Don't Double Space at the End of a Sentence - here's why.

If you are a writer who still double spaces after a period, please read this post by Alice Osborn. 

In my classes I always find writers who learned in typing class to double space at the end of every sentence, but today in the computer world, we use only one space. I am asked why the change.

Alice, in a light-hearted, humorous way explains why. Check out her blog for many good tips on writing. 

What do I need to know to change from writing nonfiction to fiction?

I am a fan of Bobbie Christmas, editor of Zebra Communications, and author of excellent books on the writing craft. In one of Bobbie's newsletters she answered a question by a reader. She has given me permission to post that exchange here on Writers Circle around the Table. Thank you, Bobbie.

From newsletter by Bobbie Christmas

Q: I've been a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers for many
years, but I have a novel in my head, begging me to write it. I'm not
sure I can successfully switch from writing nonfiction to writing
fiction. What are some of the things I need to know?

A: Quick answer: everything.

Let me explain. I worked with newspapers and magazines for the first
twenty years of my writing and editing career, so I thought I knew
enough to write a novel. Boy, was I wrong! The best thing I did was
join a critique circle for novelists, and I quickly saw that I knew
almost nothing about how to write fiction. I knew a great deal about
how to form a strong sentence; I knew grammar, and I thought I knew
punctuation. Quickly I learned, however, that I had been using
punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations standard in AP style,
whereas novels and nonfiction books call for Chicago style.
As a gift, my son gave me a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, and I
went into overwhelm, because of the volume of the book. I didn't think
I could learn it all. I soon realized that I did not have to learn
everything, but I did need to look up specific things, when I wasn't
sure.

Members of my critique circle had been writing fiction much longer than
I had. I could help them when it came to grammar and strong sentence
structure, but they helped me tremendously with details of Chicago
style as well as the many elements of fiction. They made me aware of
point of view, setting scenes, scene changes, character development,
plot development, exposition, backstory, flashbacks, and much more that
I had never encountered as a writer and editor of newspaper and
magazine articles.

Go ahead and begin writing your novel, but find a good critique group
that concentrates on novels and get feedback and information from
members more knowledgeable in writing fiction.

In addition, pay attention while you read your favorite novelists and
see how they handle openings, chapters, flashbacks, backstory,
exposition, dialogue, scenes, character development, plot evolution,
climax, and denouement.

I also offer a lengthy free report on some of the differences between
AP style and Chicago style. It has good information for anybody not yet
fully familiar with Chicago style. Ask for Report #118 by e-mail
(Bobbie@zebraeditor.com), and I'll send it right away.

The switch from nonfiction to fiction isn't simple, but if your heart
is in writing a novel, you will enjoy entering a whole new world of
writing.    

(Bold fonts in post are mine. Glenda Beall)

Bobbie Christmas

Author of Write In Style: How to Use Your Computer to Improve Your Writing 

(To learn more, click here: http://tinyurl.com/o4trud2 )

Owner, Zebra Communications 

Excellent editing for maximum marketability

Coordinator, FWA Editors Helping Writers

230 Deerchase Drive, Woodstock, GA 30188

(1)770-924-0528 

www.zebraeditor.com 

Sign up for The Writers Network News, my free newsletter for writers, at www.zebraeditor.com.

                                 

Chat with a Poet on July 24

A few places are left in the class on Saturday, July 25, with Michael Diebert. 

Our space is limited to ten people in a class at Writers Circle around the Table, so contact me and send your fee for this most interesting class. See registration form at top of page. 

When Michael Diebert taught at Writers Circle a couple of years ago, his student evaluation sheets told me he was greatly appreciated for his work.

This class is especially interesting as it uses bits and pieces of old poems, parts that you have cut out of a poem or a line you really like, but didn't find a good way to use it.

I have many of those bits and pieces in my files and I am looking forward to seeing how I can bring them back to life, salvage them from the junk yard of used words. 

I am also looking forward to Michael's Chat with a Poet  at Joe's Coffee House, 82 Main Street, Hayesville, NC on Friday afternoon, July 24, 4:30 p.m.

We get to hear some of Michael's own poetry and talk with him about poetry, about how he selects poems for the Chattahoochee Review which he edits. Beginning poets will find his talk interesting and will be able to ask those questions you have been wondering about.

We will have some snacks furnished by Writers Circle and Joe's has great coffee and tea as well as a wine bar. There is no cost for the event, but Joe would like for you to pay for the coffee, tea or wine.

Guest Post by Michael Diebert, Poetry Editor at Chattahoochee Review

Today we are honored to have Michael Diebert as our guest on Writers Circle around the Table. He has written a most interesting post for us. Be sure to read this if you are a poet. Thanks, Michael, for taking time to guest on our blog.

Salvage and Reconstruction: Thoughts on a Poem in Progress

By Michael Diebert

Two years ago, when poet Andrew Hudgins led a workshop at the college where I teach, he showed us work he'd been doing on a poem.  He had written it in blank verse, unrhymed and rhymed iambic tetrameter, and with two- and three-beat accentual lines.  He'd even cast it as a prose poem.  As the forms dictated, he’d added words, took them out, moved them to other lines, and indeed redefined the line for each occasion.  The impulse was largely metrical and musical, but if form dictates content, he was also tinkering with meaning.  His patience astounded me.  After all that work, he concluded it was probably a failed poem, a good subject for a lecture such as the one he was giving.

Recently, I have been working on a poem modeled after Bob Hicok's poem "A primer."   Hicok's poem is a relatively succinct 44 lines.  Mine currently stands at about three single-spaced handwritten pages.  It is a shambolic stab at Tennessee facts and history, a chagrined interrogation of my hometown.  I am trying to be funny, and I'm falling flat.  I am trying to be probing and exact and fair.  I am trying to, as usual, account for the unusual and the otherwise overlooked.  In its current form, the poem is untenable; only recently have I realized this. I still like it, and I still think I'm onto something.  After my usual practice of putting the poem away for a while to let it marinate and age, what do I do now?  I have rewritten and expanded it at least twice, to little avail.  The same flailing, the same chest-beating is there. 

Within the last two weeks, though, I've started to go the other way, toward not just cutting but concision.  This is, I admit, not my usual strategy--I pride myself (and chide myself) on my masochistic desire to write through a problem, to add volume first and worry about depth later.  But fueled by a couple of other recent poems where I've striven for economy and precision, I am now trying to capture in fewer than 20 lines what I've been shooting for in 100-plus lines.  One benefit in trying to write this poem long is that I now see whole lines I want to keep!  This means the poem has probably been there all along, just not in the form I envisioned and, indeed, have labored so mightily to realize.  There are usable parts; it's just taken me a while to discover them.

If we poets are priests, marrying form to content, beauty to truth, then surely we are also scavengers, hovering raven-like over the broken bones of our failed drafts, using what's usable.  Or we are salvage artists in a junkyard, looking for an intact carburetor, a front bucket seat with fabric that hasn't faded, all for the purpose of reconstituting, of making them new and workable again.  To salvage is to save. 

Our workshop at Writers Circle on July 25 will be devoted to the art of poetic salvage.  We will work with your own failed or stuck poems, poems with usable parts or recoverable bones; we will work to identify these pieces and construct new organisms.  Please email me either 1) a whole poem or 2) a document of poem parts no later than Tuesday, July 21 and I will make copies for the group.

Great Class with a Fine Writer and Teacher today

Steven Harvey's Mnemonics of Memoir class today at Writers Circle could not have been better!

Eleven men and women gathered around a table and Steven led us through a number of steps to writing memoir that helped all of us in some way. Although I teach memoir writing to mature adults through the Community Enrichment Program at Tri-County Community College and use many of these elements in teaching and my own writing, Steve gave us new ideas and we had discussion from the students in today's class. The youngest student present today will be a freshman at Young Harris College in Young Harris Georgia in the fall. Although he didn't think he would be interested in writing non-fiction, he says this class changed his mind.

Several of those in class today were former students of Steven Harvey either at YHC or they were in the MFA program at Ashland University where he teaches. Their comments about him did not surprise me. They were all very complimentary and appreciative of his teaching. 

One of his grateful students drove over from South Carolina. Her name is Laurie and I was delighted she and I could have lunch together after class. She has a great and unique story that she will publish one day. 

Almost every student said the only thing they would change was to make the class longer. Steve said he hoped we'd ask him back next year. It is for sure, we will ask him back next year. 

I think we bought all the copies of The Book of Knowledge and Wonder, his new memoir, that Steve had with him. 

Now I'm going to get busy writing some of the stories Steven inspired in me today. 

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If you live in Clay, Graham, or Cherokee counties in NC or Towns, Union or Fannin Counties in Georgia, and you want to write true stories, memoir and creative non-fiction, sign up for my writing class at Tri-County College in Murphy, NC  beginning September 1.

Writing Your Life Stories for Your Family or for Publication:

Glenda Beall has taught adults to write stories about their lives for a number of years. The stories are often written for grandchildren or other family because the writer wants to leave a legacy of what life was like before cell phones, before computers and video games, before families were too busy, and before they were scattered all over the country and around the world.

Each of us has a unique story, and in this class you learn: where to begin, how to begin, how to organize your work, what to write and what not to write, and how to write so that your audience will want to read your stories. Each student will have several stories completed and written by the end of the course in an entertaining and interesting form. Each student will carry home a number of tools he/ she can use in the future.  12 hrs. of instruction.

Instructor: Glenda Beall
September 1 – October 6    Tuesdays
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. $35 

Contact Lisa Thompson for registration information.

Here Is what is coming

Classes at  Writers  Circle are filling for the  summer. I have had many interested in Dr. Steven Harvey's class for Saturday, but our class is full with a waiting list.

Tara Lynne Groth's marketing and publishing class for August 22 has two places open now. This is an important class for serious writers who want to publish and sell their books. The deadline for registering for Groth's class is July 1. 

Michael Diebert, Poetry Editor for the Chattahoochee Review, a  literary journal, is teaching once again at Writers Circle studio. His subject is salvaging your poetry, using those bits and pieces of poems you have in your files to create new poems. Those who attend will go home with new poems they will be happy to submit for publication. 

Registration is now open

In September we will host Scott Owens, a favorite poet and instructor in our region. 

In October, Karen Holmes, poet and author of the  popular poetry collection, Untying the Knot will teach a class at Writers Circle.  

Michael Diebert teaches poetry class

Re-purposing Your Poems: The Art and Craft of Poetic Salvage

Saturday, July 25, 10 - 1 p.m.

Location: Writers Circle ,Hayesville NC
Fee - $35.00   Registration deadline is July 19

Description: Just as a car enthusiast scavenges a junkyard for working parts, just as a songwriter scavenges the musical past for something brand-new, this workshop will focus on the art of salvaging your work--not rewriting per se but rebuilding. 
Bring your failed poem parts from the past, pieces or bits which may still have potential but need spark: stagnant stanzas, flat lines, dull images, etc.  Using some examples and our own discussion and practice, we will jerry-rig and rebuild our poems (as Johnny Cash once sang) "one piece at a time."

Send registration form at top of blog with check to Glenda Beall, 581 Chatuge Lane, Hayesville, NC 28904

Michael Diebert is poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review and teaches writing and literature at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta.  He is the author of Life Outside the Set, available from Sweatshoppe Publications through amazon.com.  Recent poems have appeared and/or are forthcoming in The Comstock Review, jmww, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

Plan to attend and meet Michael on July 24, Friday afternoon 4:30 p.m. for a chat and a reading at Joe's coffee house, 82 Main St. Hayesville, NC 28904

Writers Night Out on June 12 - Don't miss this one

Karen Holmes, facilitator for Writers Night Out says, "Yes, I'm bringing two of my good girlfriends from Atlanta, who also happen to be super poets, both with chapbooks. I've promised them a great mountain audience, so please come and prove me right!"

Featured readers

Trish Thomas (pen name: Patricia Percival), lawyer turned poet

Kathleen Lewis, co-editor of Flycatcher Journal 

A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, Lewis was a finalist for the 2014 Ron Rash Poetry Award. She is senior editor of the online journal, Flycatcher. A graduate of Wake Forest University, she also has an MA in Professional Writing with a concentration in creative writing from Kennesaw State University.  Her chapbook, Fluent in Rivers, was published in 2014 by FutureCycle Press. Her poetry and prose have also appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Yemassee, Still: The Journal, James Dickey Review, Heron Tree, The Southern Women’s Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. V: Georgia, among others. 

Thomas is the author of the chapbook, Bargain with the Speed of Light, published by Kattywompus Press in 2015. The book tells the story of a box of poems left by her brother after his death and how the mysteries there led to her practice of poetry.  Her poems also appear in Sixfold, The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. V: Georgia, Town Creek Poetry, Stonepile Writer's Anthology Volume II, and other venues. In what Thomas says, “seems like a past life,” she graduated from Duke University and the Emory University School of Law.

Lewis and Thomas are both part of the Side Door Poets group originated by Karen Paul Holmes, who also hosts Writers’ Night Out, which is a North Carolina Writers’ Network-West program, open to the public. 

Friday, June 12
6 pm social hour (the View Grill is open with a new menu -- food and drink available for purchase in the grill or in the ballroom)

7 pm featured readers in the ballroom
7:45-ish open mike for prose or poetry, limit 3 mins (please time yourself at home and make us want MORE)

Union County Community Center (at Butternut Creek Golf Course in the heart of Blairsville)
129 Union County Recreation Rd.
Blairsville, Georgia 30512
here's a map but note that the Holiday Inn on the map is now a Comfort Inn
http://www.uccommunitycenter.com/location.html