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Kismet: [1840–50]
Fate or Destiny
Persian, Arabic.

Pitchcraft [2009]
The art of your pitch

Kismet would sum up my weekend. Joe and I celebrated 24 years together last Sunday. We decided to get the party started in San Francisco where Joe was on business. I happened to look up what writing events were going on and signed up for The Donald Maass Breakout Novel Workshop offered as a Pre-Conference event at the sold-out San Francisco Writer's Conference. Everything was perfect.

But then, Snowmagedoon hit and postponed all flights out of New York and the workshop until Monday.

Went to a couple other workshops on Thursday. Loved them. Pitchcraft was taught by Katharine Sands an agent at The Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency. One of her unique ways of seeing a writer's career was as an arc: get ready, get read, get readers. She maintains that a pitch is a sparkle of a book and is more about what you'd tell a friend about the latest greatest movie you saw than about distilling the nuts & bolts of an entire novel in 100 words. The morning session was taught by Julie Salisbury and focused on the readers of our book. Fabulous. Taught me to think about my title in new ways and gave me the tools I need to write a more compelling [let's HOPE so] synopsis. A big thank you to the snow gods for seeing to it that I got exactly the information I need to help me when I'm ready to seek representation this Spring/Summer.

I hit the road back up to San Francisco on Monday for the Breakout Novel Workshop and got so many new insights into my story. Glad I made the extra trip, even though that alarm at 4AM was, um, harsh. Wonderful to go in depth and see what might be more unexpected for my story and look to add a few more layers. I highly recommend this workshop if you can ever go. The day was one of the best I've spent learning how to deepen my story and I left with concrete scenes that I can use and expand upon.

I just checked out this video and loved it, thought you might too:

JK at Harvard: The Fringe Benefits of Failure

San Francisco places you CAN'T miss:

The Tadich Grill
The oldest restaurant in San Francisco

Caffe Trieste
The North Beach location is where Francis Ford Coppola wrote THE GODFATHER

The Top of The Mark

A BIG shout out to my BRO for his 50th! Can't wait 'til we all celebrate together:)

Today I'm celebrating the good friends in my life that I can talk to, really talk to and they just get me. Know how I'm feeling by the tone in my voice. Giggling together. Crying together.

Here are this week's Magic Words coming to you from the books I am currently reading, words I didn't know before I read them. Hope they inspire you and maybe give you a few story ideas:)

The Colossus of Rhodes
One of the Seven Wonders Of The Ancient World

Redoubt [1600–10]
n.
1. A small, often temporary defensive fortification.
2. A reinforcing earthwork or breastwork within a permanent rampart.
3. A protected place of refuge or defense.

Rabelais
–noun
Fran⋅çois 1490–1553, French satirist and humorist.

Ephemeral [1570–80]
–adjective
1. lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory: the ephemeral joys of childhood.
2. lasting but one day: an ephemeral flower.
–noun
2. anything short-lived, as certain insects.

Velocipede:

Version of the bicycle reinvented in the 1860s by the Michaux family of Paris. Its iron and wood construction and lack of springs earned it the nickname boneshaker. It was driven by pedaling cranks on the front axle. To increase the distance covered for each turn of the cranks, the front wheel was enlarged until, finally, in the ordinary, or penny-farthing, bicycle, the wheel would just go under the crotch of the rider. The penny-farthing nickname came from the smallest and largest British coins of the time, in reference to the disparity in the size of the wheels. By the second half of the 20th century, the original meaning was restricted to those knowledgeable in the history of the bicycle, while to others it referred to a children's tricycle, which duplicates the differentiated wheel size. The velocipede was eventually replaced by the more stable safety bicycle, having a chain-driven rear wheel

Papiamento
–noun
a creolized language based on Spanish and spoken on Curaçao.

I just finished reading ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel García Márquez, ironically in the solitude of Big Sur. Here's one of my favorite quotes from the book:


“Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets.”

Here is my review, if you are interested:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews >>

Since I've been aware of my magic words, I've been keeping a weather eye open for posts that relate to them each week. Today I'm posting about a guy who palliates negativity and just generally inspires me. Big Sur attracts seekers and people who live a bit out-of-the-box [and usually in their cars with most old timers' stories beginning with, "So I lived a year or two parked among the redwoods."]. Last week I round a corner, on my way to town to get a haircut and I see this:







This sculpture is called ATTAINMENT


Meet the artist Kermit:



He's living the dream. A one-time industrial iron worker who decided to do something different. "No one has any money right now," he said when I asked him why he decided to swing by Big Sur. He hopes people here will be interested in his art. Check out his website. Came to Big Sur by way of Texas and Utah and many different careers.

Storm update: Was like the heavens opened up this morning and poured a river of water on the house and because that wasn't dramatic enough decided to throw in some hail too. Oso helped me take a shower, blow dry my hair, do the laundry and work all day. Wouldn't leave my side, poor guy, even though all the while he wanted out of this nosy, creaking, and thankfully not leaking, house!


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I'm not a big angle person. I just talk about what's going on in my writing life with a hot heaping side of personal stories. But, what I'd like to do on Mondays this year is to share new words, well, my new words. They're my magic words [kinda like Forrest Gump's magic shoes] because there's usually one in there that speaks to some usually random and sometimes funny slice of life story I have from the week before. I guess that will be Tuesday's post from now on. And heck, we're writers, words are our bread and butter. I get sick of using the same old ones over and over and over. Don't you? Always nice to find a new one. Kinda like a treasure hunt. Besides, sometimes all it takes is one word to get the creative juices flowing, aye? And I'm kinda into seeing a word's born date too, so I'll usually include it. All definitions come from Dictionary.com. Seems I have to look words up more than the average bear, so you might not find some of the words as magical as me. Never fear, on a week where I'm particularly word challenged I'll only post the top five. That said, here are today's magic words. Enjoy:)

Seraphic [1625-35] : like, of befitting a seraph. A seraph: 1. one of the celestial beings hovering above God's throne in Isaiah's vision. Isa. 6. 2. a member of the highest order of angels, often represented as a child's head with wings above, below, and on each side.

Daguerreotype [1830–40; named after L. J. M. Daguerre] : 1. An obsolete photographic process, invented in 1839, in which a picture made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine was developed by exposure to mercury vapor. 2. A picture made by this process.

Hermetism [1890–95] : 1. the body of ideas set forth in Hermetic writings. 2. adherence to the ideas expressed in Hermetic writings. 3. the occult sciences, esp. alchemy.

slough [before 900] : noun 1. an area of soft, muddy ground; swamp or swamplike region. 2. a hole full of mire, as in a road. 3. Also, slew, slue. Northern U.S. and Canadian. a marshy or reedy pool, pond, inlet, backwater, or the like. 4. a condition of degradation, despair, or helplessness.

encyclicals [1610–20]: noun 1. Roman Catholic Church. a letter addressed by the pope to all the bishops of the church. adjective 2. (of a letter) intended for wide or general circulation; general.


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