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WRITERS' Journal

Table of Contents
January/February 2008
Volume 29, Number 1

      .....Editor's Note, by Leon Ogroske 

     Writers make a difference in what people think. Take a look at a newspaper, a magazine, or a book and you will see that writers are affecting people’s lives every day. How do you affect others? On page 14, Nina Durfee challenges us to discover our purpose in her article “Swapping Nouns for Adjectives.” Step back and evaluate yourself and your writing. Writers need to take time for themselves. Drop the pen, shut off the computer, and spend some time with yourself. Assess your assets! Who are you? What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to make a difference?

     Once you have a handle on your purpose, you might want to dispel all your fears and quit making excuses. This is a new year! Read how Dara Girard, on page 16, addresses some of the main excuses writers use to not write. Then go to page 41 and discover how Tatiana Claudy finds time to write with “The Perfect Time Schedule.”

     All professionals need to understand networking in order to utilize their skills to the greatest advantage. Writers can network in an amazing number of ways, as explained by Cynthia Lueck Sowden in “Networking for $$$” on page 46. See how she shows us that networking contacts can reveal numerous avenues of income.

     On page 22, Felice Prager introduces us to an unusual freelance market: publications that use quizzes. I never considered this type of market; yet I believe that many writers will find creating puzzles and quizzes for children very fulfilling. Let’s not leave out the adult market. Query one of your usual adult markets on this topic to determine whether there might be an interest for such a column. After all, who doesn’t like a challenge?

     This issue highlights the winners of the Romance contest—nothing too erotic; instead, just good heartfelt writing. “Dog Tricks” offers an interesting point of view. The Write to Win! grand prize winner “Pat Hand” should keep the poker player in you interested.

Leon Ogroske, editor

Columns

  4       .....Readers' P.O.V.

  5       .....Massaging the Muse, Lynne Pisano
           World-Building from the Ground Up

  6       .....Marketing Helps, Janet Elaine Smith
           Hitch Your Trailer Here

  7       .....Vocabulary Review, Carolyn Howard-Johnson
           Stress

  8       .....Effective Screenwriting, by Christina Hamlett
           Baring All for the Spotlight
           As we go to press, I find myself reading the unpublished novel of a business associate who has paid for my professional advise on whether I think her novel would make a hot movie. "And every single word is true," she reminds me. "It's important everyone know that."...

 10      .....Computer Business, by Angela Render
           Nine Questions Your Developer Should Ask You
           Building a Web site is like building a house. Changes are easy to make before you've broken ground, but time consuming and costly if you change something in the middle or at the end of the build—not impossible, just expensive and time consuming....

 12      .....Photography Techniques, by Ronald D. Kness
           Product Photography Made Easy
           With the advent of listing items for sale on eBay.com, Amzon.com, or your own Internet Web site with a product catalog of your writings, it is now easier than ever to show a picture of your item as part of the listing. It is a proven fact that items sell better if the potential buyer can see the item. But, it is not always as easy as it looks. Below are some of the things to watch out for when taking product images....

 58      .....For Beginners Only, by Catherine L. Tully
           Going Above and Beyond 
           When you are a freelance writer, developing long-term relationships with editors at various publications can be an enormous help in the seemingly never-ending quest for financial stability....

 59      .....Words...Tools of Our Trade, by Betty Garton Ulrich
           Acknowledging the End of Another Part of WJ's Past
          By the time you read this, another year will be launched. But I write this in September of 2007, and I have just returned from the funeral of Marilyn Bailey, who, with me, cofounded the precursor of this WRITERS' Journal, known as The Inkling. Marilyn was not only my cofounder and one of my cherished "writing pals," but she was also a true friend....

 60       .....WRITERS' Journal Market Report, by Laurie Graziano
            January/February 2008 Market Report Plus, Kelly Koch of Soft Dolls & Animals! and Scrap & Stamp Arts
            What makes a doll unique is its ability to transcend gender and age differences. Dolls are not merely vestiges of childhood. In later years they are referenced frequently during momentous occasions such as the first words out of a father's mouth upon holding his "doll-like" baby daughter. From that moment, she is known as Dolly, because dolls are forever, and Dollys give a lifetime of joy to all!....

                   Markets: Soft Dolls & Animals!, Scrap & Stamp Arts, Alternative Medicine, ReadyMade, New York Spaces, Watercolor Magazine, Art & Antiques, Knucklebones, his&hers.

Feature Articles

 14       .....Swapping Nouns for Adjectives, by Nina Durfee
            The Key to Discovering our Purpose
            Nothing beats the smug satisfaction of nailing a complex concept with the clarity and precision of a single word. Less is more. Writing our way down the Yellow Brick Road to Strunk-and-White publishers and our readers. Serving ourselves is another matter....

 16       .....Excuses, by Dara Girard
            The Ultimate Dream Killer
            Excuses are some of the biggest dream killers in a writer's life. When something happens and you're knocked flat, excuses give you a great reason to stay down and never get up again. They are prevalent and insidious, causing a lot of untold stories and ideas to remain so. Why? Because everyone believes them.....

 21       .....From Lowly Letters to the Big Time, by Jim Patterson
            Marketing the Small Stuff
            You won't get rich writing letters to the editor of a newspaper, but with some marketing savvy it could lead to a paid assignment. Short, timely letters to the editor of a newspaper, especially the national papers, can get your name in print quickly. But a writer can't settle for only that. Apply a little marketing and you could find a paying job.....

 22       .....Selling Smart Quizzes That Teach, by Felice Prager
            Creating Puzzles for Older Students
           Serendipity often plays a large part in the career of a writer. We know we are skilled, creative, and driven, but it may take a little luck to direct us toward turning our vision into a reality....

 41       .....The Perfect Time Schedule, by Tatiana Claudy
            Fact or Fiction?
             What did Saint Benedict first introduce in his monastery at Subiaco, Italy, in the sixteenth century, that became one of the pillars of modern life? "Fixed times" for manual labor and for sacred reading—the time schedule. Eviatar Zerubavel, professor of sociology, calls it "one of the most remarkable inventions of Western civilization."...

 43       .....Apples and Oranges, by Rob Loughran
           Adapting Your Novel
           When I had an opportunity to adapt my novel High Steaks into a script, I thought, much like Union soldiers who thought they'd be home from the war for Christmas: "Great, it'll take a week; two, tops." But turning an 82,000-word, 255-page book into a 17,000-word, 112-page screenplay was probably the most exacting and arduous writing task I've ever accomplished....

 44       .....Finding the "Where", by Jill Jepson
           The Right Setting Sharpens a Scene
           Early in Jan Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres, the protagonist, Ginnie, runs into a neighbor, Loren Clark, at the bank. He tells her his long-lost brother Jess is returning to town, an event that will ultimately change her life. It's a quick scene—not more than a few sentences—but it sets the stage for much of what happens in the remaining 365 pages of the novel....

Fiction

July 2007 Romance Contest Winners:

 27       .....The Gem, by Lauren King
            First Prize Winner of July 2007 Romance Contest

 28       .....Rebounded, by Linda Thorne
            Second Prize Winner of July 2007 Romance Contest

 30       .....Dog Tricks, by Sandra Gaffigan
            Third Prize Winner of July 2007 Romance Contest

More Fiction:

 33       .....Your're Damned If You Don't, by Dale Worcester
            H. M. Winner of 2006 Fiction Contest

August 20, 2007 Write to Win! Winner

 38        ....."The Pat Hand"—"Four large...," by J. R. Kilgore

Poetry

 51       .....Every Day With Poetry, by Esther M. Leiper
            Folk Poetry—No Joke
            Where do the roots of poetry start? Can we in our hope of producing a poet onto children who have nursery rhymes read to them nightly, whose parents point out red lights, green lights, stop signs, and detour markers, all of these begin visual stimuli having useful—indeed, necessary—meanings? What about poets from deprived backgrounds who grasp for words and reasons on their own? How do they develop and, in time, enclose core beliefs and observations with ordered words?....

 55       .....Esther Comments On..., by Esther M. Leiper
            "The Blood in Babi Yar" and "Fool Me Once"
            "The Blood in Babi Yar" presents the tale of a terrible slaughter that occurred during the Second World War, when 100,000 Jews and other "undesirables" were stripped, shot, and dumped down a ravine in the Russian Ukraine. The name of this rift in the land (indeed this rift in the fabric of civilization) is Babi Yar. The speaker remains nameless and could be a man or a woman....