Q’s Place is Moving

I have had two blogs, for a number of years now. I hardly have time to manage one. So, I’m ffolding this one into the first: “Mostly by Knight”:,
Renaming it ” Q’s Place”, a writers journal – mostly by knight.

New Year, new theme. And a new F2K.

!Is back … new theme, new year and a new F2K session at the Writer’s Village University.  About seven weeks; open to all and free! A wonderful opportunity for all: beginners may test their skills; old recidivists, polish up forgotten ones: and finally, for those that make it all the way, a good story at the end.

There are no obligation and plenty of critique in wonderful and amiable company, with some fine mentors too.

Q

Glimmer Train contest:

A little late (deadline is January 2d); details below

http://www.glimmertrain.com/

Prizes:

• 1st place wins $2,000, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies.
• 2nd-place: $1,000 and possible publication.
• 3rd-place: $600 and possible publication.

Results post on February 28, 2010. Winning story will be published in Issue 78.

Other considerations:

• Open to all writers, all themes.
• Reading fee: $20 per story.
• Word count range: 2,000 – 20,000. (Don’t worry: A great 2,000 word story can compete against a great 20,000 word story. It’s the story that counts.)

Q

The March Hare

Another NaNoWrimo swept under the carpet (and how I “cheated”)

Yet another National Novel Writing Month finished – with more than sixty thousand words, not too bad. It has been the hardest (out of five,  completed three) as …

• We are in the midst of moving — not far this time,  to Santa Rosa de Calamuchita, ten miles South of this town (Villa General Belgrano). We are restoring Mrs. Q’s deceased parents place, more or less abandoned for twenty years.
• The internet “service”  here is truly hopeless. Most places are on the National telephone grid, which offers at least one megabyte connection. This town,  Villa General Belgrano, is fairly unique as it is a German Community * town and all services are run by local cooperatives:  with Teutonic efficiency but the Internet Service provider has to buy bandwidth from the National network:  less than one megabyte for the whole town … and shared by all users.  As it is also one of the most popular tourist attractions (the “Little Germany” factor). most of the time a thousand or more users may be online. though we pay for 250K, we actually get less than dialup speed (when it works at all) .  They have also expanded the service — every restaurant and beerstube offers WiFi access, and “cyber establishments” ” (joints with up to twenty computer booths) have cropped up like mushrooms  after a warm summer rain. And recently, they’ve extended heir service though wireless connections to other small towns, otherwise isolated. Very admirable. Except they have done nothing to increase the number of servers, or purchase more bandwidth.
• Our next town – Santa Rosa – is on the National grid. There is also a service that offers a powerful wireless connection, with dedicated one megabyte: that is, not shared. So things will improve. A lot.
• Through rather peculiar circumstances, I was able to get a Lenovo laptop with automatic wireless – so for this year’s NaNo I’d take it to Santa Rosa (after composing in the Word of Gates) … or from here, get up at three AM, when there would be fewer users online — but not often!

And how I “cheated”:  First, I didn’t write a novel: I set up fifteen short stories, vaguely related, about 3500 words each centered around a fictional town called Chestamovarado as a common point. Second, in October I set up fifteen separate Word pages and wrote a hundred word outline for each story.  It worked — when it became time to start I would know exactly where I was going.  Even so, some of these “chapters”  are pretty bad, so I’ll have to do a lot of editing — once we’ve moved. I think it should turn out well, in the end.

*The name “Villa General Belgrano”:  most would associate it with an Argentine battleship, sunk by the British submarine (“Conqueror”) during the Falklands fracas: in 1982 . It’s much older than that. General Belgrano, Manuel Belgrano, was a lawyer turned general during Argentina’s  war for independence from Spain, beginning in 1810. He had a quandary, during one of his more successful battles: both sides had the same flag. Most confusing. So he devised a new one, light blue, white and light blue in broad horizontal bands. So his biggest claim to fame was as the Argentine flag’s creator.

This town was called “Los Sauces” . It had a substantial German, Swiss and Austrian community even before World War Two but after 1945 a new wave of immigrants came from Germany.  Sometime in the ‘fifties a few youths, presumably after a “fine party”, burnt an Argentine flag.  A judge decided that not only the kids, but the town, had to be punished: so the government of the time ordered the town renamed — in an unusual fit of poetic justice, to the name of General Belgrano, the flag’s  creator. As if,  after burning an American flag in the US, the town would be renamed “Betsy Ross”.

That should   do for tonight. The connection is burbling again (and I can’t load images)

Q

Writing exceptionally well …

Horace

“You will have written exceptionally well if,  by the skillful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original”

From Horace (65-8 BC) Ars Poetica.

Written? In Horace’s time? The original text in Latin is:

Dixeris egregie notum si callida verbum reddiderit iunctura novum. The verb is “to say”, not “to write”. This was the age of oratory, studied and practiced as a component of rhetoric – the art of  persuasion, of moving an audience, with language.

William Shakespeare

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Q

“F2K” and the “Writers’ Village University”

This is a huge site on the web: created by Bob Hembree (Editor of T-Zero Quaterly), and run by Mr. Hembree and many, many assistants (some have web logs: check out author and mentor “benning”  Benning’s Writing Pad ;  Joni’s site, One Voice;  0r June Diehl , who has a wonderful book) . I’ve been a member for about five years (I think it’s five, I became a life member this year) and I’ve found many new friends like Laurel Wilczek (aka Raven) already an excellent writer, Susan Fourtane from way back  and covering the arts scene in Helsinki, “Granny” (now a mentor);  these are the ones with web links that I know of but there are so many names (and nicknames)  I should add – Maruxa (also mentoring, I  see now – my apologies),  “Grumps” , Malkeet,   “Otter”,  “Greywolf”, Gloria,  “Shriek”, Sonja …  and many many more (as I will be writing about these groups from time to time, I’m sure I’ll be covering most omissions) .

But it wasn’t my intention (nor would it be interesting) to make an extensive list of all my friends, old and new, here. There is one item in this Writers’ Village that should get our attention now:

F2K

It’s Bob Hembree’s creation (I think the name derived from “F” for “Fiction” followed by whatever year that course would be – until 2000, nine years ago and the “2K” stuck). It’s held four times a year and the next one starts this Wednesday 20th. of May. It is free to anyone – literally anyone, not only members, there is a first week of “Orientation”, where everyone can introduce themselves (user names, as you’ve seen before are both acceptable and varied); then there are six lessons – groups of exercises, surprisingly simple ones but the several times I’ve done it I’ve been astonished how quickly subscribers progress, specially beginners (though many drop out, there is no obligation to remain but one does so by keeping up to date with the assignments).  There are also many experienced writers that join – I’ve been doing this for nearly half a century and each time I’m humbled and overjoyed at finding how good fresh new talent can be, or can become. The final exercise can often produce a finished, or nearly finished, story – that alone is reason enough to join.  We post our exercises, within a study group small enough to allow each to follow the others work (all subscribers are split up into groups, each group has a mentor to resolve posting questions and provide prompts and encouragement,  but there is no impediment in visiting and participating in any other group): so we polish each others  exercises .  It really works extremely well. *

There is an option, by paying a small fee, of getting “one on one” assistance from one of the W.V. University mentors.

I’ll be joining this coming session (I appear as “Q”). Perhaps we meet there?

F2K – Free Creative  Writing Course – Wednesday 20th. of May 2009

* Since posting this I’ve been reminded of the best and most notable feature of this course. (thank you meer!), quoted roughly: “The joy of discovering true camaraderie in writing … learning how to have fun, and not be so uptight and even fearful about our writing …. How right, and how true that after a while we just take it for granted. There are many course, many tutors and even more books – but few have the lighthearted touch (with some pretty earnest learning, but one hardly notices that) as this course – and then later, if one should choose to join, in the groups and courses at the WVU. I don’t know how I could forget that, in this post.

Meanwhile – Hasta pronto!

Q

Sphere: Related Content

Cruz Blanca (1): from the garden

For about twenty years, until two and a half years ago, we lived in this old stone house, part of a farm that was in Mrs. Q’s (Susan’s) family, and was sold before we married – all but the house and nearly nine acres of mesquite thorny bush.

Susan and her first husband (she was widowed young) raised their children at this place, but it was more or less abandoned for a time, overgrown ,  and wild.

Over the two decades we were there we hacked the bush back, mowed and planted (Susan, flower beds – her green thumb is quite famous – and I had trees and shrubs to plant).

We did much of the work ourselves, but help was affordable and were fortunate in getting some good people – specially for the hacking and clearing. This is “Cruz Blanca” – the “White Cross”, as Susan and Franz, her first husband, hailed from Switzerland.

The trees grew, and on the ” shade side” (our South, Northern Hemisphere’s North) we had a good forest going, with evergreen pines, cedars, spruces, mimosa and deciduous oaks, liquidambar, maples and just about anything that would grow. Susan had a rose garden, chrysanthemums, jasmine, a most admired cactus collection, a rock garden … and I’d better stop right there as I’m out of my territory. Maybe she’ll be along later.

The property is on a slope, a side of the Santa Rosa river, which runs across its Northern boundary, some five hundred yards downhill: a mountain river, white water and prone to floods in heavy rain (up to twenty feet, in a flash).  Under normal conditions though, its best feature is a fine swimming hole, a pool in the rocks.

The cool, clear water is about twenty feet deep, with some shallow parts and a sand beach (that over the years, disappeared, as some ten miles (in a straight line) upstream a small town grew and sand was taken for building.

In spring, the Jacaranda would show off:

And the small forest, not visible here, alongside the entrance driveway

We had to sell and leave – family dispersed and we were left, the two of us too far away from so called civilization, medical services, vulnerable to emergencies of any kind, with more than an hours drive to the nearest town; a bumpy crawl up a mountain track. Not without regret. And I gained access to the world, through broadband internet – I thought I had: turns out it’s not so broad and has been more or less disconnected for the last month or so – but that’s another story. This one, the tale of Cruz Blanca – the “White Cross” – this one I will continue from time to time, specially when as now, I unearth an album of photographs of the place and Mrs. Q and I become misty and nostalgic. Until later.

(And yes, 911 forest critters at WVU – and Gandy/Joni specially -  you did inspire this post. Now maybe, I’ll even write to the prompt

Q

From Q, Mrs. Q, Remy and Champ – a Happy 2009!

But I’ll let Remy represent us this year. Her picture is from last July (it is considerably warmer now, in our Summer)

Earthrise – from Apollo 8, Christmas eve 1968

As Apollo 8 nosed its way back from the far side of the Moon for the fourth time, the crew got their first view of Earth … Frank Borman took this picture, Christmas Eve, 1968

With all our concerns in these troubled times, this seems an appropriate greeting to our planet and everyone on it!

Merry Christmas!  – And peace and harmony for all creatures great and small, in the New Year…

Q