Write Angles 10-09

Write Angles O c t o b e r

2009

Newsletter of the Berkeley Branch, California Writers Club

COULD YOUR NOVEL BE AN e-BOOK? Table of Contents Could Your Novel be an e-Book? David Baker 1 The View From the Helm AL Levenson 2 A CWC-BB Workshop 2 CALIFORNIA WRITERS CLUB and the Active Role Women Took From Its Early Years Therese M. Pipe 3-4 Member News Anne Fox 4 Tidbits 4 Noted From the 2009 Squaw Valley Conference AL Levenson 5-7

Cover Image: Distinguished Writers of California Jack London Stamp

October 2009

Kemble Scott, whose novel SoMa was a Chronicle bestseller and a finalist for the national Lambda Literary Award for debut fiction, is more than just a successful author. He’s a resource. SoMa Literary Review, the e-zine Kemble co-edits, features the great variety of literary activities and work of Bay Area writers, including his own. His weekly e-newsletter, The Lit Guide, alerts the reading public to upcoming literary events, including author presentations. When Kemble spoke to us in April 2008, he described and evaluated local organizations open to people trying to get their manuscripts reviewed and published. His willingness to help his fellow writers will once again be on display at our October 17 meeting, when he’ll talk to us about e-books. Using the Internet to further one’s writing career is a topic Kemble addresses with authority. In 2007, he surprised the publishing world by producing YouTube videos introducing potential readers to settings that inspired SoMa. In May 2009, he attracted widespread media coverage by e-releasing his second book, The Sower, as the premier novel sold by start-up Scribd.com. In addition to Kemble’s e-publishing insights, we will learn more about the breadth of his writing. A longtime journalist, he won three Emmy awards for his work in television news. His darkly humorous novels take readers into unfamiliar territory. SoMa’s characters inhabit the cultural underground in San Francisco’s South of Market district. The Sower’s antihero protagonist carries a disease-destroying virus that can save mankind, but only if he practices unsafe sex as promiscuously as he can. In August, Numina Press published The Sower in hardcover. Kemble restricted in-store sales of the first editions to independent booksellers. Why? Come to the October meeting to find out. - David Baker

October Meeting:

Saturday, October 17, 2009. Social Hour: 9:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Meeting and Program: 10:30 a.m. - Noon Event Loft, Barnes & Noble Book Store Jack London Square, Oakland. Write Angles

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The View From the Helm

A CWC-BB Workshop PRE-REGISTRATION ONLY ART OF THE NOUN: PEOPLE, PLACES, & THINGS with Writer/Professor Marianne Rogoff. The Art of the Noun is the art of description. People, places, and things are the concrete infrastructure of stories. Abstract concepts such as truth, justice, love, or beauty are also nouns, and come to life in writing when embodied in spirited characters, settings, and objects. Using selected readings and writing prompts, we’ll practice describing your own or your characters’ attitudes toward themes of love and perfection. Sunday October 11, 2009, 10am-1pm, followed by potluck lunch. Pre-registration only. $9.00 for CWC Members. $29.00 nonmembers. Mail your check to CWC-BB, Box 6447 Alameda, Ca. 94501 Limited seating. Questions? [email protected]

* * * Marianne Rogoff teaches Writing & Literature at California College of the Arts. She is author of the biography, Silvie’s Life, which has been translated, optioned for film, and adopted for Ethics courses. She has published numerous stories, essays, and book reviews, and is an independent editor for publishers and individuals.

October 2009

The October 2009 issue of Write Angles is hereby designated The Centennial issue. In the third week of October, California celebrates all of her writers with Writers Week. As the founding branch of the California Writers Club, the Berkeley Branch is the Keeper of the Flame for our seventeen sister branches. The earliest seeds of the CWC can be traced to a small group of women, professional writers all, who met informally in Alameda in 1907. Two years later they decided to grow the club and recruited the number-one rock-star writer of the day, Jack London. His presence gave the club wings and substance to the legend that he was a founder. It is a good story, and, a hundred years later, no one appreciates a good story more than the members of the Berkeley Branch. On London’s 100th birthday, the post office at Glen Ellen, California, released a postage stamp bearing his sly smile. The stamp is the over image for this issue. In this issue we feature the first of a three-part story of CWC history by Therese Pipe, longtime member of the BB and prominent member of the Berkeley Historical Society. Much of this issue addresses the current state of the writers’ world, seen through the eyes of panelists at the 2009 Squaw Valley Writers Conference. Our speaker at this month’s meeting is Kemble Scott, pen name of Scott James, a great friend of Bay Area writers’ clubs. His recent book, The Sower, was first released as an eBook, a notion unimaginable 100 years ago. It is an exciting time to be a writer in the Berkeley Branch. We sprint into our second century with innovative programs: craft workshops, additional critique groups, and our own writing contest. I think that group of women who began meeting in 1907 would be proud of how their club has evolved. - AL Levenson, President

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CALIFORNIA WRITERS CLUB and the Active Role Women Took from its Early Years PART 1 Although the California Writers Club was originated with men like Jack London as a founder and mentor, women writers have been attracted to it all along and continue to take an active role in the Club’s leadership and publishing today. Believed to be a small faction of the Press Club of Alameda County that existed earlier, this informal group of journalists, editors, amateur poets, and fiction writers met in private homes in the Bay Area to read and discuss their creative works. Correspondence from woman journalist Torrey Connor in 1937 clarified that Florence Hardiman Miller, a newspaper woman and fiction writer, started that Press Club around 30 years earlier. Torrey Connor and Agnes Morley Cleaveland inspired the name change later to California Writers Club, and the two encouraged participation by writers of stature—for example, Jack London, George Sterling, Ina Coolbrith and Herman Whitaker. After several attempts, the California Writers Club became incorporated in 1913 when Dr. William S. Morgan was president, its first branch established in Berkeley, California. Professor Art Perham Nahl of UC-Berkeley designed its seal, and the Club adopted the motto, “Sail on,” from Joaquin Miller’s poem “Columbus,” with a pledge to concentrate on the association and inspiration of men and women in creating art and literature on the Pacific Coast. During the Club’s earlier days, many members were on the faculty of UC-Berkeley. Ina Coolbrith, one of the Club’s earliest honorary women members, received the title of first “Loved Laurel-Crowned Poet of California” at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, with UC President Wheeler and The Regents present. By 1919, the Ina Coolbrith Circle started meeting in San Francisco. It continues to meet today in the East Bay, promoting the art of poetry, the study of history and literature of California, and the preservation of literary works. Miss Coolbrith took an active role within the Circle’s meetings until close to her death in 1928. For Maud Volandri of San Francisco, who began attending meetings in the late 1920s and joined the Club in the early 1930s, her memories went back to the time when she met Ina Coolbrith, already in her 80s. It was at a California Writers Club meeting in the Athens Athletic Club of Oakland. “Everyone there deferred to her,” Volandri reminiscetd with me when we met in the 1980s. “Miss Coolbrith,” she said, was “relaxed and poised, wearing a black mantilla that contrasted against her white hair and light skin.” Describing the California Writers Club poetry group that she participated in, Volandri said, “We met several times in June to picnic in the garden of Ormeida Keeler’s home in the Berkeley hills. She was the widow of poet and scientist Charles Keeler.” A president of the California Writers Club in the early 1920s, Charles Keeler wrote a book, The Simple Home, at a time when Berkeley’s aspirations were high to become the “Athens of the Pacific.” It focuses on the architectural concept he and architect Bernard Maybeck favored at the turn of the century. After his death in 1937, Keeler’s wife Ormeida took a very active role with the Club as its secretary and continued to write poetry. Kathleen and Charles Norris and San Francisco novelist Gertrude Atherton were some of the other early honorary Club members, Volandri recalled. October 2009

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A writer of conventional, romantic novels, Kathleen Norris sold serials of her works to Women’s Home Companion and Good Housekeeping. One of her most ambitious works, Certain People of Importance, was published in 1922. Her husband, Charles, also wrote novels and at least four plays for the Bohemian Club. Gertrude Atherton gained international recognition as a writer in the days when she lived in San Francisco. She hobnobbed with the city’s high society, traveling often to Europe. Her first important published work, Randolph of the Redwoods, appeared in The Argonaut magazine in 1883, published anonymously because of its scandalous content. The author’s historical works include The Californians, in 1898, California: An Intimate History, in 1915, and The Splendid Idle ‘40s. As a feminist, the prolific novelist wrote Can Women Be Gentlemen? in 1938. Volandri described Mrs. Atherton’s 85th birthday celebration by the California Writers Club at the Claremont Hotel in 1942 as “a gala event where she made a stunning presence.” ------Article by Therese M. Pipe, adapted from her original article for the Berkeley Historical Society appearing in the Independent Gazette’s “Berkeley History” column, dated September 5, 1982. With special thanks to Maud Volandri (deceased), Dorothy Benson, and Ray Faraday Nelson of the California Writers Club of Berkeley for research assistance; and The Bancroft Library.

Member News

Tidbits

ATTENTION: REMEMBER TO SEND ALL NEWS ABOUT YOUR WRITING ENDEAVORS, ACHIEVEMENTS, AND ALLIED UNDERTAKINGS TO [email protected]. Arline Lawrence, longtime member of the Berkeley Branch, has been honored with the title of Poet Laureate for the Northern California Indian Tribes. Sasha Futran, radio and print journalist, continues her monthly news stories, columns, and cover articles about dog training and the Bay Area dog world in Fetch the Paper. See her piece “Positive Vibrations: Training Your Dog Through Motivation and Reward” at fetchthepaper.com/articles.aspx?gi_id=2967.

Reviewer needed. Lloyd Lofthouse has advance review copies of his new novel, Our Hart, the sequel to My Splendid Concubine. Our Hart is scheduled for release in January. Is there a member who would like to read Our Hart and post a review online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites? Lofthouse can reciprocate with a review for a novel of approximately equal length (280 pages). Contact Lloyd at [email protected].

Also a current KPFA board member and up for reelection, Sasha had a piece,“KPFA: Let’s Get Real,”in the September 10 Berkeley Daily Planet. The article is also available online: berkeleydaily.org/ issue/2009-09-10/article/33708?headline=KPFA -Let-s-Get-Real. October 2009

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Web Sites for writers: refdesk.com dictionary.com

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Notes From the 2009 Squaw Valley Conference Book Editing-- Squaw Valley Writers Conference 2009 Moderator: Michael Carlisle, agent Panelists: Michael Pietsch, publisher, Little, Brown and Company Joy Johannessen, freelance editor (formerly with publishing houses) Jay Schaefer, San Francisco-based editor-at-large for Algonquin Books and Workman Jack Shoemaker, veteran of a 40-year publishing; has purchased Counterpoint Press, Soft Skull Press, and has an agreement with Sierra Club Books. The discussion opened with the question, “What do editors do?” Pietsch replied that editors within publishing houses are business managers, production managers, and investment managers. They are also the author’s advocate. The editor’s job is to recognize talent, acquire books, and work with writers on their manuscript. Shoemaker believes editors “prop writers up,” supporting writers through the final draft and the marketing process. Editors pitch sales reps and publicity people on the writer’s behalf and are the author’s connection to these elements. Freelance editors’ tasks are narrower. Primarily, they deal with improving the work. Carlisle added that good agents work to keep the author’s expectations reasonable. The discussion moved on to Kindle. Schaefer said he prefers the Sony Reader and uses it for all manuscript reading. Pietsch remarked on the easy accessibility of downloadable books. He observed that the eBook market has about a 3 percent share of the market. He went on to say music downloads went from a 1 percent market share to a 35 percent market share in four years. He predicts the devices will steadily improve. He also observed the Romance market leads the genres downloaded. He sees eBooks as proof that the world still wants books and authors. The panel took a brief side trail to remark about the difference in the experience of ink and paper as opposed to orderly electrons on a computer screen. Someone opined that an eBook is to a paper book what an inflatable doll is to a flesh-and-blood lover. The Kindle topic was a short hop to some remarks about Amazon, itself ever a topic and a target when industry professionals get together. Amazon and Big Book Stores are blamed for the shrinkage of the number of indie book stores from 3500 to 500. One panelist has a near total antipathy for Amazon and avoids supporting them whenever possible. Another panelist expressed concern that Amazon’s market share gives them so much power over what the public gets to read and how they get to read it. The same commentator said that Amazon has changed the industry for the better in one important respect. Before Amazon, he observed, the shelf life of a book in a book store was a few months and rarely as much as a year. At Amazon a book might never leave the list of what is currently available. Someone from the audience asked the panel to describe their dream author as well as the author they dread. Shoemaker replied the dream author is one who responds to his editor and is diligent about promotion. The nightmare author is demanding, with demands that increase as the author succeeds. The nightmare author tends to be unkind to support staff. “Do publishers buy manuscripts or writers?” was another question from the audience. Pietsch and Shoemaker both replied they publish writers. The manuscripts have to be good. But the hope that a writer will produce another four or five books is part of the decision to purchase a manuscript. The theory is that if they believe in the October 2009

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author, his work will eventually find its audience, and then the value of the back list will be enhanced. (ED. You might conclude by reading other observers of the publishing industry that the idea of working with a writer until he is a commercial success is an anachronistic notion. I wonder how many authors there are who became commercially successful on their fourth or fifth book actually sold three or four earlier works to their publisher.) Asked if unagented submissions get read. The answer is no at larger houses. Jack Shoemaker said, “If you call Counterpoint, the answer will be no. But the person who answers the phone actually does have a slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts they are responsible to read. But know that they are the last to be read. In a concluding remark, Schaefer noted that editors are ever hopeful when reading query letters.

Agents-- Squaw Valley Writers Conference 2009 Moderator: Leslie Daniels, writer and owner of Daniels Books LLC, an agency; also editor of Green Mountain Review Panelists: Susan Golomb has had her own literary agency since 1990; Peter Steinberg, who started his own agency in 2007 after eleven years in other agencies.

Daniels opened with question about a typical day for an agent. Golomb said it begins with two hours of e-mail, of which 45 minutes are devoted to queries. Mostly, she deals with logistics of selling a manuscript, talking with editors and writers. She believes an agent must have frequent contact with editors, and her New York location is an advantage. She gets to read manuscripts only at night and on weekends. She has an assistant and sometimes interns who do all the first reading. Asked about the editing that is done by agents, the response was that they do conceptual editing, pointing out slow spots, unresolved conflicts, areas that need more detail. They do not do copyediting. The panel said if a manuscript needs copyediting, it does not get past the first reader. There was a discussion about agent loyalty. Some agents have formal contracts Leslie Daniels does not. A thread of the loyalty topic prompted someone to ask about whether it was appropriate to have a second agent if you have a book in a second genre. The response was that this does not really work. Agents are career-managers, managing a multiplicity of rights; it is important there be but one person who knows the overall picture. An observation came up that if the agent could not handle the breadth of the author’s work, it may be time to change agents. This conversation led to a question about termination of agents. Termination ought to be done by phone not by mail. The panel was asked about reading fees. The agents felt strongly that there should be no reading fee. One called them immoral. Daniels pointed out they are prohibited by the Association of Author’s Representatives. Asked but not well-answered in the weave of topics was how to judge an agent. One response was word-ofmouth, call people who have agents and ask about their experience. Another indicator is the regularity with which the agent reports to the author about the status of submissions. The human nature factor recognizes a reluctance to report rejection after rejection and a tendency to wait for a sliver of good news. Asked what genres they and the marketplace are looking for, Golomb responded escapist literature, including fantasy and science fiction. Daniels looks for originality in language and voice, humor. Steinberg looks for platform. Platform in publishing has been a slippery word, hard to get a definition of, usually discussed as a list of things to do and places to publicize oneself. Steinberg gave a succinct definition—a specific guarantee of publicity. Then added, “It still comes down to the work.” Asked the dollar range of advances for debut novels, the response was between one dollar and five million. October 2009

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Berkeley Branch Officers President: AL Levenson Vice President: Dave Sawle Secretary: Ken Frazer Treasurer: Carlene Cole Program: Laura Shumaker Membership: OPEN Children’s Contest: Lucille Bellucci Newsletter Editor: AL Levenson Copyeditor: Anne Fox Publicity: Linda Brown Delegate to Central Board: Linda Brown WestSide Story Contest: Tatjana Greiner Workshop Coordinator: Risa Nye

Wrap-up--Observations and Advice Squaw Valley Writers Conference 2009. Panelists: Amy Tan, Janet Fitch, Jason Roberts, Karen Joy Fowler, Molly Giles, Sands Hall. Molly Giles, speaking of her first writers’ conference: “These people are crazy in the same way I am. And I began to think of myself as a writer.” Janet Fitch on writing groups: “Don’t have good food. Don’t gossip.” Karen Joy Fowler on critique groups: “I learned more from critiquing others than having my own work critiqued where ego is involved.” Jason Roberts on why writing is hard work: “Writing never gets easier. The product gets better, but the struggle does not.” Jason Roberts: “Get it out there. Don’t be the curator of the museum of your brilliance.” Molly Giles: “Get to a locked cell every day.” Janet Fitch on annotation: “Make notes of about what you are reading and how it affects you as a writer.” And two more from speakers whose names I failed to note. “Writing is the thing I am doing when I don’t think I should be doing something else.” “I write in the morning when I am sharp. I read in the evening when I am not sharp enough to write.” - AL Levenson

The CALIFORNIA WRITERS CLUB is dedicated to educating members and the public-at-large in the craft of writing and in the marketing of their work. For more information, visit our Web site at cwc-berkeley.org. Copyright © 2009 by the California Writers Club, Berkeley Branch. All rights reserved. Write Angles is published 10 times a year (October - October) by the California Writers Club, Berkeley Branch on behalf of its members. CWC assumes no legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, process, product, method or policy described in this newsletter.

October 2009

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