Hobbies

Two Styles of Mystery Writing: Cozy and Hard-boiled
 by: Mary Arnold

Cozy novels do not have graphic violence, and little or no sexual content and abusive language. Society is “viewed as orderly and controlled, and the crime is a failure of the society to function correctly” (Niebuhr 7). In this type of novel, right and wrong are clearly defined, and the murder is considered to be an aberration, not something that is seen on a daily basis.

The detective in these novels is usually an amateur, although there are exceptions such as Agatha Christie’s Superintendent Battle of the CID. And the murder victim tends to have some inherent moral flaw that leads to his or her death. This doesn’t mean that the murder victim must be a monster. Take, for example, the character of Mrs. Argyle in Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence. She was a wonderfully kind woman who turned her home into a safe haven for children during World War II. After the war ended, she adopted five of the children. She loved and cared for her adopted sons and daughters very much and did everthing she could for them.

What Maks Fiction Special
 by: Rebecca Guevara

I was in a brisk discussion about whether a woman ‘would’ or ‘would not’ leave her wayward husband when a man interrupted and said, “But he’s not real! It’s fiction!” It was time to end the talk before I began my ten minute soliloquy that would have sent everyone in the kitchen for one too many drinks before going home. I knew the difficult husband in The Trading of Ken was not real because he fell out of my head and ended up on paper over a year’s time as I had fun punching him, his wife and girlfriend about. That’s exactly the point. Fiction has helped me put life in fascinating perspectives that allegedly truthful biographies, gooey memoirs, self-righteous improvement and dry scientific report studies can’t touch. Imagine:

Fiction makes judging human nature and gossip acceptable. Sunday school and ethics lessons can be overlooked when we dissect the behavior of Flaubert’s Madam Bovary. We can be arrogantly appalled, giving approval to our cherished ideas. Without apology or deference to a human being’s frailties we can smack our opinion about like a tennis ball hoping to aim and hurt. Or an author can give us that information on a character that forces our play; makes us look again and reconsider. Madam Bovary ‘loves without guile’ to gain sympathy and twist our presumptions. Then we can smack our ideas against the wall again because they’re not based on ‘real’ people and we can dissect them like an orange.

How To Put The Power Of YOU In Your Web Writing
 by: Bruce Carlson

One of the most important words in the vocabulary

of a Web writer is the simple little three-letter word

“you”.

Many Web writers fail to understand the importance

of this little word, and for that reason they don’t

attract an audience of hungry readers.

You need to understand the importance of this little

word if you want to get your Web content read.

This article will show you how to increase the power of your Web writing by using this one little word effectively.

**What Do All These Different Kinds Of Web Writing Have In Common?**

Here on the Web we do a lot of different kinds of

writing. Maybe you have a blog, and that takes one

kind of writing.

Then you have a home page on your Website, and that

takes another kind.

And then you have a sales letter which you send people

to where you sell your product or service, and that

takes yet another kind of writing.

Setting Your Fees as a Freelance Writer or Copywriter.
 by: Susanna K. Hutcheson

Probably the most common and frustrating problem any freelance writer has is setting his or her fees. If you’re too high, you cut yourself out of a lot of good business. If you’re too low, you get far too much work and you can’t do the client a really good job because he hasn’t paid you enough for your time. So you can’t spend as much time on his project as you should. Or if you do, you lose money.

In addition, if you don’t charge enough, you look like an amature. A raw beginner. And, to make matters worse, you make it hard for all copywriters to make a decent living because prospective clients get the wrong idea that we shouldn’t charge a fair fee for our services. A good copywriter deserves good pay.

So what should you charge?

The first question you should ask yourself is how much experience do you have and exactly how good are you? Can you compete with the pros? Or are you still learning? Be honest with yourself because you’ll have to be honest with your clients.

Writing the Denouement for Mystery Stories
 by: Mary Arnold

I’ve read many mystery novels in which the writer left out the denouement, but, in my opinion, a mystery without one is seriously lacking. Admittedly, I grew up reading Hercule Poirot, in which he always demanded to gather up all the suspects so he could demonstrate his brilliance in deducing the meaning of all the perplexing clues and fingering the murderer.

Poirot’s motive for such demonstrations may have been egotistical, but there’s no doubt he had a flair for the dramatic. And stories without the classic denouement leave me feeling cheated.

Tips on writing denouements

1) Include all the major characters/suspects

2) Make sure that the physical surroundings of the meeting place are inducive to comfort. Put the suspects at ease and the murderer will more likely act irrationally when he or she is accused.

3) Have the protagonist/detective start his or her narrative at the beginning and work to the end, explaining all the confusing details along the way.

4) Point out the motives each suspect had for doing away with the victim. It’s always a good idea to have at least two or three other people who gained something from the removal of the victim.

Rejection slips? Sock ‘em in the eye!
 by: Mervyn Love

Don’t you hate rejection slips? If they make you despondent,

then here’s a way to deal with them: sock ‘em in the eye!

But first, you need to realise that the editor or publisher

who had the gall to send you this offensive missive is not

a vindictive, short-sighted, ignorant meanie, she’s most

likely a hard working, underpaid and possibly over

stretched individual who might just have a reason for

sending your baby back.

So, if rejection slips bring on an attack of the grumps,

also realise that this is just a state of mind, a perfectly

natural one, but one which you personally can quickly and

easily turn back into a success story. How? Sock those

rejections in the eye.

“How do I do that, Merv.?” I hear you say above the sound

of wringing of hands.

Simple. What you have to do is show your inner man or woman

that you are not beaten, you are a writer and you will

continue to write. Rejection means not a sausage to you

Beginning Your Memoir Despite Family Guilt and Critic Voices
 by: Linda Joy Myers

When we first decide to write, we feel good about it—we have memories and stories that form who we are. We want to explore ourselves, to capture times long gone and preserve them in story form. To leave a legacy about our lives. But other voices compete with our writing—“what will people think; you should be ashamed; you will embarrass the family. Don’t air dirty laundry; you know only part of the truth, so be quiet. Your mother will roll over in her grave if she found out you wrote that.”

We all know these voices. They make us throw down the pen, sit back and turn on the TV. We don’t want to lose our family. We don’t want to make them angry. Writing a memoir is an act of courage, even defiance against powerful family dynamics. We need to find a way out.

As a family therapist, I have worked with many families, and because of my background, I’m in a position to help my coaching clients understand the source of their resistance to writing their stories, and the source of the critic voice inside.

The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Countee Cullen
 by: Mary Arnold

Like Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen is also “something of a mysterious figure” (Early 194). The place of his birth is unknown, and not much is known of his childhood, except that he was adopted by Frederick Cullen, a Methodist minister, and his wife sometime before 1918. Cullen was enormously popular in literary circles, and the Negro intelligentsia hailed him as a “major crossover literary figure” since

Here was a black man with considrable academic training who could, in effect, write ‘white’ verse - ballads, sonnets, quatrains, and the like, much in the manner of Keats and the British Romantics, (albeit, on more than one occasion, tinged with racial concerns) with genuine skill and compelling power. (Early 195)

Thus, Cullen was viewed as a man who could be “assimilated” while still maintaining his “racial self-consciousness” (Early 195). It may be, however, that Cullen didn’t manifest a struggle with his identity as an African American in the world of white intellectualism because he had a more pressing identity conflict: that of his unorthodox sexual desires (homosexuality) against the Christian insistence of heterosexuality.

The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Jean Toomer
 by: Mary Arnold

In his only novel on African Americans, Jean Toomer also found beauty in the “vernacular culture” among the people in Sparta, Georgia, where Toomer spent two months working as an interim principal at the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in 1921 (Byrd 733). Nathan Pinchback Toomer (1894-1967) changed his name to Jean after his move to Greenwich Village and reading Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe (1904), in an effort to “solidify his emerging identity as a writer” (Byrd 733).

Toomer’s experimental novel, Cane (1923), is described as “a record of his discovery of his southern heritage, an homage to a folk culture that he believed was evanescent, and an exploration of the forces that he believed were the foundation for the spiritual fragmentation of his generation” (Byrd 733). Although Toomer continued writing after the publication of Cane until the time of his death, he did not have any other works of fiction published during his lifetime (Byrd 733).

The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Jessie Redmon Fauset
 by: Mary Arnold

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) also viewed art as a means for political or propagandist ends. In her personal life, as in her art, Fauset strove to depict the middle class values of which she saw as the way to freedom and equality for her race. In one very revealing episode in which her personal inclination conflicted with social propriety, Fauset chose to stay within the boundaries of society set for her. On a trip to Africa, Fauset had visited alone the section of Algiers named the Kasbah. She returned the next day with two companions, only to be warned by a Frenchwoman that the “quarters are too dangerous to visit without an escort” (Wall 34). Notwithstanding the fact that she had been there alone already and now had two companions, Fauset adhered to the proper conduct the Frenchwoman informs her of.

Fauset had earned degrees from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, and had worked as a high school teacher for fourteen years before becoming involved in the Renaissance (Wall 35). During the years she spent as literary editor of The Crisis, from 1919 to 1926, she was also the “most prominent black woman writer” (Wall 36). Fauset published “poems, reportage, reviews, short stories, and translations” in addition to her four novels (Wall 36).