DINAH LENNEY BANNED BOOKS WEEK PACIFIC STANDARD

THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF JOURNALISTS AND AUTHORS
VOICES ON WRITING
REBELS WITH A CLAUSE
MILLER-McCUNE REBORN
IN REMEMBERANCE
DINAH LENNEY
BANNED BOOKS WEEK
PACIFIC STANDARD
NORA EPHRON
VOLUME 61 • NUMBER 8 • SEPTEMBER 2012
WE WRITE WHAT YOU READ ™
The
Monthly
VOLUME 61 • NUMBER 8
SEPTEMBER 2012
PUBLICATIONS CHAIR
Tina Tessina
EDITOR
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
DESIGN & LAYOUT
Dave Mosso
CONTRIBUTORS
Alisa Bowman, Greg Breining,
Iyna Bort Caruso, Katie Fishman,
Bruce W. Fraser, Margie Goldsmith,
Sam Greengard, Deborah Huso,
Florence Isaacs, Alexandra Owens,
Sally Wendkos Olds,
Bonnie Remsberg, Paul Vachon,
Minda Zetlin
PROOFREADERS
Ellen Count, Bettijane Eisenpreis,
Joan Heilman, Lisbeth Levine,
Sue Lick, Kathryn Wilkens
The ASJA Monthly (ISSN 15418928) is published monthly, except
for a combined July/August issue, by
the American Society of Journalists
and Authors, Inc., 1501 Broadway,
Suite 403, New York, NY 10036.
Subscriptions: $120 per year as a benefit of membership. Periodicals postage
paid at New York, NY, and additional
mailing office.
Features
Voices on Writing: Memoirist Dinah Lenney
BY BARBARA DEMARCO-BARRETT
6
Nora’s Legacy BY BONNIE REMSBERG
Remembering the life and writing of Nora Ephron
12
Queens: New York City’s International Express
First in our series of NYC attractions to visit around ASJA 2013
BY MARGIE GOLDSMITH
14
Remembering Grace Weinstein BY KATIE FISHMAN
A reflection on the life and friendship of an ASJA past president
17
Columns & Departments
From the President’s Desk BY MINDA ZETLIN 3
Society Page
New and noteworthy member happenings
4
Websites, Social Media Outposts & Blogs and Member Events 5
First Amendment Committee Press Release 8
ASJA 2012 Conference Panel Reviews 10
Wise Advice WITH ALISA BOWMAN, GREG BREINING, INYA BORT CARUSO,
SAM GREENGARD & FLORENCE ISAACS
11
What’s In Store BY PAUL VACHON 18
ASJA Mission and Administration 19
POSTMASTER
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© 2012 American Society of
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The articles and opinions on these pages
are those of the individual writers and do not
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Please obtain permission from ASJA and
individual writers before reproducing any
part of this newsletter.
The deadline for submissions to The ASJA
Monthly is the first of each month for two
months out.
2
THE ASJA MONTHLY
Features
How I Learned to Love Social Media BY BRUCE W.FRASER
Using LinkedIn, Elance, and more, to get writing jobs
C1
Columns & Departments
Market Report: Pacific Standard BY PAUL VACHON C4
Inside ASJA WITH ASJA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ALEXANDRA OWENS
New & Reinstated Members C5
Industry News The latest information from around the industry C6
MarketRate Formerly PayCheck C9
Letters to the Editor C12
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Interested in the contents of the entire newsletter, and not just the public section? ASJA members receive all 32 pages, including
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www.asja.org.
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK
BY MINDA ZETLIN
What Does It Mean to Own a Book?
I
don’t mean owning the copyright. I mean “owning” in the
most ordinary way, as when you buy a book at a bookstore.
You can read it whenever you like, put it on your shelf, lend
it or give it away, and even destroy it if you like. If it’s an ebook
rather than a paper book, you can still do all these things except
give the book away, and in some cases lend it. Owning a book is
very different from borrowing one from the library, in which case
you can only read the book for a certain period of time, and you
can’t give it away or destroy it.
This distinction is clear and easy to understand—today. But
there’s a reason I think it may not be that clear in the future, and
that reason is Spotify.
Spotify is a new kind of digital music service. Previously,
there were stores like iTunes and Amazon, where you could buy
songs, download them to your computer or MP3 player, and listen to them whenever you wanted—ownership in the traditional sense. Then there were services like Pandora and Rhapsody,
which let you listen to music whenever you liked, so long as you
were connected to the Internet. These essentially functioned like
a highly customizable radio station. You could listen to songs you
liked, but it was clear you did not own them.
With Spotify, I find the line between owning and not owning a song very blurry. For $10 a month, I can listen to any of millions of songs whenever I like. I don’t have to be connected to the
Internet to do it. I can grab an album, move the entire thing to
my playlists, and then click “Available Offline.” And then I can
listen to the album on my iPhone or iPod or computer, wherever I
am. I can have thousands of these albums if I want them, without
having “bought” any of them, beyond paying Spotify its monthly
fee. The only practical difference between this arrangement and
actually owning the albums is that I’ll lose access to them if I ever
stop paying that $10 a month.
Is this the future of books?
As a music lover, I find Spotify very handy. As a writer, I
think it may be a glimpse of things to come. I’ve long suspected
that a model like this is what Google has in mind for its ebooks.
The logic is inescapable from Google’s viewpoint. It has infinite
amounts of server space and bandwidth, but it makes sense from
readers’ perspectives as well. Would you pay $10 a month to read
as many books as you want, for as long as you want, wherever you
want? I sure would.
How would such an arrangement work for the authors of those
books? Not great, if Spotify is anything to go by. Freelance guitarist Cameron Mizell reported last fall that Spotify was paying him
0.4 cents every time one of his songs was downloaded. Compare
that with iTunes, where musicians who sell directly through the
service get 70 cents for every 99-cent song listeners buy.
Why would major record labels accept Spotify’s paltry payments? They don’t. They’ve negotiated separate deals with
Spotify, which may include hefty upfront payments and special
pricing for their songs. And several labels are also investors in
the service, so if it succeeds they’ll make money that way as well.
In other words, the great big mega-company obtains electronic
rights from individual artists and makes lots of money in this
new digital market, while the individual artist is paid virtually
nothing.
Does this sound like a familiar scenario?
Like it or not, the subscription model is coming to publishing.
Amazon Prime already lets members who own Kindles pay $80 a
year to borrow up to one book a month and keep it as long as they
like (along with other benefits). That’s not the Spotify model, but
it’s getting close. Publishers have, for the most part, been remarkably slow and awkward in dealing with this new era when people read on mobile devices rather than paper. But sooner or later,
Google or someone else will come along and negotiate a subscription-based deal with the big New York publishers. And authors
will likely be out in the cold, collecting the text equivalent of four
tenths of a cent per song, unless we do something about it.
From what I’ve heard, the major publishers are
trembling in their fancy Midtown offices, in fear of
losing their relevance the same way the labels have.
What can we do?
I believe many writers were caught off-guard in discussions
over electronic rights years ago--we didn’t realize how digital media would come to dominate the market. We shouldn’t be so shortsighted this time. Many of us work with agents or lawyers to negotiate book contracts. We can talk to them about selling rights
to subscription services. Contracts could specify that authors are
only selling ebook rights to venues that exist today, or specify that
they’re not to be sold by subscription. Then, if Amazon Prime or
any other subscription service wants a book, the publisher can pay
the author separately for the right to sell it. Or, the author can retain that right and handle the sale him or herself.
Afraid to take on the mega-publishing industry? Consider
what’s happened in the music world. A decade ago, record labels ruled. Today, they’re struggling to maintain their relevance
as more and more bands and musicians produce their own CDs
or MP3s and sell them directly at concerts or over the Internet.
“Record stores” are going the path of the dinosaur. Social networks and services like Pandora, Rhapsody, and Spotify suggest music you might like based on what you’ve already chosen.
They’re making radio play less and less important.
From what I’ve heard, the major publishers are trembling
in their fancy Midtown offices, in fear of losing their relevance
the same way the labels have. If you’re offered a deal that will
let them sell your book to a subscription service without proper
compensation, you can add to that fear by remembering that you
don’t need them and simply walking away.
Whatever you do, don’t get caught unawares. A subscription
model for books is coming, the only question is when. Be ready to
negotiate for your rights before it gets here.
After all, when it comes to authorship and copyright, the
owner of the book is you. ¢
I welcome responses to these president’s letters. Email me at
[email protected].
Minda Zetlin is president of ASJA, a columnist for the
Inc. magazine website and author of several books,
including The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology
Professionals Don’t Understand Each Other and Why
They Need Each Other to Survive (Prometheus Books,
2006), co-authored with her husband, Bill Pfleging.
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
3
Society Page
New & Noteworthy Member Happenings
T
he Profiler (Hyperion Voice, 2010), which member Bob Andelman wrote
with criminal profiler Pat Brown, was optioned by Warner Bros. TV and
made into a pilot this spring by Jerry Bruckheimer. It starred Mira Sorvino.
Sadly, it did not get picked up by the network in May. So close … Joan Wester
Anderson’s first book in her angel/miracle series recently celebrated 20 unbroken
years in print. Where Angels Walk was launched in July 1992 at a book convention
in Chicago where it sold three copies. Later, it stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for over a year, and is currently available in sixteen languages. Sales have
waned, but Joan is not complaining about shelf life … Gerald Bartell reviewed S.
G. Browne’s Lucky Bastard for the San Francisco Chronicle (4/24), Philip Kerr’s
Prague Noir for the Kansas City Star (4/19), and Bruce DeSilva’s Cliff Walk for
the Washington Post (5/27) … The scientific journal Nature called Stefan Bechtel’s
newest book, Mr. Hornaday’s War (Beacon Press), “a lively biography ... a fascinating portrait of a man both ahead of his time, and deluded by gross misreadings of
Darwin.” Bonnie Biafore’s first novel Fresh Squeezed, a crime comedy with hit
men, stupid criminals, and veggieterrorists, is now available. She is also working on
QuickBooks 2013: The Missing Manual, which will be Intuit’s new Official Guide to
QuickBooks. Her book, Successful Project Management (Microsoft Press, 2011) recently received a Distinguished Award from the Puget Sound Chapter of the Society
for Technical Communication. The book went on to receive an Award of Merit at
the STC International competition … Our Family Tree: The Towers Watson Story, a
history of the global professional services firm Towers Watson, won an 2012 Apex
Award of Excellence from Communications Concepts, Inc. Dick Blodgett wrote
the book; Marian Calabro managed the project. It is the tenth book published by
Marian’s company, CorporateHistory.net …
Stefan
Bechtel
Marijke
Vroomen
Durning
Margie
Goldsmith
Jennie Miller
Helderman
4
THE ASJA MONTHLY
M
arijke Vroomen Durning’s blog, Marijke: Nurse TurnedWriter, has
been named one of the top 10 Canadian health and fitness bloggers
by SheKnows Canada. Marijke began this blog in 2007 to increase
her visibility not only among other professionals, but the general public as they
look for easy-to-understand health information … Thomas Fensch has just published Steinbeck’s Bitter Fruit: from The Grapes of Wrath to Occupy Wall Street.
It is Fensch’s 31st book. He is the author of four previous books on Steinbeck and is
chairman of the Mass Communications Department, at Virginia Union University,
Richmond … Financial writer Bruce W. Fraser is writing a series of articles for the
Wall Street Journal, as well as CNBC.COM. He is also updating a proposal on millionaires, dormant for three years during the financial crisis, which he hopes will
be an ebook, and is working on another proposal on successful entrepreneurs …
Margie Goldsmith has just won the Travel Classics Award for her essay, “Looking
for Answers on the Highway to Heaven.” She is the first writer to win this award
three times. The story is about her experience trying to have her fortune read in a
Chinese Buddhist temple in Richmond, B.C., Canada, while on a three-hour layover
at Vancouver International Airport. This marks the 20th award Margie Goldsmith
has won in the last five years for her essay writing … Minneapolis-based health and
fitness writer Yael Grauer wrote a piece on sprinting that’s in the July/August issue
of Experience Life. It appears in The Workout section and includes three sprinting
workout alternatives to accommodate people of all fitness levels … Tam Harbert
won two national awards from the American Society of Business Publication
Editors (ASBPE). Harbert’s story in Computerworld, “Age Bias in IT: The Reality
Behind the Rumors,” won gold in the Web feature category and her piece in Law
Technology News, “Catch Me If You Can,” won bronze in the technical article category … Jennie Miller Helderman was awarded the Alumnae Achievement Award
for lifetime achievements, the highest honor bestowed by the 180,000-member
Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity. Helderman, an award-winning writer, advocates
for women’s and children’s issues from her native Alabama to national levels.
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
R
ichard C. Levy contributed a chapter to The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design,
a book that won the 2012 Origins Award for Best Game Publication. His chapter titled “Life’s A Pitch,” addresses how to market and license board game concepts. Two of Richard’s best-selling games are based upon the literary properties Men are
From Mars, Women Are from Venus and Chicken Soup for the Soul … Sue Fagalde Lick’s
new book, Childless by Marriage, has been published by Blue Hydrangea Productions.
Available in paperback and Kindle e-book formats, the book explores what happens when
one’s husband can’t or doesn’t want to have children … Maynard Institute for Journalism
Education selected Michael Luongo as one of America’s 30 top trailblazing gay journalists for their June Gay Pride Month calendar. His day of honor was Monday, June 11, and
featured his teaching at New York University, his books, and articles on travel, human
rights and other topics … Colleen Kelly Mellor’s Grandpa and the Truck: Book 1 has
just released. It’s for ages 4-8 and is the first in the series that details the trucker lifestyle and lingo as lived by her long-haul trucker husband who traveled the United States
for 30 years … In June, Jen A. Miller’s Salon.com piece, “The endlessly bizarre duality of
New Jersey,” was recognized with an award of excellence by the New Jersey chapter of the
Society of Professional Journalists. She also wrote cover stories about the Jersey Shore for
the June issues of New Jersey Monthly and Main Line Today. She blogs about the region
for Newsworks.org, which is a new website of WHYY, an NPR-affiliate broadcasting in
Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey … Rodney J. Moore is working on a book proposal
with Cordia Harrington, aka The Bun Lady, and will ghostwrite her forthcoming memoir/
business book (title TBA).
Sue Fagalde
Lick’s
Childless by
Marriage
Rodney Moore
C
ynthia Polansky’s latest eBook is Death and the Maven, published by Booklocker.
Formerly known in print as Remote Control, this New Age novel about life, love,
and death boasts a new cover and title in its digital-only format … Milt Toby’s
Dancer’s Image: The Forgotten Story of the 1968 Kentucky Derby collected two national awards in the spring: the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for the best book about thoroughbred racing published in 2011 and an Editorial and Design Award from American
Horse Publications for the best equine book … Melissa Trainer pitched a book idea to the
University of Alaska Press and is now reviewing the contract. In July, she will travel back
to Alaska’s Bristol Bay region to continue research on the fishery, the communities, and the
impact of the Pebble Mine. She continues to write content and recipes for the BBRSDA and
is writing press releases and consulting for other organizations in Alaska. She attended the
Canada Media Marketplace in April and continues to blog for Amazon, Woodall’s, and REI
… Marvin J. Wolf presented his newest book, The Tattooed Rabbi, to some 100 members
of the Jewish Book Council at JBC’s annual Manhattan conference. He was among 200 authors vying for an invitation to speak at JBC community centers, Federation Councils, large
synagogues, schools, etc.) in inviting them to speak to their members … Kathleen Vyn’s
short story, “The Book,” appeared as featured fiction in Untoward Magazine … Malerie
Yolen-Cohen has just released the first mile-by-mile guide to the longest contiguous US
Highway, Route 6. Stay On Route 6; Your Guide to All 3,652 Miles of Transcontinental
Route 6 is jam-packed with advice on the best attractions, shops, restaurants and lodgings
through fourteen North American States. ¢
Cynthia
Polansky’s
Death and
the Maven
Marvin J.
Wolf’s
The
Tattooed
Rabbi
Websites, Blogs & Social Media Outposts
The following websites, blogs, et al, revolve around members’ news, detailed above.
Bonnie Biafore’s fiction website: bonnie-james.com
Marie Hueston’s new blog: mphueston.blogspot.com
Marijke Vroomen Durning’s blog,
Marijke: Nurse Turned Writer: medhealthwriter.blogspot.ca
Sue Lick suelick.com/childless.html.
Cynthia Polansky cynthiapolansky.com
Member & ASJA Events
Iyna Bort Caruso Two workshops: 10.23 “Five Steps to Launching a Successful Writing Business” & 11.7 “So You Think You Can
Pitch an Article? Delivering the Pitch-Perfect Query” Hofstra University, New York.
Joan Detz 11.3 Workshop, “How to Break into Freelance Writing: Using Bylines to Build Your Career,” Philadelphia. joandetz.com.
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
5
Voices on Writing
By Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Memoirist
Dinah Lenney
D
inah Lenney wrote Bigger than Life: A
Murder, a Memoir, published in Tobias
Wolff’s American Lives Series at the
University of Nebraska Press, and co-authored Acting
for Young Actors. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,
Ploughshares, Agni, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, and
she received special mention in the Pushcart Anthology
2010 for an essay published in the Water~Stone
Review. Dinah serves as core faculty in the Master
of Professional Writing program at the University of
Southern California, as well as in the Rainier Writing
Workshop, and the Bennington Writing Seminars,
where she earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction. A
working actor, Dinah has played roles in theater, film,
and in countless episodes of prime time TV, where she
recurred, for 15 seasons, as Nurse Shirley on NBC’s
long-running hit, ER. She lives in Los Angeles, just
over the hill from Dodger Stadium. Watch her on TED
at http://bit.ly/MmImyh.
How did you find your story? Did you have an “a-ha” moment after a life changing event, or did you take a more methodical approach?
When there is so very much that happened that seems
noteworthy and relevant, how do you cover everything without putting your reader on overload?
It wasn’t methodical, that’s for sure. There was a life-changing event, yes—my father was killed, violently, unexpectedly; afterwards, I hardly knew what I was doing, only that I felt compelled to write. The thing is, though, as far back as a fiction workshop in college, I was crafting “stories” about fathers and mothers and daughters. With Bigger than Life, I supposed at first that
I was writing about the murder—and I was; and I thought I was
writing about grief—and I was doing that, too. But the real story,
I’m pretty sure, turns out to have much to do with coming of age
with divorced parents before joint custody; therefore having to
figure out my connection to my dad—to prove that we belonged
to each other, he and I. I’d say that story found me—or, more accurately, it was there all along. I’d been trying to tell it for years.
Well, memoir isn’t supposed to cover everything, right? The
best ones (for me) focus on a specific period of time as viewed
through the lens of an event or a relationship—or they look at an
event or a relationship, as defined during a specific period of time.
It’s true, we’re loathe to leave anything out—it all seems so important at the time of the writing, even and especially things that
weren’t important when they actually happened. They take on
resonance in retrospect, that’s the whole point. So it’s vital, first
off, to cultivate a relationship with your own shtick. It’s helpful
too, to have trusted readers who can tell you when you’re boring
the crap out of them. It’s valuable to get an awful lot of it down so
as to have stuff to cut. And it’s crucial to remind ourselves along
the way about the books we like best. We get so involved with
our stories, we sometimes forget that we actually want somebody
else to enjoy them. Memoir isn’t meant to be therapy; nope—it’s
supposed to move, inspire, and entertain somebody else.
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is editor of The ASJA
Monthly and author of the ASJA award-winning Pen on
Fire (Harcourt, 2004). She hosts Writers on Writing on
KUCI-FM, in Southern California, and founded the Pen
on Fire Writers Salon in Corona del Mar, CA.
6
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
Writing a memoir is as much about knowing what to
leave out as knowing what to keep, isn’t it? Yes. Absolutely. Especially now, as I’m trying to finish a
draft of a new manuscript, I keep telling myself, stop, stop, you
don’t have to tell it all, save some for next time, why dontcha?
Which feeds into theme. Does theme concern you at any
point or is it something you leave up to the reader?
How much time had to pass before you could write about
your father’s murder?
I started writing very soon after he was killed. It was a coping mechanism—my way of making sense of what was happening
to me. I do that, per Joan Didion, to find out what I think. But it
wasn’t long before I realized that I that I wanted to shape the work
into something that other people would want to read. And that
took some time. (All writing is not equal.) My dad was killed in ’97,
and I’d finished a first draft six years later, in 2003.
I try not to think about theme while I’m writing. When I do, I
get in trouble. Themes emerge, sure—we’re aware of some of them
and maybe not so aware of others. (I love listening to Michael
Silverblatt on Bookworm tell unsuspecting writers about their
themes; they nearly always agree with him, but they
also always sound so delightfully surprised). But the
thing is to tell the truth—to get it right—which, all by
Writing, too, is a kind of performance—and
itself, is just so hard. If you try to do that with an idea
nonfiction writers create a persona, inhabit
in your head (a theme, that is) you’re bound to get didactic and boring, or worse, to manipulate the truth
character, much in the way that actors do.
to serve the idea. Which means, to me anyway, that
the most authentic themes show up after the fact.
How do you recreate dialogue if you haven’t kept
journals?
Even if you do keep journals, they can only be so helpful.
Nobody reads a memoir for a dutiful transcription—that’s journalism, right? With this genre, the reader is (or ought to be) looking for interpretation and nuance; which, I hasten to add, is not
the same thing as changing or even elaborating on the facts. But
readers and writers of memoir enter into a kind of tacit contract
about the limitations and the requirements of the genre. Memoir
celebrates memory: it’s about how we remember, not what we can
prove. And we can quite often remember the tenor of a conversation; we can, quite often, remember a particularly pungent remark, or a characteristic line or phrase, and work backward or forward from there. But the whole idea is to “recreate” from memory,
and to do it well—speaking of which, there are ways to remind the
reader about the nature of the task, and so bolster writerly cred.
Words and phrases like perhaps, maybe, probably, it might have
been, and even, I don’t remember, are the memoirist’s coin in trade.
How did you deal with sensitive material about those you
wrote about?
I didn’t much worry about it until after the book was written. But I was resolved to be fair, which meant I had to be as merciless with myself as with anyone and everyone else.
Talk about the structure and tense of your book.
I only structured Bigger after I wrote it, like putting a puzzle together—or making a quilt. The actual writing of individual
sections was pretty haphazard. But somewhere along the way I
realized I was telling two stories—one about growing up in the
wake of a divorce, and the other about the events precipitated by
my father’s death. In the end it made sense to alternate the stories chapter by chapter.
And tense is part and parcel of structure of Bigger—and very
purposeful. Everything that happened before the murder is written in past. Everything that happens from that day on (including a re-imagining of the crime itself) is in present. In this way I
hope I was able to guide the reader, to tip her off about where we
were in time, and also to bring the lens in and out so as to up the
stakes in some sections and imply distance in others.
a
You strike me as quite extroverted. Would you say memoir writing belongs to the extroverted, or do you think you
can be an introverted person and still write a memoir that
gets at everything it needs to get at?
What a great question. I absolutely do think introverted
people can and do write memoir. Just as I believe introverted
people can be actors. Writing, too, is a kind of performance—and
nonfiction writers create a persona, inhabit a character, much in
the way that actors do. This would seem to imply that the work is
somehow dishonest, but that’s not the case, not at all. The most
authentic performances, the most moving on stage and on the
page, are the most fully inhabited. To be able to do that in either
place, but especially as a writer, is a decidedly private and intimate process. It is something else to get up and talk about the
work once it’s done: that might be easier for extroverts. But I’m
almost sure it’s the extrovert who has to cultivate her inwardness to get the job done in the first place, and not the other way
around.
Talk about titles. Your memoir has a brief subtitle. At
what point did your title come about and do you think memoirs are moving away from needing subtitles?
Cripes, the subtitle. A way to call attention to the book, yes,
with a view toward sales. And yes, I was asked to come up with
a subtitle that used the “m” word. But maybe people are bucking
that trend. I know a writer who wanted to lose the subtitle when
his book came out in paperback (Parallel Play by Tim Page, a
memoir about, among other things, dealing with Asperger’s syndrome), and won the battle.
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
Gee—I guess I want people to laugh and cry. I want them
to feel close to me and mine—and consequently more connected
to themselves. I hope they will identify with the story as fathers,
mothers, daughters, and sons. So I want them to find themselves
in the book, yeah—to feel affirmed in their attachments—to turn
that last page with the understanding that they—that is we—do
not sorrow, celebrate, love, or grieve in vain. And I want the book
to stay with them; I hope for that, too. ¢
For more, visit Dinah’s website at DinahLenney.com.
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
7
FIRST AMENDMENT COMMITTEE
PRESS RELEASE
August 10, 2012
For immediate release
Contact: Alexandra Owens, (212) 997-0947
ASJA JOINS NATIONAL ONLINE READING OF BANNED BOOKS
When Banned Books Week was first celebrated back in 1982, ASJA was one of its founders. We launched
it with a read-in of banned books on the steps of the Fifth Avenue Library in New York City. Over the
years, we followed with read-ins in bookstores across the country. This year, ASJA joins other sponsors
of the 30th annual Banned Books Week—September 30 to October 6—in inviting writers and readers
to participate in an online read-in of banned books via a specially dedicated channel of YouTube. Last
year’s celebration was the biggest ever as more than 800 people participated in an Internet read-out from
banned books. This year’s theme is “30 Years of Liberating Literature.”
“We urge everyone to join this only national demonstration on behalf of the freedom to read,” says Claire
Safran, chair of ASJA’s First Amendment Committee. Now and throughout the year, you can post twominute videos on YouTube, showing yourself or another person reading from a book that has been banned
or challenged. Information on how to participate can found at bannedbooksweek.org.
The American Library Association recently reported 326 book challenges in schools and libraries across
the country in 2011. The most frequently challenged books were ttyl by Lauren Myracle, The Color of
Earth by Kim Don Hwa, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, My Mother’s Having a Baby! A Kid’s
Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestad Butler, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
Indian by Sherman Alexie, Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, What
My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones, Gossip Girl by Cecily Von Ziegesar, and To Kill A Mockingbird
by Harper Lee.
Joining with ASJA as sponsors of Banned Books Week are the American Booksellers Association (bookweb.org/index.html), American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (abffe.org), American
Library Association (ala.org), Association of American Publishers (publishers.org), Freedom to Read
Foundation (ala.org), National Association of College Stores (nacs.org), Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
(cbldf.org), National Coalition Against Censorship (ncac.org), National Council of Teachers of English
(ncte.org, and PEN American Center (pen.org).
Banned Books Week is endorsed by the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress (read.gov/cfb)
and Project Censored (projectcensored.org). Our ASJA “I Read Banned Books” red-and-white buttons are available for $1 each (go to asja.org, click on “About ASJA” and click on “Store”). You can
also buy new Banned Books Week promotional items (t-shirts, tote bags, and lists of banned books)
from the American Library Association at alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=269.
Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. Follow it on Facebook (facebook.com/bannedbooksweek), Flickr (flickr.com/photos/tags/bannedbooksweek/interesting), Twitter
(twitter.com/#!/search/%23bannedbooksweek), and YouTube (youtube.com/user/BannedBooksWeek).
— Sally Wendkos Olds
8
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
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SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
9
2012 ASJA Conference Panels
Reviews by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
I
t figures that the one year I don’t make it to the conference is the year when the schedule is filled with excellent panels, one better than the last. Every panel I’ve listened to thus far is superb. Even topics I didn’t think I was interested in—how to make it on
Twitter, writing for science magazines—I found myself sucked into, and listened to the very end. Below you will find brief mentions of the panels I listened to and recommend. They are my opinions only, not the opinions of the ASJA board or membership at
large. If you found a panel especially good or useful, and would like to review on these pages, email me at [email protected].
Tweet Your Way to More
Money (Thursday, Members-only)
Selling Stories From the Lab
and Field (Saturday)
Cultivating Green Markets
In 140 characters or less, learn how
to charm an editor, use your wit, and
build relationships. Panelists offer
tips and their experience about how
they make Twitter work for them. If
you consider yourself an expert on
Twitter, then you’ve already heard
about Hootsuite and Bitly. If you’ve
never heard of Hootsuite or Bitly, admit you’re not an expert, and order to
this recording. Sometimes questions
from the audience were a little too focused on the bottom line, but the panelists handled them well, saying it was
hard to quantify how much tweeting
helped them financially, that using
Twitter was more about building relationships and you never know where
that might lead.
My interest in science writing has
only recently blossomed and this panel sealed the deal: Science writing not
only can be fun and fascinating, there
are more and more magazines that
want your stuff.
Another science writing panel, this
one, along with the last, combine
to give you the nuts and bolts about
breaking into green markets.
Moderator:
Jackie Dishner, author of Backroads
& Byways of Arizona. Published credits include several AAA publications,
Arizona Highways, Fast Company,
Sunset, The Writer, Wine Enthusiast,
HGTV.com, and many others.
Panelists:
Stephanie Schwab (Twitter: @socialologist) Stephanie is the Founder and
CEO of Crackerjack Marketing, which
helps small businesses and individuals
get up and running using social media.
Kayt Sukel, ASJA (Twitter: @kaytsukel). Kayt’s work has appeared in
the Atlantic Monthly, New Scientist,
USA Today, and The Washington
Post. She is a partner at the awardwinning family travel website Travel
Savvy Mom.
Randy Dotinga, ASJA (Twitter: @
rdotinga). Randy writes about books,
medicine, politics, and media for The
Christian Science Monitor, Newsday,
Voice of San Diego, HealthDay News,
and MSNBC.com. He is next year’s
ASJA conference chair.
10
THE ASJA MONTHLY
Moderator:
Dan Ferber, ASJA, Moderator
Dan is a correspondent for Science,
and contributor to Popular Science,
Wired, Reader’s Digest and others.
He is the coauthor, with the late Paul
Epstein, MD, of Changing Planet,
Changing HealthM.
Panelists:
Pam Weintraub, executive editor of
Discover Magazine and author of Cure
Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic,
winner of the American Medical
Writers Association book award, 2009.
David Biello (Twitter: @dbiello), an
award-winning associate editor. He
joined ScientificAmerican.com in
November 2005 and has written on
subjects ranging from astronomy to
zoology for both the Web site and magazine. Biello has been reporting on the
environment and energy since 1999.
Brendan Borrell, ASJA (Twitter: @
bborrell), a journalist whose work
has appeared in numerous publications, including Scientific American,
Discover, Nature, Archaeology, The
New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post and Slate. His
Smithsonian story on giant pumpkins
received an ASJA award this year.
Linda Marsa, ASJA, is an ASJA
award winner, a Discover contributing editor and a former Los Angeles
Times staff writer. Her work has appeared in American Archaeology,
Popular Science, Playboy, Utne
Reader, and others. She is the author
of Prescription for Profits (Scribner),
and the upcoming Fevered.
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
(Saturday)
Moderator:
Christopher Johnston, ASJA, whose
over 3,000 articles have appeared
in American Theatre, Cleveland,
Continental,
Crain’s
Cleveland
Business and many others.
Panelists:
David Biello (Twitter: @dbiello)
David was on this panel, too, running from one to the other (they
were scheduled during the same time
frame). See his bio at left.
Luba Ostashevsky, is senior editor in
trade books at Palgrave Macmillan,
where she edits the science, history,
and current events lists.
Maria Streshinsky (Twitter: @
Mstreshinsky), editor-in-chief of
Pacific Standard, former editor of
Miller-McCune and former managing
editor at The Atlantic for four years.
Nina Ryan, a literary agent and freelance editor who has worked in book
publishing for 20 years.
Order CDs or mp3s of all
the panels at www.asja.org/
wc/recordings.php
Reviews are the opinion of the
newsletter editor and not the board
or the membership at large.
Wise Advice
Veteran writers share their experience
Q:
with Alisa Bowman, Greg Breining, Iyna Bort Caruso,
Sam Greengard and Florence Isaacs
When you go on vacation, do you bring any work along, or work on a special project—essays,
memoir, fiction—that you don’t normally give yourself time to work on, or forget about writing
altogether? Should writers ever take a total break from writing?
Alisa Bowman
I sort vacations into categories:
1) Vacations I take because I’m burned
out: For these I try to completely unplug.
I leave a voice mail message that says I’m
completely unreachable (which may or
may not be true). I’ll often go to a meditation center or yoga ashram that is so off the
beaten path that it doesn’t have cell access.
The most work I allow myself to do: take pictures that I might
post to my blog, jot notes in a journal, and read a book. These
are often three or four-day weekends, and I return refreshed and
ready to write.
2) So-called vacations that I take because I feel obligated to
visit family members and in-laws: I have been known to work
during some or all of a vacation with the in-laws. If I wasn’t working, I’d have been sitting in the living room trying to read while
soap operas were playing in the background. The work keeps me
from losing my mind.
3) Vacations about a destination: For these, I usually write
very little, but I will check email, only responding to very important messages. I’ll also post to Facebook, usually about my
vacation.
4.) Writing vacations: A change of scenery often sparks the
creative process, especially for those side projects that I write for
love rather than for money. When I’m home in my office, I feel
guilty working on such projects. When I get away and declare
that it’s a writing vacation, the guilt goes away.
Greg Breining
Just about every trip I take has some
focus, whether it’s an activity such as hunting or kayaking, or an assignment, such as
a travel story. So, some of my favorite “vacations” have been wintertime in Siberia
with the American bandy team (a sport
like soccer on skates and a story for Sports
Illustrated). Or a trip to Puerto Rico with
side trips to Vieques, the underground Rio Camuy, and the rainforest El Yunque (stories for The New York Times and National
Geographic Traveler). Or swimming with manatees (for the Star
Tribune). My wife and I did take a lovely vacation to Quetico
Provincial Park in Ontario. Oh, wait, that was for a book of essays on canoeing the North Woods. We did once take a trip to
Mazatlan with my then-90-year-old father. But then that became
a travel essay. We joined our daughter and son-in-law down in
Florida this spring. But then I drove to a couple of nearby universities to see if they needed a writer for their alumni magazines.
I’m just really crappy at this sitting-around stuff. Besides, I
can use the tax deduction.
Iyna Bort Caruso
For many years, I worked on my vacations. I took notes, engaged with locals and
collected materials that would eventually
make their way into articles on travel, food,
and culture. I’d been doing it so long I didn’t
realize how much I was shaping the vacation for the story instead of myself. Or how
my working may have been a distraction to
the people I was traveling with. Worse, I was returning to work
as burned out as when I left.
That’s when I reconsidered. Of course, it’s hard for writers
to ever totally turn it off. And you wouldn’t want to. Vacations
can be inspiring, sparking new story ideas and new approaches
to business challenges. I always have a notepad with me for that
reason.
But you have to be mindful of work-creep. When the purpose of a vacation—relaxation, discovery, exploring, whatever—
tilts too far in the wrong direction, you lose the head-clearing,
rejuvenating benefits a clean break represents.
Sam Greengard
This is a personal decision and there’s
no right or wrong way to approach the situation. Personally, I prefer to take a vacation
and not think about writing or do any writing while I’m away. After all, this is what I
do virtually all of the year. Taking a break
refreshes and recharges my mind. It allows
me to come back feeling more energized
and creative.
However, I also think it’s valid to take breaks—say a weekend or a couple of days off—and take work along—especially if
the alternative is not going away. The key is to balance the time
working with time off—and spend time with friends or loved
ones. If you can’t pull away from your work you may want to ask
yourself if you really want to be on vacation ... and whether you
truly want to spend time with friends or family. In the end, everything comes down to a single word: balance.
continued on page 16
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
11
IN REMEMBRANCE
Nora’s Legacy
W
An appreciation of Nora Ephron by Bonnie Remsberg
hen the news hit that Nora Ephron had died at 71, I’m
not the only female writer who reeled with shock. “So
young,” my mind screamed at me. “So very young.”
When I was actually young, in the child-rearing years,
busy with work, and kids, and home duties, I used to laugh as
my mother and (then) husband went round upon round, arguing, whenever she said, hearing of the death of a seventy year old,
“But he was so young.” My husband, full of hubris, tried mightily to get her to admit that seventy wasn’t young. “You wait,” she’d
say. “You’ll see, someday, that it is.”
Well, time passed, as it will. My mother lived to 94, which
even she admitted could probably be called old. Now, to my exhusband, seventy no longer looks so old.
But Nora, to die at 71? Chalk up another one in the book of
“Life is Not Fair.”
We met only once, at an award ceremony. She was adorable.
To this day, I cherish a note she wrote me, complimenting me
on an Esquire Magazine article. “My husband and I laughed out
loud,” she said. That was her first husband. My byline in Esquire
had been shared with my first husband. We’ve been through the
marital wars, she and I, and come out the other side, happy and,
at last, well-married.
It was a mighty bond. At the exact time Heartburn was published, which was, as she described it, “the most thinly-disguised
work of fiction ever,” my husband and I were meeting to go over
the terms of our divorce. He put a newspaper down in front of
me; it carried a full page feature story on Nora, Carl Bernstein,
the book and her famous depiction of “him” as “a man who could
have sex with a Venetian blind.” The blood had drained from my
Bonnie Remsberg is an award-willing writer of books,
plays, magazine articles, TV and film scripts. She
has been a member of ASJA (nee MWA) since 1963.
Another form of this piece appeared on thirdage.com.
husband’s face: in twenty-five years of marriage I had never seen
him that color. “I suddenly realize the danger of getting divorced
from a writer,” he said.
When asked for comment about the “novel” Heartburn, Carl
Bernstein said, “It’s just like Nora. Very, very clever.”
Well, yes.
Just after her death, I heard a rebroadcast of an interview
she had done recently about her book I Remember Nothing,
which is her take on the disadvantages of growing older. (The
only advantage she could come up with, when asked, was “You
don’t have to wash your hair as often.” Her words, even after she’s
gone, resonate. “Your cleavage,” said our Nora, speaking of ladies
of a certain age, “looks like a peach pit.” Now, that’s writing.
Some other Noraisms I cherish: “I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the
potatoes that went with them.”
“Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet Magazine.”
“The major concrete achievement of the women’s movement
in the 1970s was the Dutch treat.”
“As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren’t even people I would date.”
“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something
to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way
to escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of
making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone
else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is great.
Reading is bliss.”
Some years ago, at a Puppetry Festival, I saw a time line of
the art form. It paused for a long moment on the late, great Jim
Henson. I’ll never forget what it said. “He was our Mozart.”
Nora, my dear, we will miss you. You were our Dorothy
Parker. And what’s so bad about being very, very clever, I’d like to
know. Between you and Dorothy, you turned it into an art form. ¢
A Few Words about ASJA’s Writers Emergency Assistance Fund
“I was so touched by ASJA’s generosity
and honored to be a recipient.
The money has helped tremendously”
—WEAF Grant Recipient, 2008
Make a one-time tax-deductible contribution
by credit card or check today.
You might need help yourself someday.
12
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
ASJA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION CORPORATE PARTNERS
ASJA Educational Foundation thanks its corporate partners for their generous support
of the 2012 Writers Conference and year-round educational programming.
WORDSMITH LEVEL
SCRIBE LEVEL
GHOSTWRITER LEVEL
GAZETTEER LEVEL
CORRESPONDENT LEVEL
MEDIA LEVEL
A special thank you to Amazon.com for a grant to provide conference registration
scholarships to writers who demonstrate a commitment to a professional freelance
writing life and to the creation of new work.
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
13
QUEENS:
NEW YORK CITY’S
INTERNATIONAL EXPRESS
BY MARGIE GOLDSMITH
Photo: Flickr/dandeluca
The 2013 ASJA Conference is scheduled for April 25 - 27 in New York City. Between now and then, The ASJA Monthly
will run pieces by New York City denizens on places and attractions to visit while in the Big Apple. It’s never too
early to plan your trip.
I
f you’re coming to the conference next spring and have an
extra few hours, why not take a trip around the world by
walking two blocks to Grand Central Terminal from the
Roosevelt Hotel, hop on the #7 subway train, known as “The
International Express,” and head to one of New York City’s five
boroughs: Queens.
Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, with immigrants from over 170 nations living side by
side. There are excellent museums (which are much less
crowded than those in Manhattan), stores selling everything
from Indian saris to Korean kimchi, and delicious food from
China, Korea, India, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, Tibet, Nepal,
Nigeria, Brazil, and more, at rock bottom prices.
Queens offers many options, but if you only have a few hours,
get off at Court Square, just three stops away. Here’s what to do
with only a couple of free hours:
Museums and Galleries
Exit at the Court Street station and walk one block west to
New York City-based Margie Goldsmith has written
about culture, adventure, luxury, and profiles in 118
countries. A contributing writer to Elite Traveler and
blogger for The Huffington Post, she writes for Robb
Report, Affluent Traveler, Business Jet Traveler, Travel
+ Leisure, Black Card Mag, and others.
14
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) PS1 (momaps1.org) at 22-25
Jackson Ave. The museum is a Mecca for emerging artists and
genres, presenting more than 50 exhibitions a year. It’s a division
of MoMA in Manhattan, but the good news is you’ll never have
to queue up to get in.
Half a block to the south is the Long Island City Courthouse
at 25-10 Court Sq. Built in the late 1800s, this brick-and-granite
two-and-a-half-story landmarked building is where the notorious 20th Century bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he
robbed banks. He allegedly answered, “Because that’s where the
money is.” (Go ahead, feel free to use it as a lede).
Two blocks from the subway station is the SculptureCenter
(sculpture-center.org) at 44-19 Purves St. This 9,000-squarefoot space annually exhibits more than 40 sculptors, ranging
from internationally recognized stars to emerging talent. Once a
trolley repair shop, the building was revamped by Maya Lin, the
landscape artist who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in Washington D.C.
And if you’re a small gallery lover, check out some of the
smaller ones such as the Jeffrey Leder Gallery, 21-37 45th Rd.
(jeffreyledergallery.com); the Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45th Ave.,
(dorsky.org); the Court Square Gallery & Project Space, 2144 45th Ave., Apt. 2 (ctsq.info); the Homefront Gallery, 26-23
Jackson Ave. (thehomefrontgallery.com); Chashama, 26-09
Jackson Ave., (chashama.org); and the Elevator Museum at 4339 21st St. (elevatorhistory.org)
Shopping
Have a half-day to spend?
A block from MoMA PS1 is Vernon Boulevard, a new shopTake the Q103 bus from any of its stops along Vernon
ping and eating hotbed. Check out Matted LIC (46-36 Vernon Boulevard and get off at 50th Avenue. The Noguchi Museum at
Blvd.) for fantastic framing, jewelry, knickknacks, and scarves, 9-01 33rd Rd. (noguchi.org) is a serene oasis designed in 1985 by
and Floresta (also spelled “fLorEsJapanese-American sculptor Isamu
ta” at 51-02 Vernon Blvd.), which,
Noguchi (and across the street from
besides stunning floral arrangewhere Noguchi worked and lived durments, sells candles that the owner
ing the ’60s and ’70s). The two-story,
makes from scratch, using lavender,
24,000-square-foot, 12-gallery space
eucalyptus, and other ingredients.
exhibits Noguchi’s sculptures, furniture
Nearby are the Yoga Room
designs, architectural models and drawLIC (10-14 47th Rd.) for great yoga
ings. It happens to be one of my favorand Pilates clothes and accessoite places in NYC, especially the outries; Earth + Sky Healing Arts (5door garden with many of Noguchi’s fa31 50th Ave.) for herbal teas, masmous rock sculptures on view. Across
sage lotions and oils; and Alcone
the street from Noguchi is the Socrates
Cosmetics (5-45 49th Ave.), which
Sculpture Park, the city’s only public
has the best make up and skin care
area where artists can create and exhibit
you’ve ever tried.
large-scale works on site. They are esoLIC (Long Island City) has
teric, funky, fun, and change frequently.
many craftspeople, and here you’ll
Located right on the banks of the East
find handmade furniture, light
River, you’ll get a great view of Roosevelt
fixtures, glassware, clothing, and
Island and the Manhattan skyline.
health products (don’t worry—they
Rock sculpture in the garden at the Noguchi Museum
ship everything). Check out Joel
Have a full day?
Voissard, Andrew Hughes, Sumie
Head to the Mets-Willets Point
Tachibana, and Angelo Ippolito, if
stop (which leads to Citi Field to the
that appeals to you.
north and the USTA Billie Jean King
National Tennis Center, but you didn’t
Eating
come here to watch baseball, and the
Naturally, food is a matter of
tennis tournament doesn’t take place
choice, so I asked food lover Rob
till next September). Walk south along
MacKay, director of public relathe boardwalk to Flushing Meadowstions, marketing and tourism for
Corona Park, 1.5 times larger than
the Queens Economic Development
Central Park. Here you can ride a biCorporation, for his favorite.
cycle; rent a rowboat, paddleboat, or
“The best place for a complete
sloop-rigged sailboat; try your hand at
meal has to be Manducatis Rustica
catch-and-release fishing, soccer, minRestaurant (46-35 Vernon Blvd.),
iature golf, volleyball, softball, cricket,
where the portions are large and enor pitch and putt; or ride a carousel with
trees hover around $20. The tire64 jumping horses, a lion, and chariots.
less owner, affectionately known
Head to the most recognizable
as Mamma Gianna, is always travstructure
in Queens: the Unisphere,
Photo: Flickr/llahbocaj
eling to Italy and always tweaking
erected for the 1964 World’s Fair. This
the menu. Plus, she sells gelato, old
140-foot-high, 700,000-pound stainPanorama of the City of New York on display
world pastries, and even espresso
less steel globe is a great place for a
at the Queens Museum of Art
machines.”
photograph of you!
MacKay also highly recommends Tournesol, a French eatery
Nearby is the Queens Museum of Art with the Panorama of
at 50-12 Vernon Blvd.; the Waterfront Crabhouse at 2-03 Borden the City of New York, a 9,335-square-foot scaled-down architecAve.; El Ay Si at 47-38 Vernon Blvd.; and Blend, a Latin fusion tural model of all five boroughs and 900,000 structures. (Talk
place at 47-04 Vernon Blvd. Entrees at all these eateries are in about the wow factor!) You can also visit the 11-acre Queens Zoo
the $10-$20 range.
with 75 animal species and countless birds in an aviary.
Cafés
The best and most colorful neighborhoods
For high-quality coffees and teas, head to Sweetleaf (10-93
Jackson Ave.), a café whose owners used to play in the eponymous heavy metal rock band. You can even watch the baked
goods being made behind the glass wall.
Another good café is Communitea at 47-02 Vernon Blvd.
They serve top-of-the-line coffee and tea as well as soups, salads,
and sourdough bread sandwiches.
“I often feel like I am traveling when I walk the streets in
some neighborhoods,” says MacKay. “Everybody on the street
speaks a foreign language and the stores cater entirely to immigrants in many places, although the borough also has dozens of
residential areas with a suburban feel.”
Here’s MacKay’s guide to the predominant ethnic groups in
continued on next page
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
15
some of the liveliest neighborhoods: Astoria (Greek, Egyptian,
Brazilian, Bangladeshi); Long Island City (Young Urban
Professional—hey that counts); Sunnyside (Irish, Romanian);
Woodside (Irish, Filipino, Nepali); Jackson Heights (Colombian);
Elmhurst (Ecuadorian, Pan-Latino); Corona (Dominican,
Mexican); Flushing (Pan-Asian); Richmond Hill (Guyanese,
Southeast Asian); The Rockaways (Hipsters from Brooklyn’s
Williamsburg hang out there during the summer); Cord Meyer
section of Forest Hills (Bukharan); and Southeast Queens
(African-American, West Indian, Central American).
Coming to New York City this October/November
prior to the conference?
More than 100 establishments will participate in Discover
Queens Restaurant Week, Oct. 1-4 and Oct. 8-11. The most common offer is appetizer, entrée, and dessert for $25, but specials
differ and some eateries throw in a free glass of wine. (Starting in
September, you can find the participating restaurants, and their
offers at discoverqueens.info)
Wise Advice
The Queens Hotel Scene
Queens has 90-plus hotels with over 8,000 rooms. So for
a short one or two-stop subway ride on the #7 train, you’ll find
hotels as much as $200 cheaper than their Manhattan counterparts. It’s simple to get from Queens to Grand Central Terminal,
walk two blocks and you’re at the Roosevelt Hotel for the conference. Some hotels even offer limo service to Midtown Manhattan
and back all day. The boutique-y Z Hotel at 11-01 43rd Ave.
has a rooftop bar with a drop-dead view of the East River and
Manhattan plus luxury suites and 300-thread linens. The brand
new Wyndham Garden LIC at 44-29 9th St. and the Holiday Inn
Manhattan View at 39-05 29th St. are also great choices.
So, if you’ve been-there done-that with Manhattan and
you’re looking for some pre- and post-conference activities to
spark your creativity (or just clear your mind from all those wonderful panels), head to the #7 train, the “International Express.”
For more information on New York City’s boroughs, visit
nycgo.com. ¢
SAVE THE DATE!
continued from page 11
Florence Isaacs
Years ago, I would often take work
along on vacation, but I found it usually never left the suitcase. Or if I did
take a stab at it, it was really hard to be
productive. I was in a different mindset. Everyone else was splashing in the
pool or out exploring, and I wanted to
be with them. Now I don’t even consider taking work along, and I rarely check my e-mail either.
I feel the complete change of scenery and experience is
a refueling, both emotionally and creatively. I usually come
back with an envelope full of pieces of paper containing
ideas and insights that poured out when I was totally free of
work. True vacations—i.e. leisure—do pay off in ways large
and small. Take that total break without a shred of guilt. ¢
The ASJA writers conference returns
to the landmark Roosevelt Hotel
in Midtown for three full days next year:
Thursday, April 25 through
Saturday, April 27, 2013. Mark it on your
calendar and see you in NYC!
What ASJA Membership Means To Me:
Shortly before Christmas I received an email out of the blue from
a contract editor who is producing special advertising sections for
the Wall Street Journal. She found me by going through the ASJA
directory, checked out my website, and thought I was perfect for
the job (she specifically needed a tech writer). She says “I have used
ASJA to find writers for 20 years—when the membership directory
was still in hard copy and you had to call for referrals!” I have done
one story for her so far and she hasn’t edited it yet. But I’m hoping
this will be an ongoing and lucrative gig.
­ Tam Harbert
—
tamharbert.com
16
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
IN REMEMBRANCE
Grace Weinstein
November 19, 1935 - August 8, 2012
W
hile Grace was known in ASJA, accurately, as an impressive financial
writer, what will remain with me is
the good times my husband and I had with the
Weinsteins. The four of us were good friends:
We traveled together to Egypt and to Patagonia.
Every summer we’d go up to their cabin in the
Berkshires, hike in the woods, swim in the lake,
and pop over to Jacob’s Pillow, the dance theater
they supported with great devotion. They loved
museums and crafts fairs and theater and interesting restaurants. They gave generously to the
charities that interested them. They traveled (not
just with us). And of course, they enjoyed their
children and grandchildren who, by a great stroke
of fortune, settled in the same town, Virginia
Beach – a bit exotic at first to New Jerseyites
and New Yorkers, but finally the place Grace and
Steve moved off to. So she didn’t live long enough,
but the life she had was full of variety and pleasure, as well as accomplishment.
—Katie Fishman
Grace Weinstein was awarded the ASJA Career
Achievement Award in 2012. Read the presentation and her acceptance speech in the May 2011
issue of The ASJA Monthly, page 17.
You can also find her obituary at http://tinyurl.
com/8uhwu6e.
At right, a photo of Grace along wth 11 other
ASJA Presidents, current and past, taken in April
2011 in New York City:
L-R (standing):
Ruth Winter, Sally Wendkos Olds, Jack El-Hai,
Salley Shannon, Russell Wild, Sam Greengard,
Katharine Davis Fishman
L-R (seated):
Grace Weinstein, Eleanor Foa Dienstag, Minda
Zetlin, Florence Isaacs, Evelyn Kaye
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
17
What’s In Store
Book Reviews by Paul Vachon
The First Fifty Pages, by Jeff Gerke
Writer’s Digest Books, 2011,
231 pages, paperback. $16.99
The famous quote, “You never get a second
chance to make a first impression” is usually credited to either Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain. But Jeff
Gerke just may be the person who demonstrates it
best. The First Fifty Pages—as indicated by the title—is based on the premise that an author has only
that amount of space to positively affect an agent,
and later an acquisitions editor. To embellish his
point, he spends considerable time in his introduction empathizing with the overwhelmed and occasionally jaded agent or editor, throwing in stats for
good measure: 99 percent of manuscripts the editor
receives end up in the slush pile for any of a myriad of
reasons such as weak, one dimensional characters,
lack of an engaging hook, point-of-view foul-ups, etc.
The good part is that the diligent, resourceful writer
can marshal the skills needed to avoid these pitfalls.
Demonstrating these strengths early—in the first 50
pages of the draft—will yield the best possibility of
winning an agent’s or editor’s approval.
To do this, Gerke starts out by providing an
extensive list of “don’ts” such as telling the reader
about a scene instead of showing her (he likens a
good novel to a screenplay, where details can be
“seen” by the reader), or failing to develop major
characters.
The balance of the book offers a bevy of good
advice including developing the plot, introducing
the main character and defining the story’s milieu. Much of this material is repeated from Plot
vs. Character, another of Gerke’s WD books, albeit
in abbreviated form.
Although I’m sure many reviewers say this
about a book they like, I do think that any aspiring
novelist should read and digest this tome as they
self-edit their manuscript prior to submittal, to
optimize those first 50 pages.
Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little,
by Christopher Johnson
W.W. Norton & Co., 2011, 246 pages,
paperback. $15.99
The cover of this book features a huge exclamation point
with a magnifying glass focused on the dot at the bottom.
Paul Vachon prides himself on being a true generalist, writing on areas as diverse as business, history
and green living among others. You’ll find his work in
Pacific Standard, Preservation Online and Michigan
History. He tweets at @paulrvachon.
18
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
“Underneath” the glass is where the title and author’s name can
be found. After a few pages, the reader discovers just how clever
a metaphor this is.
Microstyle isn’t about penmanship—but rather an introduction into what the author calls “micromessages.”
Aimed at the new sphere of tweets, text messages,
and status updates, micromessages are tiny revelations consisting of a phrase or even just a word
which encapsulate a great deal of meaning in the
smallest space possible. Johnson presents this
model of concise communication as the antithesis
of traditional, formal writing with its emphasis on
style and grammar, the age old leviathan he dubs
“Big Style.”
Writing successful micromessages is as much
an art as a science, and in 246 pages, Johnson,
who has a Ph.D. in linguistics, explains in sometimes mind-numbing detail (an obvious irony, I
know) how to construct these gems on the levels
of Meaning, Sound and Structure. Johnson offers defiant advice on clarity, diction and grammar—some of which violates traditional rules—to
coax the reader/writer into a new way of thinking,
one that gives word economy priority over all other concerns. He even encourages readers to coin
their own words!
While I think there is a real need for this information, and I’m glad I tackled the book, I have
to think the lessons he tries to teach could have
been explained much more simply, reducing both
the amount of paper consumed and the amount of
head scratching employed.
The Story Within,
by Laura Oliver, MFA
Alpha Books, 2011, 246 pages,
paperback. $13.95
If Microstyle can be seen as an authentic “left
brain” exercise, The Story Within undoubtedly
stems from the opposite hemisphere. In this deeply astute book, Laura Oliver offers a novel compendium of motivation and inspiration—suitable for
either the emerging or seasoned writer.
Many of the techniques she shares draw from
her personal experience and her years teaching fiction and essay writing at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland. Oliver begins by asking and answering two philosophical queries: why do we write, and/or why don’t we write?
Not surprisingly, she casts the answer to the former in a positive light—“you write to entertain and, in fiction, to stretch the
imagination, to incorporate what you’ve experienced with what
you can envision…” Everyone has secrets to be told, and our writing manifests this inner voice. In short, when we write we appeal
to the better angels of our nature. When we don’t write, we fall victim to an inner “personal
critic.” We exaggerate our own weaknesses and lose our sense
of courage.
From this starting point, Oliver begins a section on tools
useful to every writer, including development of one’s unique
voice, self discovery through journaling plus a number of more
“conventional” skills, including plot and character development, dialogue and setting. An especially useful chapter called
“Publishing and Rejection” offers useful advice on marketing
and coping with the “R” word.
While I think The Story Within is a much needed and relevant writing book, I do have one criticism. Oliver presents a
perspective on writing that, while eminently helpful, can seem
overly introspective at times. While all writing is a creative undertaking, not all of it needs to arise from such a high degree of
soul searching. ¢
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ASJA Mission and Administration
Founded in 1948, the American Society of Journalists and Authors is the nation’s professional association of independent nonfiction writers. ASJA
is a primary voice in representing freelancers’ interests, serving as spokesperson for their right to control and profit from the uses of their work in
online media and elsewhere. ASJA brings leadership in establishing professional and ethical standards, and in recognizing and encouraging the
pursuit of excellence in nonfiction writing. Since 2010, the ASJA Educational Foundation has been offering programming to both established and
aspiring writers that covers all aspects of professional independent writing. ASJA headquarters is in New York City.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Upstate New York Gina Roberts-Grey
PRESIDENT Minda Zetlin
VICE PRESIDENT Gina Roberts-Grey
TREASURER Randy Dotinga
SECRETARY Sandra E. Lamb
IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT
Salley Shannon
PAST PRESIDENT Russell Wild
Washington, DC
Pat McNees and Emily Paulsen
AT-LARGE MEMBERS
AWARDS Co-chairs Barbara DeMarcoBarrett, Linda Marsa
Terms expiring 2013
Damon Brown, Bevery Gray, Holly Tucker
Terms expiring 2014
Laird Harrison, Linda Melone,
Brooke Stoddard
Terms expiring 2015
Sandra Beckwith, Mickey Goodman, Sherry
Beck Paprocki
CHAPTER PRESIDENTS
Arizona Jackie Dishner
Chicago Area Joanne Y. Cleaver
SHOP TALK (MEMBER PROGRAMMING)
Winnie Yu
STRATEGIC PLANNING Jack El-Hai
STANDING COMMITTEE CHAIRS
ASJA STAFF
ADVOCACY Tina Tessina
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Alexandra Owens
OFFICE MANAGER Diana Pacheco
IT MANAGER Bruce W. Miller
ANNUAL WRITERS CONFERENCE
Randy Dotinga
CONTRACTS AND CONFLICTS Milt Toby
EXECUTIVE Minda Zetlin
FINANCE Randy Myers
ASJA CHARITABLE TRUST
BOARD OF TRUSTEES Minda Zetlin (chair),
Gina Roberts-Grey, Randy Dotinga
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Alexandra Owens
WRITERS EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE
FUND BOARD
FIRST AMENDMENT Claire Safran
FORUM Nona Aguilar
Chair Paula Dranov
Deputy Chair Gloria Hochman
Secretary Joan Rattner Heil­man
Board Members Fran Carpentier,
Betsy Carter, John Mack Carter (emeritus),
Lisa Collier Cool, Greg Daugherty,
Katharine Davis Fishman, Florence Isaacs,
Julia Kagan, Caitlin Kelly, Al Silverman, Judy
Twersky, Grace W. Weinstein
HOSPITALITY TBD
INDUSTRY TRENDS Anne Stuart
MARKET REPORTS Jackie Dishner
New York City Tristate
Daylle Deanna Schwartz
MEMBER NETWORKING Sally Stich
Northern California D. Patrick Miller
NOMINATING TBD
Rocky Mountain Sandra E. Lamb
PAST PRESIDENTS Samuel Greengard
ASJA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
PUBLICATIONS Tina Tessina
Program Committee
Gina Roberts-Grey (chair), Grace Daly,
Robin DeMattia, Erica Manfred,
Sara Reistad-Long
Southeast Mickey Goodman
Southern California
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Upper Midwest John Rosengren
MEMBERSHIP Terry Whalin
SOCIAL MEDIA & PROMOTIONS
Gina Roberts-Grey
THE ASJA MONTHLY
SEPTEMBER 2012 WWW.ASJA.ORG
19
PERIODICALS
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