2010 -- A year in review (November 3)

Indiana Writers' Consortium participated
in the 2010 Great Lakes Award Initiative
sponsored by:

The Legacy Foundation
(Lake County’s Community Foundation)

Above, left to right:
Kathryn Page Camp, Sharon Palmeri, Katherine Flotz

This year Indiana Writers' Consortium was selected to participate in the Great Lakes Award Initiative Program for non profit organizations.

The program, which ran between April and September, consisted of seven training workshops on topics which included: Strategy, Fund-raising, Clarity, Roles, Accountability and Resources.

The Great Lake Award Initiative focuses on flexibility and perfecting the roles that each of us play in creating and sustaining robust nonprofit organizations.

Members who participated in the program were: Kathryn Page Camp, Katherine Flotz, Janine Harrison, Sharon Palmeri and Judy Whitcomb.

The photos on this page were taken and shared with us by the Legacy Foundation at the November 3, 2010 Legacy Foundation's Annual Community Reception.

Kathryn Page Camp explains the mission of IWC

Legacy Foundation at the 2010 Annual Community Reception on November 3
First row, second person: Sharon Palmeri joins the GLAI participants

2010 -- A year in review (October)

The Road to Publishing Banquet
Second Annual Banquet and Writers Panel
was held on October 28, 2010 at
Strongbow Inn, Valparaiso, Indiana



(above) Several tables were set up for authors. Picture is Sandra Tooley







(Above) Pre-dinner networking




Outgoing President Sharon Palmeri recaps the history of IWC from 2007-present




Left to right: Kathryn Page Camp served as moderator; next to Kathryn are authors Katherine Flotz, Peggy Archer, Michael Poore, Cynthia Echterling, and Kate Collins


Below are readers from the poetry slam that followed the banquet



(above) Michael Poore



Gordon Stamper



Ken Alexander



Heather Stamper

2010 -- A year in review (July)

The 2nd Annual Networking Picnic was held on
Saturday, July 17th, 12 - 4 PM
Community Park at Lions Shelter
Munster, IN




(above) Author Peggy Archer discusses the craft of writing for children




Preparing for the "white elephant" fund-raising auction




Good eats



Let the auction begin....

Drinking Starbucks’ Coffee* By Kathryn Page Camp

I drink a lot of coffee, although not usually from Starbucks. But my characters go there. That’s because it is a nationally-recognized name, and I like to use some recognizable brands to give my stories a sense of authenticity.

But I know writers who are scared of using brand names. They think it will violate copyright or trademark laws, or they don’t want to use the trademark symbol because it can interrupt the flow of the story.

I don’t worry about any of that.

You can’t copyright names, so copyright law doesn’t apply. You can trademark names, and Starbucks is a registered trademark. However, trademarks have a specific, limited purpose, so the protection the owner gets is much narrower than with copyrights.

Trademarks protect against consumer confusion over the source of a product or service. Consumers use recognizable names and symbols to tell them that they are getting a certain quality or a product with particular characteristics. When you see the Nike swoosh on a pair of shoes, you expect them to last for a while. When a counterfeiter prints the swoosh on shoddy-quality shoes, people are mislead. That harms both the consumer (who is not getting what he or she expected) and Nike (who could lose sales to the counterfeiter and suffer harm to its reputation when the shoes fall apart).

Your characters can drink 7-Up without worrying about trademark infringement. No one is going to go out and buy counterfeit 7-Up based on your novel, nor will readers assume that the makers of 7-Up are connected with your book. You don’t have to call it lemon-lime soda.

A brand name can lose its trademark protection if consumers use it generically for any brand of the same type of product. After people started referring to all tissues as Kleenex and to photocopies made on any brand photocopier as Xeroxes, the owners of those trademarks spent a lot of money educating consumers on the proper use of the terms. That’s why brand owners would like you to use the trademark symbol. But you aren’t required to. If you want to help trademark owners protect their property and you think “the real thing” will add authenticity, just capitalize Coke.

So let your characters drink Starbucks’ coffee if they want to. Or 7-Up. Or Coke. (There seems to be a lot of drinking in this post. Maybe I should send my characters to the bathroom more often.)

* This article originally appeared on the Hoosier Ink blog (http://hoosierink.blogspot.com) on April 22, 2010.

You Did What in the Name of Research? by Kate Collins

When I read a book, I want to be right there with the characters, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting their world through their eyes. By the time I’ve finished, I hope to feel like I’ve visited a place that was foreign at first, and then became as familiar as my hometown. That’s why I believe vivid descriptive scenes are as vital to a good novel as believable, sympathetic characters and true-to-life conversations.

To get that all-important color and flavor in my own writing, I opt for first-hand knowledge whenever possible -- the hands-on approach – which I’ll admit has made my life quite, ahem, interesting. And at times, downright chilling.

For my historical romances I did a lot of research simply by reading up on the time period in which my book was set, which was pretty tame stuff. But I also went spelunking in a cave that was NOT designed for tourists, and am still amazed I emerged unscathed. My tour guide was a college student looking for some pocket money, and we did not have hard hats with lights on them. We had old flashlights, candles and matches, and kneepads to crawl through the tight spots. Good thing I’m not overly claustrophobic because there were long stretches of those tight spots.

At one point, after straddling an icy stream for about twenty yards, when I was finally able to stand upright, I aimed the beam at the ceiling and discovered that it was here inches above my head. And hanging from that ceiling were about a thousand brown bats about the size of my thumb. I hunkered down and backed out very slowly. But let me tell you, that scene played out exceedingly well in my story.

I’ve also had my husband assume the roles of both hero and villain to help me script those black moment/woman in jeopardy scenes. If anyone had glanced in my office window as we were role-playing, I’m sure the cops would have been there soon after. I have my suspicions that my husband took great pleasure in pretending to try to throw me down a well. I’m just saying.... Then again, he took even greater pleasure in scripting the love scenes.

In writing mysteries, my research has taken me to very cool places as well as really strange ones. Because the main setting is a flower shop, I’ve spent a lot of time with florists, soaking up their techniques and that wonderful tropical atmosphere, pouring over floral magazines, and doing virtual flower designs. Pure heaven.

But when I wrote A ROSE FROM THE DEAD, in which my sleuth, a feisty young florist named Abby, sets up a booth at a funeral directors’ convention, I needed an in-depth look at a mortuary – really in-depth, because I had to climb inside a casket. And let me tell you, it’s really, really dark in those boxes. Still, I needed to experience it because that plays an important part in the story. Then there was the day I toured a crematorium. Enough said. And way more info than I ever wanted to know.

In the name of research I’ve also:
Held an eight-foot snake. They’re not slimy.
Ridden a donkey up the side of a steep cliff and didn’t fall off.
Took a hot air balloon ride. You can hear a person talking in a normal voice on the ground when you’re way up high.
Stood inside a prison cell. I can still hear the clanging of that door.
Sat in a tiny room in a prison with a criminal defense attorney as he interviewed a huge and frightening man accused of a grisly crime. (I told you it could be chilling.)

Would I have experienced these things if I’d remained an elementary teacher? Highly doubtful. As a child, I was the one cowering in the back row, unable to finish a swimming course because I was afraid to jump off the high dive. So this new-found courage, where does it come from?

It’s some kind of transference, I guess, because somehow, after having lived in my characters’ heads for years, I’m not scaredy-cat Kate any more. I’ve become bold, empowered by a passion for life and a fierce need for justice. I stand up for my rights now and don’t let bullies intimidate me. I fight for the underdog. What a heady feeling that is. I imagine it must be like being an actor. When you’re on stage, you become the character.

For a writer, you have to become many characters, and to do that accurately and with feeling, you must step outside of yourself and live fully in their worlds. All fun stuff, trust me.



Kate

Kate Collins is the author of the popular, best-selling Flower Shop Mysteries. For her plots, Kate draws upon her own love of flowers, and states firmly that none of the zany characters populating the fictional town of New Chapel are based on people she knows. Honest. Read more at www.katecollinsbooks.com

A desk is just a desk -- or is it?

I recently returned from a road trip to the places where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived. Being a writer, I noticed the desks that were on display at De Smet, South Dakota, and Mansfield, Missouri. Two belonged to Laura, and the rest to her daughter, Rose.

And I realized that desks have evolved over the years.

In 1894, when Laura moved from De Smet to Mansfield, she took along a lap desk. Most of us have seen something similar: about 18 inches by 12 inches and 3 or 4 inches deep, with a top that lifts up so that you can store stationary and writing implements inside. Lap desks were great for a society that was always moving (usually farther west) and that wrote with pen and ink.

By the early 1930s, Laura was well settled in Mansfield, where she lived out the rest of her days. She wrote her books on a desk more than three feet wide. It has a pull-down writing area that, when closed, would cover the cubbyholes at the rear of the desk. Although it would be possible to put a typewriter there, the desk is set up with a pad of paper. Since the curators left things pretty much the way it was when Laura died, she might not have adopted the “more modern” mode of writing using a typewriter.

The museum at Mansfield also has three of Rose’s desks. Rose was a newspaper correspondent as well as a novelist, and two of the desks there are the type you see in newspaper offices in old movies. These desks are possibly 4 or 5 feet wide by 3 or 4 feet deep and have a lowered typewriter shelf in the middle.

But it was Rose’s desk in the house at De Smet that had me salivating. No photos were allowed, so I have to rely on my memory. And now I wish I’d taken more time to look at the desk. I think this was the largest desk of all, built in an E shape without the middle prong. Or, if it were a house, I would describe it as having a long main wing with shorter wings extending from the front on each side. It is all the same height (with the possible exception of a lowered typewriter shelf where the doors to the main hall would be located). Instead of an entrance courtyard, there is a cut-out for a chair, and the shorter wings have built-in bookcases where the walls would be. Does anyone know how to steal a desk without getting caught?

Even though the room was filled with Rose’s possessions, she never lived at De Smet, and I don’t know when she owned this desk. It may have been one of her latter desks, possibly even the one she was using at her death in 1968. And big as it was, desks got even larger once PCs started replacing typewriters as the mode of writing. Think of all the space needed for a monitor and a printer and a keyboard and a hard drive.

But now we’re back to the lap desk, which we call a laptop or a notebook or an iPad. And we are also back to being a society on the move, even though our travels are usually temporary forays away from home rather than searches for new ones.

So are we progressing or regressing? I’ll let you answer that question.

Kathryn Page Camp

Research history of your family by Katherine Flotz

My passion is to search out family history – memoirs of worthwhile facts that are usually hidden away in the minds of our older relatives. I lost my parents early in life. I cannot ask them about their fondest memories, their adventures, and their stories of family functions. I depend on friends of my parents, still alive, to fill me in.

There are many questions we want to ask but it’s often too late. In my memoirs ‘A Pebble in my Shoe” I write about my memories as a child and later as a wife and mother. I wish that I could ask my parents or grandparents about their childhoods and the culture at the time. So much change in fifty years.

In this wonderful world of the Internet, so much more is possible. I have saved all the emails my grandson sent us during his college years. I bound the copies into a book and will give that to him when he settles down with a family. In reading the emails over, I learned so much of his character, his likes and dislikes, his feelings for teachers and classmates and his ambitions.

I also write a Christmas letter each year and have done so for thirty years. My relatives and friends out of town wait for those letters. Again, I bound them into a book and check back when I want to know what happened in a specific year. It is a diary of sorts, as well as a historical family keepsake. It spans children’s births, school activities, weddings, and deaths. It’s a lifespan of history.

Ask your older relatives for a visit and make it a day to remember and chat. Make them feel important and you will reap the benefits along the way. Grandfathers probably served in WWII, fathers perhaps in Korea or Vietnam. Grandmothers may have worked in unusual places during those years. Mothers may have served in the armed forces as well. No facts are useless; the lives of your family are important and worthwhile to record.

It’s easy to write what you know. This is a project that can serve as a practice session for future novels. Life is a novel. You only need to change the facts and the story falls into place.

If you can get photos of family members no longer alive, include them into the memoirs and honor their memory. Children can see who their ancestors were, even though they never met them.