Screw Iowa!
Screw Iowa has an e-book which is available through Bridle Path Press: Writing in a changing World. This book went into print in fall of 2010.
To preview or purchase, go to: http://www.birdlepathpress.com
Here are some blurbs for the book, followed by the story of how Screw Iowa began and some excerpts from the book.
From Tom DeMarchi
If you’re reading this blurb, you’re probably considering whether to
purchase Writing in a Changing World. Stop considering and just buy it.
Writing in a Changing World takes the how-to writing guide in a new–and
welcome–direction. While most guides offer a single author’s advice,
what you get here is the collective wisdom of FIVE authors
(affectionately known as the Screw Iowa! Writers Group). It’s a given
to say they provide comprehensive instruction on the nuts and bolts of
craft and character development and plot and revision–any guide worth
its ink has to cover the basics. What makes The End of the Book unique
is the way the authors encourage and inspire by demystifying the
creative process. Most important, they convince you that there’s
nothing more important than writing, and they remind you that
storytelling is the basis of communion. ~~Tom De Marchi is author of numerous short stories and the director of the Sanibel Island Writers Conference.
From John Dufresne
I am much impressed with these five gifted writers from Screw Iowa! and their commitment to a life of arts and letters and their dedication to making the world a safe place for writers. Read Writing in a Changing World and learn how to build yourself a supportive literary community. It’s something we writers can’t live without. The world of publishing in the twenty-first century is a formidable and brave new world, and we’re lucky to have such people–Damon, Graff, Romano, Small, Westemeier–in it. You’ll never write alone! ~~John Dufresne, Is Life Like This: A Guide to Writing a Novel in Six Months, Requiem, Mass: A Novel
From Leonard Nash
Damon, Graff, Romano, Small, and Westemeier might sound like a New York law firm, but these five authors have pooled their diverse talents and created a must-read, 21st-century guide to drafting, workshopping, revising, publishing, and marketing your creative writing. They also offer in-depth, candid advice about developing and sustaining your own local or long-distance creative writing community, plus critical guidance for authors considering the brave step into the publishing business. Whether you’re writing your first short story, submitting your second poetry chapbook, or plotting your fifth novel, this gem of a book provides the knowledge, inspiration, and emotional support you’ll need to define and accomplish your literary goals. ~~Leonard Nash, You Can’t Get There from Here and Other Stories
Here’s our story and how we got our name…
Writing Group was formed in the summer of 2004 by Mariana Damon, Marnette Graff, Nina Romano, Lauren Small and Melissa Westemeier.
The story started in Iowa during the Summer Festival of 2004. Our seminar’s teacher/author was not a professor at the renowned University of Iowa s famous Writing Workshop. Maybe that was a mistake, but there s fortune in misfortune. Ours was finding each other five serious women writers intent on publishing our novels.
The next year we decided that instead of the measly 20 page critiques we would get from another seminar in Iowa, we wanted critique on our entire novel manuscripts that we d finished over the year.
Nina wrote to Iowa suggesting a summer course that would do just this, but instead of taking twelve students for the seminar, perhaps they could take half the amount. We were willing to pay double, but we were refused. So one of us said, Screw Iowa! we can do it ourselves. That s how our name was born. That first summer and every summer since, we meet for a week as a group after writing all year long on our projects. This past June we met at Nina’s mountain digs in Utah.
We send each other our completed novels, manuscripts of poetry, short stories, essays, treatments, or whatever four to six weeks before we meet. We read and critique each others work. Then for a glorious week, we discuss it. One day per person. The mornings are all general critiques and the afternoon is set aside for either discussions of plot or other major aspects of the work, or a page by page critique. Each writer leaves with 4 thoroughly edited and critiqued copies of their manuscript and a bundle of notes, suggestions and ideas for what to do once home again working on it.
At the end of the week, we part with a silent understanding that we re going to work our buns off so we can get together the following year for an intense week of critique and camaraderie. We stay in contact though e-mail.
This is the Screw Iowa method, and this is what we want to bring to all writers. Writing is a lonely occupation. We recognize that. Our website and book explain how to sustain your writing life, improve craft, and achieve success.
Up-to-the-minute news on the group and our book! Currently our book proposal is in the hands of a NY agent, and the manuscript is undergoing last minute revisions.
Two of the members were presenters at the Sanibel Island Writers Conference Nov 5-8 2009. http://www.fgcu.edu/siwc/
Nina Romano taught a poetry workshop and Lauren Small made a presentation on self-publishing.
Recently, two members taught workshops in Baltimore, MD. Marni Graff taught a fiction workshop and Nina Romano taught poetry.
Lauren Small’s novel, Choke Creek ( www.chokecreek.com , www.laurensmall.com ) is being taught and used in History and English classes in Baltimore schools.
MK Graff’s novel The Blue Virgin, a mystery, was published last year through Bridle Path Press and it is available at www.bridlepathpress.com and Amazon
Mariana Damon graduated last year with an MFA from Goddard with a thesis in the novel with the working title: Death of a Poet.
Hot bloggers:
Marni Graff’s mystery novel–here’s her blog:
http://auntiemwrites.wordpress.com/
Melissa Westemeier’s chick-lit novel–here’s her blog:
http://melissawestemeier.blogspot.com/
Both are currently represented by Curtis Brownand are working on new novel projects.
Based on our experience the writing group has written a book: Writing in a Changing World from Bridle Path Press (Below please find two excerpts) http://www.laurensmall.com/WritinginaChangingWorld/tabid/60/Default.aspx
Why We Write
What makes writing so powerful? Maybe it’s the nature of the medium itself. We begin with an idea in our head a motif, an image, a bit of dialogue, a memory, a scent and transform it as best we can into words on the page. When we’re done, we hand the paper to someone else and wait with bated breath while he reads it. Will he understand what we are trying to convey? Will he see what we see? Feel what we feel? If he does, we feel as if we have accomplished an amazing feat: using nothing more than ink on the page, we have created an entire world.
This effort of the imagination makes writing unique. All the other arts give you something sensory to cling to. With painting, sculpture, film, and dance, you have tangible things you can see: a canvas, a piece of marble, bodies in movement on a stage, a flickering screen. Music can be heard. Even the culinary arts engage our senses of smell and taste. Only writing exists in such an abstract form, tiny curlicues and intricate shapes of black ink against the backdrop of a white page.
Perhaps it’s the abstractness of the medium that makes it so powerful. What other art can deliver to you ancient Greece intact? Take you into a magical world filled with wizards and house-elves? Unveil the inner world of a tortured woman searching for sanity through her yellow wallpaper? No wonder we are so often disappointed when we see the filmed version of a book. Movies take place on a screen in front of us, but books take place inside our heads. It’s no surprise that films pale in comparison.
We know how valuable stories are because people guard them like priceless treasures, passing them down from generation to generation, in unbroken chains that stretch back thousands of years. When the sea of reeds parted so that the fleeing Israelites could pass safely through, Miriam sang a song. We no longer know the melody she used, but we have her words, handed down to us with care by generations of storytellers and scribes. Stories persist because we understand instinctively how important they are, and how irreplaceable. It’s the reason we still talk about Abraham and Gilgamesh, Odysseus and Oedipus. The cultures that gave rise to these heroes are long gone, but their stories endure.
When you live in a culture that measures value in dollars, it’s hard to argue in favor of an activity that may never earn you a cent. But this is true for any artist working with any medium. Part of writing for the twenty-first century means engaging with writers of all kinds the published and the unpublished and discovering the myriad of opportunities for you to share and develop your talent. By telling your story, you become one more link in that great chain of storytellers, dedicated to capturing the human spirit, stretching from ancient to modern times.
The need for storytellers has never been greater, for through them communities are born. Only by exploring who we are and reflecting on our past can we create a common vision for the future. Tell your story, and help illuminate the world.
How to Give Feedback
Nothing is more critical to the successful running of a writing group than the way the members give feedback to one another. Remember those writers with hefty egos that we talked about in an earlier section? They are also surprisingly sensitive. Their manuscripts are their babies their flesh and blood and they will not take your criticism of them lightly, any more than they would if you told that their children are ugly, and stupid to boot.
But wait a minute, you say. Didn’t you tell us at the very beginning that writers need honesty? That was the reason we left our relatives out of our group!
Of course. It’s all a question of how that honest feedback is delivered. It may be useful here to return to the reason you all joined a writing group in the first place. The purpose was to help one another, hand-in-hand to climb the ladder of success. And so the first and last rule of giving feedback is to be helpful to one another.
This is not as easy as it sounds. We are all taught to conflate critiquing with criticism, and criticism with identifying what is wrong with a piece of writing. We make a long list of negatives everything we don’t like about a manuscript deliver it to the writer, and sit back with smug satisfaction, believing we have done our job.
No, no, and again, no. No group will ever survive such an approach. It’s the reason so many writers leave traditional workshops and classes in tears, vowing never to write again. It’s destructive, and even worse than that, useless. Your primary mission as a group member is to be helpful, while still being honest. Here’s how.
Let’s begin with those all-important words read and critique. Replace them with listen and respond. Remember the storytelling model we opened this book with, the image of the group drawn to the fire, listening to the singer chant her tale? When you take a new manuscript in hand, imagine yourself there. Read as though you are listening. You might even want to read the manuscript out loud. Your goal here is to identify, as best as you can, the story the writer is trying to tell. Who are the main characters? What happens to them? What are the crucial events that occur in the story? Where does the story take place? Now write down the answers to those questions as carefully as you can. This is the first level of your response. It may seem ridiculously simple and obvious, but it’s harder than you think. It’s also extremely important. Every writer sends a manuscript out into the world wondering: will they understand the story I am trying to tell? Will they see what I see? By repeating back to the writer what you have gotten from her tale, you will go a long way towards answering her questions and giving her the help she needs.
Once you have finished this first, crucial level of response, you are ready to go on to the second. Think about the manuscript you have read again. This time, concentrate on images, tone, voice, and style on those elements that determine not just what the story is but how it is told. What kind of feeling does the story give you? What themes does it bring to your mind? What are the larger issues that the writer is engaging? Does the story celebrate the redeeming power of love? Mourn the fleeting nature of life? Again, write down your impressions. The writer will want to know. As a matter of fact, you may surprise him. Many writers are truly astonished to discover the themes their works evoke in others how rich their stories are.
Now it is time for the third element of your response. Think once more about the story you have just read, but this time identify the parts you admired the most. Every writer has strengths, and it’s time you told the writer what you think they are. Is he a whiz at dialogue? Expert at setting a scene? Tell him. He will be glad to know. By showing him his strengths, you will enable him to build on them, and his writing will improve.
Next think about the aspects of the story that you had trouble with. Was there too much description, and it slowed the story down? Were there places you found confusing, or gaps you got lost in? Write the problems down. Once more the writer needs to know.
Finally think hard about the problems you have identified. How would you, as a writer, address them? If you think there is too much description, can you show the writer places to condense or cut? If you think a character is too undeveloped, can you give the writer ideas on how to make him more clear? Your job here is to brainstorm, to give the writer possible solutions. Whether or not she ultimately adopts them is up to her. Writers always have the final say on their manuscripts. Your job is to guide them to the point where they feel satisfied, not to rewrite their stories for them as tempting as that may sometimes feel. By brainstorming solutions, you make sure that you are not leaving the writer in the dark. Furthermore, you are practicing the very same skills you will need later on, when you identify problems in your own writing, and search for ways to resolve them.
Brainstorming is the key element that distinguishes feedback from a writing group from critique by other kinds of reviewers, such a movie or theater critics. Critics don’t have to think about how to improve the pieces they are reviewing. All they have to decide is whether or not they like what they have seen. For the purposes of a writing group, whether or not you like something is almost beside the point. It is certainly of little use to the writer. You might cringe at scenes of bloody carnage, but that doesn’t mean other people won’t clamor for them. Your job is to tell the writer whether or not she has achieved in a workable fashion the goal she set out for herself if she has succeeded in telling the story she wanted to tell.
Once you have finished composing your response, you will be ready to send it back to the writer. She will be glad to receive it, for you will be giving her the information she needs. She will know what is working in her story and what isn’t. Most important, she will know what it means to others, both in terms of the events she narrates, and the themes she develops. She will be equipped to continue working on it, and will feel inspired to do so. And all because you helped.
These guidelines are suited to any kind of manuscript, but especially the ones you will most often be asked to read for your group: drafts of unfinished stories, and works in progress. As time goes on, and your group matures, you will find yourself receiving finished works to respond to also, from short stories to complete novels. At that point, you might decide to put other feedback principles into place, more specific and directed. We have included some in our appendix, listed under Guidelines for Advanced Feedback. You will also want to avail yourself of a good book on revision, if you haven’t already. Again, we include our favorites in the bibliography at the end of this book.
In the meantime, lest you are worrying about how much time you’re going to be devoting to writing responses to the manuscripts you receive from your group, and how doing all that work for others will benefit you, it’s time to turn to our next topic.
My Books
Lush and lyrical, funny and mundane, Nina Romano’s second bound poetry collection is presented in two parts.
About Me
Recently in an interview with Linda Bladholm, I said, It all begins with family and stories around the table-food is love, communion, spirituality, poetry, and our histories are the way we break bread with our ancestors. That’s why food is in my poetry and ficiton … and yes, non-ficiton too!
I love writing and reading they pump my blood to lub-dub it through my heart as I learn about life. I wrote poems growing up in Brooklyn, began my first novel when I was sixteen in Garden City. But with nothing earth-shattering to say, decided to live life instead and write about it later in novels.