LEARNING FROM THE BEST WRITERS by Maria Hudgins

 There must be a thousand books on "How to Write." If you read them all you wouldn't have time to write.So what are a few really good ones? How do you know if a book on writing is good? How do you know this author's advice is right or wrong? That's easy. Read a bit of it and if you are having a hard time putting it down--the author knows what he's doing. This topic, after all, is dry as dirt. It's right up there with "How to change the duvet cover," or "How to clean a bathroom," or "Filling out your 1040 form."

The best book on writing I have ever read is Stephen King's "On Writing" which, by now, has probably gone through a dozen editions. I couldn't put it down. I've read it more than once and not because I didn't remember his advice. It's wonderfully entertaining. I can't forget his description of pretending to be a circus strong man when he was two years old.

I've been looking at a website called Master Class and I see a lot of today's top writers are contributing their best suggestions.One click gives you samples of their advice and I have clicked on a bunch of them. I would tend to favor the words of authors that are my personal favorites. If I enjoy them, I think, so would others. My taste in stories is not unusual. I'm pretty typical. It's not free, but at $120/year, it's cheap for what you can get if you really use it.

This may sound stupid, but I learn a lot from listening to a favorite author on audio. It doesn't matter if the author is doing the reading or not. Some writers are not good readers, and some are. Listening frees your mind to think only about the story. When you aren't thinking about the words on the page or how many pages are left in this chapter, you become more aware of the structure. Why is the writer giving you all these details in one chapter but not in another one? Where is the viewpoint character and what are his eyes seeing? If she parks her car, does she immediately open the door? Does she remember to pick up her purse? Why does the writer skip over all the details sometimes with a brief, "Next morning, he flew to Chicago?" Details are tedious if they don't move the story forward.

Sometimes I can just lie in bed with my eyes closed and realize that I'm working!

WHAT WE'RE READING THIS SUMMER! by the Sand In Our Shorts Gang

It’s July, it’s hot, (in the northern hemisphere at least) and it’s time to grab a good book to read at the beach, the lake, the pool, or in the front porch swing! The Sand-in-our-Shorts writers are here sharing their summer reads with you. Their picks might be your next vacation read— check it out!

Michael Rigg:

I’m not much of a beach reader. Sun and sand and sweat don’t create an inviting atmosphere for reading. (And sunscreen makes the pages stick together.)  But sitting at a beach house in Sandbridge pouring over a novel, with the roar of the ocean as background? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Especially if there’s air conditioning involved. Next on my summer

VACATION FUN: BEAUTY, HISTORY, AND MYSTERY! By Angela G. Slevin

The throne room

      Summer always puts me in mind of vacations and travel. This year, I’m thinking of two places, one I’ve been to many times and where I have family, and the other a place I’ve always wanted to go. Surprisingly to me, they have a connection.

     The island of Crete, Greece, sits in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and is huge in comparison to the other Greek isles. Crete measures 160 miles wide from west to east, and varies in width from 7.5 to 37 miles from north to south, making its area 3,218 square miles. Crete was an independent nation from 1898 until 1913, when it joined modern Greece.

RESEARCH: A CRITICAL PART OF WRITING. BUT NO ONE SAYS IT HAS TO BE BORING! By Michael Rigg

Harriet Robin 
New Orleans School of Cooking 

Any fiction writer worth their salt will acknowledge that research is a key component of our craft. We write stories that, in the long run, are not entirely true. That’s why it’s called fiction. We ask our readers to suspend belief, at least while they read what we write, and pray they will accept our premise: “what if…” But to engage the reader, to keep them turning pages, our fiction must be plausible.

In sum, fiction—the ultimate untruth—must, of necessity, be based in truth, and supported by facts. Our written untruth must be believable. Thorough research is how we attain this believable untruth. Research is the lifeblood of good fiction. If it doesn’t ring true, the reader will soon be bored and more likely to put our novel down and, worse, add us to their “do not read” list.

STRENGTHEN YOUR SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY, Part 5 by Max Jason Peterson (aka Adele Gardner)

 Happy Father's Day, Delbo G.!

Delbert R. Gardner and Adele Gardner

Growing up, I had the time of my life sharing the writing path with my father, Delbert R. Gardner, a talented writer of poetry, fiction, humor, and essays, who during my lifetime worked variously as a professor of English literature who taught creative writing, and as a writer/editor for TRADOC who felt a special mission to improve training materials for the Army thanks to his experiences in World War II. I’m writing this on the eve of Father’s Day, so I just wanted to share how much it always went to me that Dad was my writing mentor, always encouraging me, providing feedback when I wanted it that was always on a level I could benefit from while growing up, just sharing the joy of the writing life together, and also showing me all the ropes with submissions. I started submitting my stories at fourteen and had my first poems published at sixteen thanks to Dad’s guidance. We were also writing pals—sharing writing sessions; offering one another encouragement; sending out manuscripts through the post every month; celebrating one another’s acceptances and tips about editors who might like each other’s work. (And now I’m his literary executor; and it’s in that capacity that I first began using statistics to track our submissions.) Since he helped me so much, and since I got such a lucky break having such a father (in terms of being a writer, naturally; but also, he was just simply an extraordinary Dad, so loving and wise, playing with us, sharing jokes, helping us with our homework and with life—our best friend) I feel strongly about passing on some of the things I learned thanks to Dad—things he taught me, and things I went on to find out as a direct result of his influence.

LOOK! IT'S A BOOK! MY LIFELONG ITCH TO PUT A COVER AROUND MY WRITING By Judy Fowler

 In her book The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron wrote that every artist has their own idea of True North. That's their "I have arrived" moment. Seeing my writing between two covers with a spine has been my True North since third grade. 

That's the year my teacher tasked us with writing a report on a country. Ugh. Tedious.  Then she said our reports had to be bound in a hardcover binder. The uphill assignment suddenly took on the wonder of a trip to Disneyland. 

I could hardly wait to get home, choose a country, pull out my brother's World Book Encyclopedia and get down to some shameless cribbing.

Okay, I cared a little about the content of my report. First, I wanted a country no other eight-year-old Glen Cove student would pick to write about. Second, the nation had to be manageable in scope. Switzerland and Germany were out. 

My choice was Ruanda-Burundi, a photo of which I'd seen in a National Geographic.

In nineteen-fifty-eight, kids used two-hole ruled paper and printed neatly on sheets of it in pencil. My teacher asked for the reports to be sectioned into Customs, Culture, Social Groups, Arts, Clothing, and History. Luckily, Volume R of the World Book had those bases covered.

But I was working toward that cover. For the blissful moment when I'd place my penciled pages of paragraphs into the black hardcover binder my mother let me purchase from the school supply section of Newberry’s (yesterday's Dollar Tree).  

I glued a large red and white paper label (used by Mom to mail packages) on the front cover and boldly wrote on it with red pen: 

 RUANDA-BURUNDI

by Judy Fowler

I sat cross-legged on the floor and held that covered beauty in my hands. I peeked inside to look at those penciled pages snuggled up inside it. True North. 

Holiday card-making exposed the same compulsive urge to cover the "Roses are Red" dreck I'd written for my parents and grandparents. It wasn’t a card until I'd nestled it inside a homemade envelope, even if the card never saw a mailbox and only had to go upstairs on a tray. 

A few months ago, a story of mine became downloadable in an anthology titled Rock, Roll, and Ruin, edited by Karen Pullen of North Carolina’s Triangle Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The stories are fantastic, but what I wanted to see most? The e-book cover.  

Most manuscripts I read to my colleagues leave me less than thrilled until I get them covered. I love the magic of Fiver. They take my ideas and in two days a cover appears. I can even tweak it and get it back again in a few hours. It's an itch my discretionary income allows.

So, whether my story appears alone or last or eighth in a manuscript's batting order, I’m just happy to know it's inside something.  I judge a book once it's covered.

 

 

 

JUNETEENTH-- THE ELEVENTH U.S. FEDERAL HOLIDAY by Sheryl Jordan

JUNETEENTH – THE ELEVENTH U.S. FEDERAL HOLIDAY by Sheryl Jordan

 

The History

For some people, Juneteenth is just another day off work or school, but there is so much more behind the holiday and its history. It is an important part of U.S. history, which changed America in many ways. The freedom it represented for so many was astounding.

Juneteenth is short for June Nineteenth, the day in 1865 on which slaves in Texas were officially freed. On June 18, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas. I'm sure the people of the city were wondering what was going on. The following day, as Major General Gordon Granger walked through the town and informed the community about President Lincoln's signing of the proclamation, I'm sure some folks were not happy about it. Some enslavers were probably pretty sure being slave owners would be part of their lives forever. Perhaps some of the slaves thought they died and went to heaven!  Some may have been scared and not sure they were hearing the news correctly. Although Emancipation Proclamation was issued two and a half years prior, enslavers were held responsible for telling the enslaved they were free, and some ignored the directive. Major General Gordon demanded Galveston locals comply with the proclamation. This was a day that changed many lives forever.

Juneteenth did not end slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in Confederate states during the Civil War but not in Union states such as Maryland, where people were still practicing involuntary servitude. Only through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution did emancipation end slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States,  signed on February 1, 1865, by President Lincoln. 

The former slaves rejoiced in their new freedom. They began celebrating through prayer, song, and dance. One can only imagine the encouragement and feelings of empowerment the former slaves experienced emotionally. They must have had the euphoria after two hundred-plus years of African Americans being enslaved and suddenly, they were free!

Texas being the last state in which the proclamation was announced, was the first state to recognize Juneteenth statewide. The annual holiday to commemorate the official day enslaved African Americans in Galveston were freed began in 1866. When African Americans migrated from the South, the holiday spread across the country.

Juneteenth is also known throughout the world as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Black Independence Day, Cel-Liberation Day, and Second Independence Day. Congress passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in June 2021, one day after the Senate unanimously passed the bill. It became a federal holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Act on June 17, 2021. After the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Democratic Senator Ed Markey first introduced the Juneteenth Bill in 2020, however, it didn't get passed.

"Today’s Senate passage of our legislation to commemorate Juneteenth as a federal holiday will address this long-ignored gap in our history, recognize the wrong that was done, acknowledge the pain and suffering of generations of slaves and their descendants, and finally celebrate their freedom," Markey said after the bill passed on June 17 of 2021. (USA Today, 2022)

The Flag

Did you know there is an official Juneteenth flag to honor the day which represents the history and freedom of the American Slaves and their descendants? It was designed by Ben Haith, founder of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation (NJCF) in 1997, and other collaborators Lisa Jeanne Graff, illustrator brought the group's vision to life.

The white star in the center represents “Texas, the Lone Star State” and the freedom of African Americans in all fifty states.

The burst outlining the star is inspired by a nova, meaning a new star.

The arc extending across the flag's width represents a new horizon - a new freedom, a new people, new opportunities, and promises that lay ahead for Black Americans.

In 2007, the date June 19, 1865, was added commemorating the day the enslaved African Americans in Galveston were told of their emancipation.

In addition to the official flag, many communities also include the PAN-African flag during Juneteenth celebrations. The flag’s colors are red, black, and green. Per the Pan-African Alliance:

Red represents the millions of Black men and women who lost their lives while enslaved, as civil rights leaders, and those unjustly murdered.

Black represents the melanin of Black people, the rich soil of the Nile valley, and the unification of the African diaspora.

Green stands for fertility, productivity, and prosperity and is the fertile cradle of Africa.

Celebrations

Juneteenth is celebrated in many ways around the world which include:

Flag-raising ceremonies.

Cookouts

Parades

Festivals

Block parties

Church services

Ceremonies to honor community service

Red color food and beverages – symbolize the bloodshed of enslaved ancestors due to the transatlantic slave trade. 

I attended Jubilee events at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, MN as a teenager with my sister and friends and later with my husband. Although I didn’t really know the history of Juneteenth during those times, I always enjoyed the festival. I love the unity of people honoring the importance of Juneteenth. I felt connected with fellow Americans, of all races in attendance and the celebrations.

This year I plan to attend various Juneteenth events with my family. My husband and I discuss each holiday's history and its significance with our grandchildren. Trust me, we will be discussing Juneteenth with them again this year. We want to ensure they understand the holiday and why it is an important part of history to be celebrated as other holidays they are familiar with.  

Juneteenth celebrations can be small and personal or huge and elaborate. Have you celebrated Juneteenth in past years? Will you celebrate Juneteenth this year? If so, how?

Not sure how to celebrate Juneteenth? You can find suggestions and listings of 2023 Juneteenth Events near you on the internet.

References:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/06/15/juneteenth-us-federal-holiday/7582744001/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/us/juneteenth-flag-meaning-explainer-cec/index.html#:~:text=The%20red%2C%20white%20and%20blue,became%20Americans%20under%20the%20law

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:~:text=The%2013th%20Amendment%20to%20the%20United%20States%20Constitution%20provides%20that,place%20subject%20to%20their%20jurisdiction.%22

Related Articles and Videos

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/

https://www.juneteenth.com/history/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/17/nearly-half-of-states-now-recognize-juneteenth-as-an-official-holiday/

https://www.history.com/news/what-is-juneteenth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBtIHTcDfYg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8EY9e7Vjis