The month of May was designed for writers. Writers are the artists who weave words of color, emotion and inspiration around Spring’s greening-up time as warmer days welcome crocus blossoms and lambs birthing. Writers never seem to run out of fancy words to describe the mystery of May – and June and July . . . .

Who isn’t grateful to move past the long, dark days of winter and to honor each additional minute of daylight added to each day? We all, man or woman, young and old, rush to proudly announce our first glimpsing of a robin, a bud bursting or a hummingbird at the feeder. Strange thing, though, we seem to be just as surprised this year as we were last, when the snowy-white blossoms of the dogwood trees suddenly appear all around us.

Certainly May is a time of new birth and new words, too. Writers fill their ink pots and sharpen their quills in expectation of setting forth newly inspired pages, stories and books. This is the time of year wordmasters dress in their best promotional attitude and attire to greet and meet their reading public wherever they can find them. This year Twin Lakes Writers will be among the accomplished artists showing off their very own spring lamb - the anthology entitled In Our Own Words. Like a parent showing off a new baby, members will be promoting ‘the book’ at every opportunity; talking about its variety of contributing authors, describing its unique construction and attractive cover, allowing readers, book in hand, to feel the power of its contents and encouraging everyone to own his or her very own copy. Book fairs, art shows and street sales are perfect for presenting our artistic accomplishments that were so diligently produced over the past cold, wintry months. I expect throngs of people queuing up, to admire and to purchase In Our Own Words.

300,000 books will be published in 2008. On an average, each will contain 80,000 words. Those words, having been reduced to a dynamic, compelling, reflective title of a mere 4 words, are expected to attract and hold the attention of a potential reader long enough to spend more than the typical three second scan, to picking up In Our Own Words, read a few words (usually the back cover) and find enough interest to open it and read several lines before feeling compelled to purchase this particular gem of a book.

For my next act, I will _________________ (fill in the blank).

"Doorways to Adventure" is the opening page header of Twin Lakes Writers website for April, 2008. And, since "Doors" is the theme of my 2008 calendar, a new and enticing entryway appears monthly. Each image invites my imagination to knock on the door and step through the portal to discover what or who is on the other side. My concept of a knock on a door is that it will fling open to offer as much access, opportunity, surprise and success as I will allow.

My life has been a series of doors that opened, thresholds crossed and opportunities accepted or rejected. New doors became familiar with regular use. Some opened onto bright and cheerful places yet, led nowhere. Others were filled with challenges, trials and hard work but, in the end, offered satisfying adventures and unexpected successes. Doors and rooms I call my own open onto my thoughts, my writings, experiences and past rewards. One super-important element I’ve learned is that even the softest knock at the door can be an invitation to your greatest opportunity.

One by one, scribblers knocked on the TLW door and became members; they met other writers, found new encouragement and support for their words, ideas, hopes and goals. Then, when opportunity knocked at the TLW door a few months ago, thirteen members stepped across the threshold to take advantage of having their writings published! TLW scribblers became authors!

Nobody knows how many more doors will open because our members recognized opportunity’s knock - and responded. Whether knocking on doors in hope of finding success, or listening for opportunity to knock at your door, remember to keep writing, one word after another, so you will be prepared to step across the threshold without hesitation. With the projected success of In Our Own Words, TLW may want to open that door of opportunity again. Of course, walking in the footsteps of famous writers by soaking up the atmosphere at a famous bookstore or gathering Ernest Hemmingway Mojo at his Piggott, Arkansas writing loft adds generous sprinkles of magic dust to access, opportunity and success!

Seeds of Hope, April 2008, nktc\\

Wii are living in an ‘e’ world. I am definitely not ready for it. I haven’t mastered the tutorials of my 2002 computer program or my digital camera, yet. Should I admit to owning a computer these past thirty years and actually having taught people how to use one? Obviously that was back in the olden day when products were Electro-, Dyno-, or Mega. Real people thought e- or Giga- was a Geeky joke!

Well, I have digital accessories and high-speed, high-definition equipment that seem to be working – but how would I really know? I cannot even program telephone numbers in my cellphone. Should ‘I’ try to catch up on ‘e’ or get out the way of progress because life has already moved on from ‘e’ to ‘i’ and Wii !

Once again, I am ready to start writing a biography - an 18^th century character this time. Naturally I tapped my ‘e’ resources to gather information on period language, photographs, documents and secondary data. I Yahooed and Googled, e-mailed and photocopied a ream of research information. I even attended a writer’s conference at which three speakers mentioned or spoke directly of reading and writing ‘e’-lectronically. They suggested writing articles, columns, and features using the simple ‘e’ format current (published) authors and photographers are using:

Find the most exciting, current, breathtaking, revealing place to start your story. They recommend starting in the middle of your story with some drama. That eye-opening event makes up the horizontal part of the ‘e.’ Next, wrap your story around that attention-getting event, encircling the – and completing the ‘e’. The drama can be flood, fire, tornado, murder or, as depicted in the movie Titanic, new technology bringing an historical event back to life.

I used the ‘e’ format and liked the circular feel and flow of writing it. I may even give it a try - as the short version of my 18^th century biography. And I recommend you give this ‘e’ style of writing a try. It may just elucidate your subject and wrap your audience around your every word.

NOTE: We are all stunned by recent tornadoes. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the people who suffered personal and property losses. In a selfish vein, however, as writers and computer users, one constant concern is loss of our hard drive and files. We have been cautioned to ‘back-up’ all our files because they are irreplaceable. You may want to employ more than just hard copy, CD, or flash drive… To relieve your fear of data loss, I recommend you check out Writers Digest magazine for April 2008, page 16. We can all live with one less concern or fear.

I’ll see you Saturday, March 8^th, 1-3:30pm. Be sure to bring some of your writing to read and critique – up to five pages, double-spaced, twelve copies and a pen to note your corrections, comments or critique for others.

SEEDS OF HOPE, 1 March 2008, nktcerny@suddenlink.net \\

If I were a columnist, I would want to write several monthly columns. The reason being, I’d get bored with the same subject over and over again – the same thing 52 weeks a year, year after year. Yet, a writer needs a topic to focus on. Food columns are nice, geography, parenting, sports, politics, gardening, bird watching, and the list goes on. Subjects exist with plusses and minuses no matter which I choose to write. So, I ask, do I have the patience to maintain an enthusiastic column? Are my fish hooks sharp enough to hook and reel in publishers and faithful readers?

In the minus column, I have no publisher interested in my ‘columns’ (at this moment, anyway). However, I prefer to see the plus column. I can pick any topics I want to write about. I can sit down at my computer every day and write a column about anything I have an interest to write. Who is going to blue pencil it or complain? Also on the plus side, I need to practice writing if I am ever to land a big fish writing contract. You know the old saying: The way to Carnegie Hall is Practice, practice, practice… The same is true of writing.

I practice by writing four or five monthly columns, each on a different topic, until I find my comfortable niche or nichee (whatever is plural for niche?). Because I was the filler-in writer for a food columnist a while back, I think "Funny Food" is an enjoyable topic. Also, because I live in the Ozarks, I write "To the Point" for its location and extensive topical interests. As a senior facing senior people’s concerns, I may want to write one of those columns, "Staying Alive after 75" – or not.

For more than twenty years, I wrote and taught "Life Skills" to people who had hit a wall with physical or emotional problems and were striving to regain their healthy balance. The topic remains close to my heart as I write a ‘help’ column and call it "Seeds of Hope." Gee, where did that come from?

I enjoy researching a variety of topics and writing to a broader range of readers while getting to know them individually. Like a fisherman, I want to test my skill in all the waters. When I succeed, I’ll create a website and make it a place to write, publish, teach and share with others who are wordsmith fishermen who want to ‘wet their line’ and ‘snag a thought’ and show off their ‘catch’ on line.

All I need, or you need, to succeed is to keep the fish hooks sharp.

Seeds of Hope 01 February 2008 Nancy Thatcher Cerny \\

2008 will arrive, complete with New York’s giant ball drop, fireworks across America, boats festooned in twinkle lights floating down waterways, with bells ringing and whistles blowing around the world. Happy New Year! Are you ready?

I hope you have taken time to review your 2007 accomplishments. There are probably more than you thought. Have you written down your goals and resolutions for 2008? Is TLW meetings at the top of that list? Meandering in circles accomplishes nothing. Set your sights. No review? No resolutions? Help is available.

Want to write a book? Get on your mark: Schedule a block of writing time five days a week. Writing one page per day becomes one chapter each month, adding up to a book by Christmas! Freelance writer? Get ready: Fill your files with your own daily blurbs, weekly columns and monthly feature articles whether you have contracts for them or not. Go: Follow the routines of successful writers like Stephen King, J. K. Rowling or Tom Brokaw. How about taking a gutsy cue from Katherine Graham: What I essentially did was to put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes and step off the edge. (Graham was the owner, editor and publisher of the Washington Post during the ‘Watergate’ exposé.)

Now, today, 2008, is a good time to apply those success cues we have heard and read about – things like:

Be Prepared: Write your bio in 35, 50, 75, 100 words and keep them updated – and ready to send or print on a moment’s notice.

In one sentence, clearly and enticingly, describe what you are writing currently. Present your latest book, article or story in one dynamic, defining paragraph. (Somebody is bound to ask!)

Build your Platform: Keep a running list of your writings, contests entered and won, publications and kudos.

Writing is like going to the gym to stay fit. If you don’t exercise daily, you will lose your rhythm, motivation and ability.

This list could go on forever! Soooo, design your own list of motivational cues, tack them up next to your computer, read them regularly and use them to enhance your unique writing style.

~ ~ ~

I want to offer my thanks to our members who make up the TLW Anthology Reading Committee: Bob and Anna Harper, Joe Wiley Russell, Phil Emery and David Jardine. My special thanks go to Joe for his collection and organization of submissions in preparation for publication of the TLW anthology.

Twin Lakes Writers meeting is Saturday, January 12, 2008, 1- 3:30 pm. Be sure to bring your anthology book cover and title suggestions – along with your writings for comment and critique. I’ll see you there!

SEEDS of HOPE, 12/22/07 nktc \\

A few days before our TLW October meeting, my sister and I returned from a driving tour through some of the southern states. Our only real destination was Columbia, South Carolina, to visit my daughter. The rest of our trip had a "Where will we go today" theme. That’s why we headed west from Birmingham, Alabama, to Greenville, Mississippi.

Why Greenville, you ask? Because I think I am a writer and writers who drink Greenville’s ‘Magic’ water get published.

The words "Greenville Mississippi" are written on a faded Post It note that catches my attention every day as I sit at my computer because Marilyn Schwartz wrote an article entitled "Greenville’s Legendary Water" for Southern Living magazine – in November, 2002. "When trying to get a book published, I was told to go to this small town and drink the water." She went. She did. It was.

Driving to Greenville, we saw miles of beautiful, snowy white cotton fields being harvested under skies so blue the clouds seemed to bloom out like giant, moving sculptures. Washington county is a place of sights, sounds, colors, flavors, music and stories unique to the legendary Mississippi Delta. Greenville, the jewel of Washington county, is known for producing corn, cotton and a crop of published authors. "There are more published writers per capita in Greenville than in any other city in the United States," according to David Cohn in The Atlantic Monthly.

Our hotel was on the east side of the levee, as the great Mississippi flowed on the west. The Greenville brochure listed 41 places of interest to tourists. We chose about six that were related to photography, writing, authors, publishing, and the homes of local writers. Map in hand, we headed out to find the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library-with its Greenville Writers’ Exhibit, Greenville’s History Museum and McCormick Book Inn. Two left turns too many and we were lost.

Everyone we stopped to ask direction offered friendly help and direction. Either they were lost, too, or we cannot follow directions, no how. We circled some blocks several times trying to find a street name or a number—any number. Because of our dilemma, we saw interesting places that were definitely not on any tourist list.

Late in the afternoon, we made our way across the levee to take sundown photos on the Delta. In the morning, having reliable directions to McCormick Book Inn bookstore, we asked where we could get some of Greenville’s ‘magic’ water. That was when we learned we had not only drunk the ‘magic’ water in our coffee that morning, we had showered in it as well! The desk clerk referred to it as "brown water." ‘White water,’ it seems, comes out of Hinckley and Schmitt bottles.

I am a skeptic, but I’d like to be a ‘published’ skeptic. Since the brown water is safe to drink, why not? Greenville, here I am! And I’m filling up a couple empty ‘white water’ bottles with ‘Magic’ water for fellow writers who attend the October Twin Lakes Writers meeting, too.

Shelby Foote, the famous Civil War author, grew up in Greenville. His family had owned Mount Holly Plantation. One of Foote’s schoolmates was Walker Percy, an acclaimed author and National Book Award winner. Percy, an orphan, lived in Greenville with his cousin, William Alexander Percy. The elder Percy was a published poet, according to Schwartz.

Hodding Carter, Jr., Delta Democrat Times editor, won a Pulitzer Prize. Josephine Haxton, wrote novels and short stories under her pen name, Ellen Douglas and her published works earned the Houghton Mifflin award.

Greenville’s library exhibits more than 16 of its best-known writers’ works while McCormick’s Book Inn has a collection of books by more than 50 of the town’s writers. William Faulkner’s literary agent, Ben Wasson, was from Greenville and Faulkner often visited him there. It was Wasson who got Faulkner’s first two books published.

We are looking forward to Pot Luck at our October Twin Lakes Writers meeting. Bob and Anna Harper have invited the membership, along with a spouse, partner or friend, to join them at the BBQ pavilion, located across the highway from the Harper house and the Bull Shoals Yacht Club.  The park and pavilion overlook the Bull Shoals Boat Dock. (They said, "Look to your right and you can’t miss it.) We plan to gather together at our regular meeting time and date: Saturday, October 13^th at 1pm. There are plenty of benches and seats so that we can conduct some business, enjoy the day, absorb the view and relish one another’s company! Don’t forget to email Anna at theharpers@bullshoals.net or phone Anna at (870) 445-4750 to let her know what delicious dish you will be bringing to share with the group. Anna and Bob will be providing the hamburgers and condiments. We are looking forward to a Good Time!

Wasn’t it wonderful to see so many writers attend the September TwinLakesWriters meeting! Keep Coming Back!

And, we certainly got a nice sampling of our writers’ product in the pieces read for group comment. We got some humor, some serious thinking and some heartfelt emotion – all a pleasure to read, hear and think about. I’m hoping our projected anthology will be filled with those kinds of thought-provoking, sensitive, funny and serious works we got a small glimpse of at our September meeting and readings.

~~~

Since my past month has been a series of unexpected detours and glitches, I decided to take my own detour from Judy Denton’s (helpful) guide to avoiding writer mistakes (I may get back to her in November), to relate a little name-dropping piece – just for the fun of it:

I conclude that a new story pops up every minute of every day. It doesn’t matter whether it is about a rude expression like "shut up," a book review like the life of Earle Stanley Gardner, a frustrated need to respond to a ‘star’ football player who raises dogs to kill each other for ‘sport,’ or seeing an old clip of Carl Sandburg on the Sunday Morning Show, all snuggled up with Marilyn Monroe. (Things don’t always ‘match.’) On the same show, in a different clip, Carl Sandburg was interviewed by Edward R. Murrow who asked Sandburg, "How do you write?" And Sandburg’s response was, "I sit at the typewriter and put down one word after the other."

Oh, but that writing was sooo easy!

Stealing (paraphrasing) from a book I’m reading* is the story about a writer who died and St. Peter asked, "Would you rather go to heaven or to hell?"

True to writer-type thinking, the writer says, "Let me do a little research first." So, there was hell with row upon row of writers chained to desks, immersed to their waists in steaming lava and pounding away at computers with sticky keys while being whipped with thorny lashes.

"I’d like to have a look at heaven," says the writer, and just off the boulevards paved with gold, was row upon row of writers chained to desks, up to their waists in steaming lava and pounding away on old Remingtons or Apples with sticky keys and being whipped with thorny lashes.

"This is as bad as hell," exclaims the writer.

"Hardly," booms a majestic voice. "Here, you get published."

Now I’m not sure what the moral of this story is supposed to be (it changes depending on who is telling the story) so I have made up my own: Writers chain themselves to desks, pound out stories through pleasure and pain, for good and not so good, until some majestic voice from on high, whether agent, publisher or the author herself says, "I’ll publish that!" And, suddenly, you’re in Heaven!

With the anticipated publication of the TLW Anthology, it looks like we’ll meet again in Heaven.

*Curtis, Richard "How to get your e-book published," Writers Digest Books, 3002.

I look forward to seeing you Saturday, October 13^th at the Bull Shoals Park Pavilion. As my cousin Julia would say, Bon Appetit!

"Seeds of Hope" Nancy Thatcher Cerny, September 10, 2007.

nktcerny@SuddenLink.net