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November 2012 contents
Presidents message November Speaker Monthly Writers Contest Poetry Page Pub Bytes Humor in Print Member News Member Marketplace Holiday Lunch Info 1 2 3 4 5 7 7 8 9

Presidents Message

Post-Litquake Wrap-up
Tanya Grove

Ah, the whirlwind that is Litquake, San Franciscos remarkable annual literary festival. If you missed it this year, be sure to consider getting involved next year. This year I attended eight events in addition to the grand finaleLitcrawlwhere I sneaked in three and half more. After the emcee of The Teen Litquake Olympics handed out medals to the young writers who won their contest, local published YA (Young Adult) authors engaged in an on-the-spot writing battle in which audience members voted on who won each round. An Evening with Four Funny Women was aptly named because I laughed a lot that night. Plus, I got Laurie Kilmartin to sign my copy of Sh*tty Mom: A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us. I made it to one of the two events on this side of the bridge: Lit on the Lake: Female Voices from the East Bay, held at Lake Chalets lovely Gondola Room on Lake Merritt, where I enjoyed a cocktail and sweet potato fries while listening to a diverse array of local authors. I saw two panels as part of the New Writers Toolkit series: First-Time Authors Reveal All and Hot off the Press: The Latest from Publishing Pros, both of which were interesting and informative. (And I saw fellow CWC members there!) At the Book Club of California (celebrating its 100th anniversary) I got to hear from pros in the book business. Bay Area Book Currents: Stories Behind Bookselling featured McSweeneys Editorial Director Ethan Nosowsky, Diesel Books owner Allison Reid, editorial director of Counterpoint Press Jack Shoemaker, and Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Bookstore buyer and Bay Area legend. Writers in Conversation was the title of two sessions in which pairs of authors spoke about the craft of writing and much more. My favorite hour of the festival was watching Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer pulling questions from a fishbowl that theyd written themselves and asking them of each other, followed by Daniel Handler making the two of them martinis, and ending with their rendition of a Dolly Parton song, accompanying it with accordion (Handler) and ukulele (Greer). To attempt to sum up an entire evening of LitCrawl in the remaining space would be like trying to read all of War and Peace on the BART ride between Ashby and the Mission. But highlights include the Muni Haiku Battle and an event sponsored by McSweeneys that featured (once again) Daniel Handler as a sort of literary game show host posing questions about Walt Whitman and economics to two poets and two volunteers from the audience. Hilarity ensued. At the end I was exhausted. And I cant wait until next year.
Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer at Litquake. Photo courtesy of M. Luke McDonnell

upcoming events
11/15 Monthly Writers Contest Deadline

11/18 MeetingSpeaker: James Dalesandro 12/8 Holiday Luncheon

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Our monthly meetings are free and open to the public and feature a speaker, an author event, or both.

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Scenes for Novels and the Screen
David Baker

My historical novel, 1906, about the San Francisco earthquake, is killing me,
James Dalessandro confessed in a 2004 interview with Kenna McHugh, I wasn't there: I don't know who had a gas heater or a coal stove, who wore wool and who wore lace, how much beef jerky cost. Everything is research, research, and the hunt for tiny and important details is exhausting. The hunt paid off. Read 1906, and youll feel youre walking through The Paris of the Pacific when the quake and fire destroyed the city. But Dalessandro, our featured speaker for the November 18 meeting, does more than set his scenes convincingly. He shows us how to move from one scene to the next. At the beginning of 1906, his protagonist is shuffling through inch-deep ash, telling us San Francisco is no more and introducing characters important to the story, including a remarkable young man named Hunter Fallon. Then comes the hook: Remarkable indeed, for Hunter alone might have saved us.

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How? Read on.

That Dalessandro understands scene craft and pacing should come as no surprise. In addition to authoring four books, he is a screenwriter who has sold or been hired on more than 20 feature films. He has also written more than 75 movie trailers and completed several television pilots. In September 2009, Hallmark Channel broadcast the movie Citizen Jane, based on his true crime novel by the same title. He wrote the teleplay and served as one of the film's producers. In his presentation at the November meeting, Dalessandro will draw on a wide range of experience. From 1973-77 he was co-founder of The Santa Cruz Poetry Festival, with Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He was also the writer of The House of Blues Radio Hour, hosted by Dan Aykroyd, during the period in which it won the Platinum Award from the National Broadcasters Association. Currently, Dalessandro teaches screenwriting at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. We are fortunate to have this opportunity to be his students.

The CALIFORNIA WRITERS CLUB is a 501(c) (3) educational nonprofit. dedicated to educating members and the public-at-large in the craft of writing and in the marketing of their work. www.cwc-berkeley.org

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Monthly Writers Contest
Novembers contest theme was urban legends. The winning entry was a cartoon by Kristen Caven. Congratulations, Kristen!

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From Perfectly Revolting by Kristen Caven www.kristencaven.com

The theme for our December Writers Contest is winter holidays. Please submit your entry to Lynne at writeangles@gmail.com no later than November 15. Remember: no more than 450 words.

The Berkeley Branch meets on the third Sunday of each month (except for July, August, and December) at 2:00 p.m. in the Bradley C. Walters Community Room of the Main Library in Oakland at 125 14th Street (View Map). Enter on Madison Street. Free street parking is available and it is a short walk from the Lake Merritt BART station.

Be sure to check our website: www.cwc-berkeley.org

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Confessional Poets I: ROBERT LOWELL
Robert Lowell (1917-1977), the 6th Poet-Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress (now known as U. S. Poet-Laureate), is long considered to be one of the founders of the Confessional Poetry movement. The movement, characterized by highly personal experiences, made Lowell one of the most well-known and influential poets of the 20th century. Lowell was born and raised in Boston. He earned a BA in Classics from Kenyon College, and taught at the prestigious Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, as well as Boston University. It was at the latter institution that W. D. Snodgrass, Ann Sexton, and Sylvia Plath came into contact with him. Lowells collection Lord Wearys Castle, which was published in 1940, won the Pulitzer Prize for its ornate and formal verse. But it was his 1960 collection Life Studies, a National Book Award winner, that put him on the literary map. Memories of West Street and Lepke describes the prison term he served in New York City in 1943 for being a Conscientious Objector.

from Memories of West Street and Lepke

by Robert Lowell

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming I hog a whole house on Boston's "hardly passionate Marlborough Street," where even the man

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in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,

scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans, has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate, and is "a young Republican." I have a nine months' daughter, young enough to be my granddaughter. Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infants' wear. ...
Read the complete poem at www.poemhunter.com/robert-lowell

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PUB BYTES
Storytelling in the Age of Censorship
N L Fix
Living in the digital age can be euphoric as well as unsettling. We have all heard about the up side and down side of authorship: writing a manuscript that propels you to fame and fortune; writing works that are diluted into obscurity; writers that pen provocative works that climb to the top of hit lists. Salman Rushdie dodged assassination squads for years after penning The Satanic Verses, which satirized antiquated aspects of zealots Islam. Larry Flynt was the victim of a white supremacist serial killer and paralyzed in a shooting incident for a photo published in Hustler magazine. J.D. Salinger was blacklisted, and his work, The Catcher in the Rye, was the most censored book in United States high schools and libraries between 1961 and 1982. Even The Diary of Anne Frank was banned by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983 for being "a real downer." Censorship is a silencing tattoo placed on content that is deemed controversial, inappropriate, perverse, and dangerously unacceptable. Curious to see how different authors deal with the intimidating cloud of censorship, I queried writers at Litquake, cartoonists at APE, and local screenwriters to see how they handle the specter of censorship and possible bans of controversial content. Cartoonist John Hageman Jr. sometimes creates his cartoon characters from real life people or personalities found in the workplace environment. As a cartoonist and creator of webcomic Social Vermyn, he talked about his work creating characters and scenarios and staying on good terms with his friends. Originally, he kept quiet about where he derived some of the personalities in his comic strip, but eventually some of his co-workers learned about his side job and even asked whether they would be inserted his cartoons. Most of the characters he sketches are everyday folk facing the day-to-day problems of life in America. He noted that one of his darker characters, the irritable and brooding director, originated from the personality of a former boss. He doesnt think that this will cause much of a censorship problem however, because, as he puts it, hes too dead to object. John Longhi is mindful of censorship because of his profession as a trial attorney. Presenting at one of the Lit Crawl events, John relayed the story of his experience with the worst of jury panels. In defending the most notorious offenders, those facing the death penalty, he must censor himself because of ethical and legal restrictions, but he finds a way to show the human side of a controversial and bleak subject. He confided to me that he doesnt usually discuss his legal work, but even in his profession, there is humor and irony in the offbeat and morbid. While sequestering a pool of jurors in a capital case in Las Vegas, he had to contend with jurors who were obsessive talkers, jurors who decided the verdict before the trial began, and one hot-blooded juror who flashed sexually charged signals to the defendant. You cant censor human nature, and John has found a way to discuss the somber topic of murder in an open and upbeat way. Screenwriters face a fine line between exploring artistic expression and following rigid conventions in a field where the ultimate goal is to create a script that is made into a film. As one screenwriter wrote, Demands on a screenwriter are more likely to be financially driven than ethically motivated.

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Instead of asking -- How much damage will the work in question bring about? Why not ask -- How much good? How much joy? - Henry Miller
As I sat in a room of screenwriters discussing their scripts, I was constantly reminded about the conventions of good screenwriting: keep the scene flowing, inject dramatic turning points and climaxes and streamline the dialogue. While the novelist dwells on the fine details and exact wording to illuminate a scene, screenwriters focus on the practical, aiming to conjure up a mood, permitting the film director to fill in the details. Screenwriters are aware of industry guidelines and how their work will be rated. They constantly face the (Pub Bytes continued on page 7.)

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Continued from page 5 tightrope of making riveting scenes while implanting a minimal amount of violence, sex, aberrational behavior or nudity to avoid the label of NC-17. It is an industry of self-censorship whose rules change over time, influenced by ratings, degrees of cultural awareness, and audience acceptance. Writers in todays world of explosive digital content should be mindful that censorship of content remains, whether self-imposed or industry-regulated and sometimes both.

Pub Law
Censorship and Law
The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press in the U.S. When a government agency or authorities seek to prohibit speech or writing, opponents often contend violation of their First Amendment rights. In cases where the communication is deemed harmful in itself or to the public, Congress encourages the media to adopt voluntary guidelines in the hope that voluntary controls will bring about socially acceptable outcomes without discouraging the freedom of expression. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regulates itself through a voluntary rating system. Radio and television broadcasts are subject to regulation by the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, when content is considered indecent. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) oversee artistic works through allocation of stipends to deserving artists. Books published by commercial presses for sale to the general public are subjected to book cancelations or editorial judgments that can be tantamount to censorship.

Pub Tech
Censorship and Technology
Censorship of content takes place through a variety of different contexts, including speech, books, music, films and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet. Reasons for censorship usually hinge on matters of national security, control of obscenity, child pornography and hate speech, protection of political or religious views, and intellectual property. There are a slew of Internet censorship technologies. Internet content filters can be implemented by a software program on a personal computer and via network infrastructure such as proxy servers that provide Internet access. Content-limited (or filtered) ISPs restrict content through a subscriber-based opt-in basis. Searchengine filters used by major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing offer users the option of turning on safety filters that screen out the inappropriate links from all search results. In response to the proliferation of Internet filtering and blocking, savvy Internet users bypass Internet censorship by using circumvention soft-ware and resources, including cached web pages, mirror and archive sites, alternate DNS servers, proxy websites, virtual private networks, sneaker nets, and other circumvention software tools. These solutions rely on accessing an Internet connection that is not subject to filtering, often in a different jurisdiction not subject to censorship laws.

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And for the right to be heard or not, we have new antibullying measures seeking to repress conduct or the use of force or coercion to abuse or intimidate others.

What next?

Missed issues of Write Angles? Read back issues on Scribd.

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Humor in Print
Lucille Bellucci To those who object to the prevailing use (except by stern TV journalists and nitpicking academics) of the plural pronoun following a singular antecedent, I say everyone should talk the way they want. Given this freedom, let's reword some proverbs: Anybody who stumbles twice over one stone deserves to break their shins. A fool should not have their own ax. Every person is the offspring of their own works. Who spits against the wind, spits in their own face. Do these feel like sand in your teeth? Do they make you cry out "Zounds! What abominations are these?"

Is There a Their There?

I would propose a solution, though I have no slightest hope of its ever catching on amongst the populace. Let lawyers and writers carry on as they always have. Upon those others, let us try to foist the term She-hee, pronounced Sh'he, an elision as musical and graceful as, say, Sh'boom. See? It is possible to avoid sexist language and not cause tics to develop in the face of the listener.

Member News
Write Angles welcomes letters to the editor, book reviews, and articles of interest to writers. Submit to writeangles@gmail.com. If you are a member and want to share news, please write Member News in the subject line. Deadline is the 15th of the month.

Lucille Bellucci's story "Cicadas" has been accepted by pixelhose.com, an online publisher, for their eanthology, due out in the late fall. "Cicadas" won the Louse T. Reynolds Memorial Award in 2000 at the new renaissance, and third place at Winning Writers in 2011. A major promotion of the anthology will include a page on Facebook. Mary Luersen wrote and performed "Princess Diana's Late Night Visit," her story for the Oakland presentation of Ghost Stories Performance, Stagebridges October storytellers event. Risa Nye has contributed to the eye-opening fall series, The seven deadly sins of the writing life, for The Writing Life section of Hunger Mountain, publication of Vermont College of Fine Arts. (http://www.hungermtn.org) April Kutger will have her short story The Gift of the Magi, published in a collection titled A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree, edited by Jennifer Bayse Sander and published by Harlequin under the Harlequin imprint, Inspiration. Expected to be in bookstores in November or December. Charlotte Cook has been confirmed as the featured guest for the 2013 Historical Novel Society's Writers Conference in Florida next June. Thomas Burchfield's Dracula novel Dragon's Ark has won Best Horror novel at the 2012 National Indie Excellence Book awards. This marks the second award Dragon's Ark has won this year.
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Member Marketplace

Write Angles wants to help promote our members. If you are a member and want to advertise writing-related services, please submit to writeangles@gmail.com and write Marketplace in the subject line. Deadline is the 15th of the month.

Charlotte Cook offers story editing, prepublishing services, and workshops for writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenplays. Also available is office/retreat space for classes and meetings. www.adaptingsideways.com or charlotte@adaptingsideways.com. Tatjana Greiner offers developmental editing for all genres of fiction and nonfiction. Email her at workshop@mac.com. More information at: http://tatjanagreinerwordshop.com. Anne Fox offers copyediting services for all levels of fiction and nonfiction. References available. writefox@aol.com Thomas Burchfield offers editing and proofreading services for nonfiction books by CWC-Berkeley members. For details, visit his webpage, e-mail him at tbdeluxe@sbcglobal.net, or call 510-817-4432. Mt. Diablo Branch Announces Workshop
Author Nick Mamatas will present a workshop on Beginnings and Endings for Fiction and Nonfiction at the next meeting of the Mt. Diablo Branch of the California Writers Club (CWC) on Saturday, November 10, 2012, at Zio Fraedos Restaurant, 611 Gregory Lane, Pleasant Hill. Mr. Mamatas will explain the difference between hooking a reader and tantalizing a reader, what editors look for in the first paragraph, how to write a memorable conclusion, and the advice to never preach. Participants are asked to bring paper and pen for exercises. Sign-in is from 8:30 to 9:00 am, full breakfast from 9:00am to 9:30am, and the workshop is from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. Registration is $35 for CWC members, $40 for guests. Reservations are required, and must be received no later than noon on Wednesday, November 7. Contact Jeannie Georgakopoulos at jeaniegpops@comcast.net or by phone at (925) 934-5677. Expect confirmation only if you e-mail your reservation. The California Writers Club Mt. Diablo Branch web address is: http://cwcmtdiablowriters.wordpress.com/

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Editor Co-Editor Copyeditor/Member News/Tidbits Presidents Message Speaker Profile Poetry Page Editor Contributor

Tanya Grove N L Fix Anne Fox Tanya Grove David Baker Alysa Chadow Lucille Bellucci

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Holiday Lunch
Mark your calendars for Saturday, December 8th, 12:00 p.m., for lunch at Spengers Fresh Fish Grotto, 1919 Fourth Street, Berkeley.

Years ago, the CWC-Berkeley held their monthly meetings at Spengers. Members who recall that will also recall the large conference rooms and the professional setup at the lunches. The food was usually a single platter consisting of fish or meat, with sides, and it was substantial. This years offering will be: First Course Mixed Field Greens Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette Entre Selections Parmesan-Crusted English Sole with Lemon Butter and Crispy Capers Pasta Primavera with Fresh Sauteed Seasonal Vegetables French-Dip Sandwich with French Fries Crab Salad Sandwich with French Fries Dessert Chocolate Truffle Cake with Raspberry Coulis Coffee and Tea Service Cash Bar: Beer and Wine only The Price: $30 per person. Broken down, the cost is $23 + Gratuities + Tax. Validated parking Is across the street. Announcements will go out in November Evite.

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Come and Join the Fun!

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