and I attended four schools. I’m sure I had friends, but not for long.

It is Leslie Heymann, my pal in third through sixth grades, whom I truly remember as my first best friend.  I think it was through my friendship with her that I realized that, like my mother, I need one really great friend at all times. Leslie’s family had plenty of money, but her parents were divorced and she was Jewish. My mother had no money, “lived in sin” with her boyfriend, and though I wasn’t Jewish it was still vividly clear that neither of us quite fit the mold of the wealthy Santa Monica neighborhood where we attended elementary school.

But we had each other, and that was more than enough.

In the 1970s two ten-year olds with bicycles and working mothers had a level of freedom my children could not dream of.  “Free-range” does not begin to describe our ability to roam.

You know the drill, read the excerpt and post a comment!  This week’s Hook is from budding author Erin Stevens.  A prolific poet and short story writer, this is her first novel.

The Accident

There are moments in life that you just can’t prepare for. That even if you could prepare, you wouldn’t know where to start. I never would’ve anticipated the event that would forever distort a good life and turn it into one of misery.

Before the accident, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who I was. Ava Carver: high school junior, reluctant member of the tennis team, hardworking but always one point short of a 4.0, even with my hours of academic labor. I was friendly enough to everyone, but no more open than I had to be. I was the new girl, the girl who had lived in four different states and attended six different schools. I wasn’t going anywhere this time– dad promised.

Anyway, I got along pretty well with my parents; especially when they vowed to let me finish high school without being uprooted. Again. My dad was a financial consultant, and he was always getting offered “bigger and better” positions every few years. He claimed it was in our family’s best interest, but I think he just got bored being stuck in the same town for more than a few years. He got me involved with tennis, and spent endless hours on the driveway drilling strategy into my brain. Naturally, I felt like I had to keep playing for him. His intentions were good though, so I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wanted to retire my tennis career.

My mother was a natural worrywart; since she didn’t work, she directed that worry at my brother, Cameron, and me. If I were a bug, then she would be the microscope, endlessly hovering over me. Both of them over-bearing, I still loved my parents. They, however, had a weird relationship. They split their attention between my brother and me so well that they practically danced around each other. No fights or huge disagreements, but no signs of affection either. I worried about what they would be like once Cameron and I weren’t there anymore.

My brother Cameron, he’s a different story. The only time either of us have ever agreed on anything was when we both begged our dad to not make us move again. He pleaded for a different reason though: hockey. His world revolved around hockey, and although he was a freshman and new to the school, he’d already proven during the summer to be the high school’s hockey prodigy. Imagine, walking down the hall as a junior, finally starting to tread water when someone approaches and says: “Hey, you’re Cameron’s sister right?” Plus, ever since his talent started to “shine through,” Cam sucked up every inch of my dad’s time. That created a lovely mixture of sibling tension.

While Cameron wanted to stay for hockey, I begged to stay because I wanted to actually make friends. I remember moving in eighth grade, already expecting to be on my own since most friendships were already established. It didn’t bother me so much anymore; I’d become independent over the years and sometimes preferred the solitude. Still, as I found myself discreetly occupying a back corner desk, I couldn’t help but hope that things would, for once, be different.

Now I’ve started at another high school for my junior year. For the first two weeks I spent lunch hours and study time observing a group of girls. They weren’t the most popular, but it was a group that I could see myself meshing with. I imagined conversations I would have with them at lunch, maybe not even talking, but sitting with a core group of friends instead of other loners would be a step up. The only friend I had was a journal, but it does nothing for social stimulation. I spent my lunch hour looking at textbooks and homework so I could get ahead in my AP classes.

My love life was… taking an indefinite vacation. I’d been on a few dates, and was asked to Homecoming the previous year at my old school (I’d been there a record of two years) by the drop– dead– gorgeous football captain Evan Mathis whom I discovered, to my embarrassment, only asked me to make one of his ex-girlfriends jealous. Then there was Nolan Reeves, the quiet, soulful boy who sat next to me in my fourth period math class at my current school. We’d barely spoken more than a few words, but I found him interesting. He always asked me for a number two pencil. Every day I always supplied it, and he always gave it back after spending an entire class period sketching. The light scratch of the pencil soothed me into a place where I didn’t feel the pain of the quadratic formula. I guess I wasn’t in too big of a rush to find “my true love,” and since I hadn’t found anyone yet, I wasn’t too worried.

All in all, everything seemed pretty good. I wasn’t ungrateful for my life; I was complacent, actually, because I knew I should be. Still, while I greeted the world with a smile, my eyes searched relentlessly for something that would satisfy me. Most people would think I was pining after the cute guy seven lockers down, or envying the girl who walked past me wearing the shirt I wanted to buy two weeks ago, but that was so far off the mark.

I was claimed by others, but I didn’t feel claimed to myself, and I was feeling an emptiness inside. I had no idea what any of this meant. Not until after, when I finally came into myself.

That’s what I was thinking about when it happened. I was trying to drown out my dad’s endless babble about training for the big tennis match the following weekend. He hadn’t come right out and said that I wasn’t playing well, but his condescending tone gave him away. He tried to make jokes after his overly critical speech, but the damage was done. I pressed my face against the cool window as I watched the world go by. I made up stories about the people we passed, each person having a piece of the life I wanted. It was in the middle of imagining the middle aged woman who looked like she was a lawyer when life threw me an unexpected curve ball.

Maybe it was that split second my Dad glanced over at me, offering an olive branch. Maybe it was the other driver who ran the red light just as we pulled through the busiest intersection in town. I heard the screaming brakes, the sound of metal against metal, horns blaring, glass shattering, and a few choice words from dad. I saw my father’s face masked in one of horror, the red, speeding bullet growing closer, and finally, my own shocked face reflected in the glass.

And then I saw nothing at all.

As in photography, archery or karate, focus is an excellent tool for writing. Focusing in on the subject matter can give an essay deeper meaning. It can give a poem instant revelation. It can give a character back story or an essay immediacy.
The smaller the moment you’re writing about, the better the opportunity for description and the richer the experience for your reader. I tell my writing students to write about a single moment–a first kiss, their first time driving a car, the first time they swam underwater–to exercise focus. Instead of writing a narrative about a family vacation or falling in love, topics that require scene after scene after scene, writing about a single moment for 3-4 pages allows a writer to slow down and recreate all the sensations of that particular moment.
Writing with singular focus, whether in a poem, story, essay or novel chapter, can help a writer mine out the best gems. Try it!

CHAPTER 22

Dave, Meet the Cartel

“That pinche gringo Pete has split with fifty kilos of our pot, patron,” Sanchez announced to Jesus, as he was eating lunch at a posh restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. The drug cartel leader put down his fork and dabbed his mouth with a napkin, while his eyes grew dark and narrow.

“You know what to do, Sanchez, when you find him. Meanwhile, watch all his main dealers and do what you have to do to find this gringo son of a bitch.”

Sanchez was a trusted enforcer for the cartel, and he moved quickly to track down Pete or anyone else thought to be an accomplice. He was particularly interested in Dave, because Pete had often bragged about the jock from Escondido who sold more pot than any other dealer. Sanchez had gringo dealers all over San Diego County willing to watch Dave like a hawk, with the promise of getting Pete’s territory. It wasn’t long before word got back to Sanchez that Pete had gotten himself murdered in Tucson. The cartel rules were explicit. If you couldn’t get Pete, you got his closest associate. The rip-off could not go unpunished. At that point, Dave’s life was worthless.

A white van with FTD painted on the sides drove up to Dave’s house at about 10 p.m. A lone driver walked up to the front door and rang the bell. After a few minutes, the delivery driver tried the door handle and discovered it was unlocked. He waved to the van and two more men walked quickly to the door, where all three entered the house, holding drawn pistols.

They found Dave crashed out in his bedroom. He was quickly tied up and duct tape wrapped around his head and mouth. The men carried Dave to the van, deposited him in the back, and covered him with flowers. The abduction was quick, almost noiseless, and efficient. No one on the block heard or saw anything except for Sanchez, who was parked halfway down the block in a nondescript car. Both vehicles headed south on Highway 395 toward San Diego, and a half hour later they were headed east on Interstate 8 toward El Centro. After driving an hour and a half, the van and car crossed the Mexican border without incident and pulled into a gated compound close to San Felipe.

Dave regained enough of his senses to understand something was very wrong. He couldn’t move his hands or feet, and his mouth was bound so tightly that making a noise was impossible. David heard a garage door open as the van drove inside a building, and then the door closed noisily behind them. The men carried Dave out of the van and dumped him like a sack of shit alongside a large hole in the earthen floor of the garage. The dirt smelled putrid, and it was far worse than anything Dave had ever smelled. The men started talking in Spanish, while laughing at the teenager lying in the filthy dirt.

Dave started shaking uncontrollably and he urinated in his pants, at which point Sanchez leaned over and simply said, “Adios, gringo.” The men began kicking Dave until he fell into the hole and landed on his face and chest. He wanted to scream, but no sound could escape the tape’s grip. He felt something being poured on his back and head. Soon, the powdery substance trickled down the side of his face and caused a burning sensation so intense that Dave started to convulse like a worm in a hot frying pan. The men finished pouring the lye mixture over Dave’s convulsing body and then shoveled dirt to cover the white, squirming mound until it reached the floor level and there was no longer any movement.

Sanchez was pleased with the night’s work. He left the garage and headed for a phone booth anticipating the report he would give Jesus. Unfortunately for the parents of Dell and Dave Wilson, they would have to continue life without either of their children. Dave thought of that, just before his light faded to darkness.

Writer’s Digest has posted their 101 Best Sites for 2010–alas, readers, Screwiowa.com did not make the cut.   Maybe next year.  Meanwhile, word of mouth is our friend, so if you find anything about this site useful/helpful/encouraging here, recommend us to Writers Digest and to your writing pals!  Meanwhile, follow the link–there are many good standards still on the list, some new sites of interest and (sadly) several that serve up a rehash of the annual Writer’s Market B.S.

What would you nominate as your favorite writing website, reader?