Tuesday, October 20, 2015

the art of letter-writing: Andrew Luba

When did you last receive a personal letter in the mail? Here’s what Andrew Luba says about letters and how they connect people.

 

The digital age has connected people in a lot of ways, but it has also left a lot of people feeling isolated.  Some people work at their computer all day, only going home in the evening to eat and sleep before dragging themselves to work the next morning.  When you only interact with your computer, life can feel lonely and disconnected.  How can we reconnect people?

 

Andrew Luba wants to empower people to feel through his Kickstarter campaign, "Solipsism”.  He’s writing letters to you, your friends, and strangers around the world.  He’s using creative writing to bring everyone together to celebrate what makes us human: emotion.  

The money he raises (only $2 Canadian/letter) goes to buying paper and ink, paying postage, and eating food while he writes.  He will send out his laters in November and December.

When’s the last time someone wrote you a letter?

You can order one here by backing his campaign:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewluba/solipsism-whens-the-last-time-someone-wrote-you-a

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

 

Monday, October 19, 2015

website issues

34 issues that may scare readers away from your website:

http://www.webdesignrelief.com/issues-that-scare-readers-away-from-author-website/

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

 

getting books into global markets

Interesting article by Jen Minkman, who writes in English & Dutch: http://tinyurl.com/plqyr9s .

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

 

Saturday, October 17, 2015

story Tree of Knowledge in Folklore Magazine

The following story appeared in the Summer 2015 issue of Folklore Magazine published by the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society.
Tree of Knowledge
By Elma (Martens) Schemenauer
It was a warm afternoon, and Mother was cross with my little brother Wally and me. She was ironing that afternoon. She had made a fire in the kitchen stove to heat the tugboat-shaped irons. She would use one iron till it cooled, set it back on the stove, and pick up another with the clip-on handle.
I guess Wally and I had been naughty, or perhaps simply whiny. Probably contributing to Mother's bad temper were the unwelcome but necessary heat of the stove, the pile of ironing that needed doing, and the wind moaning around our tall farmhouse. Like many houses on the Saskatchewan prairie in the 1940s, it was unsheltered by trees.
"It's not fun here," I said to Wally. "Come on. Let's go for a walk."
My brother's face brightened. He hitched the straps of his overall shorts higher on his shoulders, and we trundled out through the screen door, Mother calling after us, "Don't go past The Tree."
The Tree was a caragana that struggled for survival about a quarter mile west along the road toward Elbow, our nearest village. Wally and I, like six- and four-year-old Vikings, had undertaken many journeys to visit this scraggly landmark.
The Tree fascinated me. It seemed to exist beyond the bounds of time and space, springing alone out of the dry ground, its origin obscure. I half expected to see Adam and Eve in the weedy ditch beside The Tree. Perhaps Adam would throw a stick for a young wolf, which would yelp with glee and snatch the stick in its slobbering jaws.
Wally and I had learned about Adam and Eve from children's stories told in our country Mennonite church. Apparently our first parents had lived in perfect harmony with wild animals in the Garden of Eden before Sin entered the world.
This information was borne out by brightly coloured, flannel-backed pictures on a flannel-board. These pictures showed the happy pair with their arms around wolves, bears, and lions. Adam and Eve's hair was wonderful in the pictures, long and brown and bouncy, conspiring with shrubs to cover the private parts of their naked bodies.
I sometimes wondered if, in the cool of the day, the Lord God Himself walked along the fence near The Tree, just as He had walked in the Garden of Eden long ago.
A more mundane attraction of The Tree was the possibility of making caragana whistles. Our cousin Eldon Janzen had showed Wally and me how to pick a ripe pod off a caragana tree, strip out the seeds, and slit it to make a whistle. Wally and I loved the sounds these whistles made. They were like squeaky wheels turning or demented roosters crowing.
We didn't yet have the trick of making caragana whistles, but we were working on it. When we reached The Tree, we began plucking off pods one after another, blowing till our cheeks hurt, throwing pods away, picking more, blowing till spots floated in front of our eyes. Occasionally a faint squawk rewarded us, but it was nothing compared to what Eldon could produce.
"Let's go and see him," I said to Wally. Eldon's parents had a whole hedge of caraganas on their farm. My brother and I had never visited the Janzens on foot, but I was pretty sure I knew the way. Just pass The Tree and turn at the next road. Then keep going till you see the Janzens' yellow house and red barn.
Wally's cheerful personality had earned him the nickname Sonny. However, uncertainty now clouded his blue eyes.
"Come on." I grabbed his solid little hand. "Let's go."
"We're not 'sposed to." Wally twisted his hand out of mine. At age four he was a head shorter than I but strong. He was an idealistic child, setting a lot of store by keeping the rules.
I was more of a rationalizer. "Mother's mad at us," I reminded him. "She probably won't even care if we go to Eldon's."
"I don't want to go." Wally dug his heels into the earth.
"What a baby!" I exploded. "OK, if you're not coming, I'm leaving you here alone." I gave him a casual wave and strolled past The Tree, half expecting a restraining order from Heaven or at least a roll of thunder.
All I heard was the wind.
"I'm going to tell on you," Wally called.
"I don't care, Baby. Go ahead and tell."
He gazed along the road ahead of us, his lower lip trembling. Then he turned back toward our house.
"Bye, bye," I called. "Have a nice walk. Don't let the coyotes get you."
My brother gave a little whimper. He glanced over his shoulder at me once, twice. Then he hitched his overall straps higher on his shoulders and proceeded past The Tree, picking up his feet and setting them down as if walking a gangplank.
What a sense of adventure I felt as he and I trudged into the unknown. Walking this road alone was far more exciting than travelling by car, as we had often done with our parents.
A crow landed on a nearby fencepost, croaked, and took off again, flapping away in the direction of our house. Wally stopped in his tracks and watched the bird till it disappeared from sight. "I'm not going to Eldon's," he announced. "It's too far."
"No, it's not," I said. "We'll just turn at the next road. Soon we'll see his house."
My reluctant brother accompanied me to the next road. There we turned the corner and passed a slough with ducks swimming on its navy-blue water. We plodded up a rise in the road and down the other side. However, we still didn't see the Janzens' yellow house.    
"Let's go back," Wally said. "It's too far." Though idealistic, he was also practical and may have been a better judge of distance than I.
I laid a big-sisterly hand on his shoulder. "Maybe Eldon's mother will give us cookies. Maybe she'll have puffed wheat cake."
"But I'm afraid," Wally whimpered. He pulled away from me and plopped himself down on the weedy shoulder of the road, choosing a spot well out of the way of any traffic, just as Mother had taught us.
My brother hung his head, clutched his hands around his knees, and began to wail. Tears dribbled down the front of his carefully ironed shirt and overall shorts.
I shuffled my feet, beginning to regret what I had done. I knew deep down that disobeying Mother was wrong, no matter how cross she was. Even worse, I had led my brother to betray his tender conscience.
So should we go back? It was a long way. Maybe we were now closer to Eldon's house than our own.
As I stood wondering what to do, I saw a cloud of dust approaching along the road ahead. Moments later a blue ton truck roared up beside us.
I recognized a man and woman from church. They may have been Pete and Anne Dahl or some others of the Dahl family.
The woman leaned out the window. "What are you children doing so far from home?" she shouted over the rumble of the engine.
I said nothing, feeling guilty. Wally scrambled to his feet, wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve.
"We're looking for our bull," the man hollered. "He broke out of the pasture."
The woman opened the door. "Get in. We'll take you home. You shouldn't be walking on the road with a bull loose."
On our way home, we passed The Tree. Nobody else seemed to pay any attention to it. But the sight made me sad. I craned my neck to stare at it, watching till it disappeared in a haze of dust.
Years later this incident and others from my prairie childhood inspired my 1940s-era novel Consider the Sunflowers. The novel is set in a fictional community like the one where I spent my early years. Published by Borealis Press, it's a story of family, Mennonites, faith, betrayal, and ultimately hope.
Consider the Sunflowers is loosely, very loosely, based on my own family. It’s available from Chapters Indigo http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or the publisher, Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/1fdo9pf . Or ask for it in a bookstore or library. More information can be found at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs .


Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

fictionalizing real life: WordWorks article

The following article appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of WordWorks magazine published by the Federation of BC Writers.

 

Fictionalizing Real Life

by Elma (Martens) Schemenauer

 

Ethel Wilson in her classic novel Swamp Angel fictionalizes life at Lac Le Jeune near Kamloops. Harold Rhenisch in his book of short stories, Carnival, combines his father's character with his own to give readers a fictionalized look at life in Germany during the 1930s and after.

Why do authors sometimes fictionalize real experiences? Certainly there are places for writing about life as it actually happened. Examples include memoirs, autobiographies, and history books.

However, there are also reasons for fictionalizing:

-Fictionalizing gives us a larger framework for exploring personal and family issues.

-It externalizes our sorrows and puts them in perspective, bringing order to confused feelings and thoughts.

-It can make mundane events more exciting.

-It's a way to explore vulnerabilities and shortcomings while aspiring to something higher and more meaningful.

-Fiction can portray the human condition in a way non-fiction can't. In the words of author Gail Anderson-Dergatz, "Writing it as fiction can help you tell it even more truthfully."

How do we fictionalize real life? Rohinton Mistry, in his short story Swimming Lessons, says: "Fiction can come from facts, it can grow out of facts by compounding, transposing, augmenting, diminishing, or altering them in any way." For instance, an author might compound two cities to make a new one, and then alter the result to create a symbolically meaningful city. An author might transpose a quiet woman and talkative man to create a talkative woman and quiet man, and then augment them so they both become larger-than-life.

In my 1940s-era Mennonite novel Consider the Sunflowers, I fictionalized the lives of some of my relatives. One example is my mother. She worked in Vancouver as a young woman, but left to marry her boyfriend in rural Saskatchewan. Later she missed Vancouver. However, she knew my father would never move there, so she tried to persuade him to move closer to their nearest Saskatchewan town.

I fictionalized that situation by altering their names and personalities, putting words in their mouths, and giving them more straightforward motives than I suspect my parents had. Following is an excerpt illustrating that. Tina and her husband, Frank, are at the breakfast table, where they've been discussing the idea of moving.

Frank pulled his chair closer to hers, the lines around his eyes softening. "I know it's not easy for you," he said, putting his arm around her. "But you haven't given this place a fair chance yet. You haven't even lived here around the seasons." He glanced out the window. "I picture our baby when he gets bigger, running through the wildflowers with his pretty mama. Her hair flying in the wind." Frank gave her the crooked smile that almost always made her heart melt.

Tina shrank away from him. She wouldn't weaken, not this time. "It's a nice picture, but we'd have wind and wildflowers by town, too."

"It wouldn't be the same. Some of our land here is virgin prairie. It's never been touched by a plough."

"It's running with coyotes."

"Coyotes are okay. They help keep the rabbits down."

Tina shivered. "They scare me, howling at night. They sound like lost souls." Sometimes she felt like a lost soul herself.

Frank lifted his arm off her shoulders. "I told you, Tina, I can't live near town. I can't stand being so close to other people. They crowd me. You can't lock me in a cage. Please don't try."

For reasons that are unclear to me, my father felt like a black sheep in the Saskatchewan Mennonite community where our family lived. He preferred to socialize with our Scandinavian and British neighbours. I altered and amplified that situation, giving my character Frank a background that included concrete reasons for his feelings. Here's an excerpt illustrating that.

Monday was laundry day. Frank stood at the stove dipping hot water out of the boiler, his bass voice rumbling something from Tchaikovsky. He seemed to be in a good mood. Maybe this was the time for Tina to ask him. "Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"I've been thinking." Tina dropped a flannel sheet into the washtub and rubbed a bar of laundry soap over it. "We haven't invited the Fehrs or Brauns over since we got married. Or the Friesens or any of our other Mennonite neighbours."

"So?" Frank's expression was as blank as dough.

"We could ask some of them to come for coffee, maybe Sunday afternoon."

He dumped a pail of hot water into the washtub and swirled it around, mixing it with the cooler water. "What makes you think the Fehrs and Brauns and them want to visit with us?"

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Come on, Tina. You know as well as I do. I don't fit in with the Mennonites. They didn't even invite me to the men's breakfast."

"That's because we don't attend church regularly."

He snorted. "Don't fool yourself. They think I'm not good enough for them."

"How can you say that?" Tina scrubbed the sheet on the washboard. "They practically begged you to play your guitar at the Christmas concert."

"Sure, but you know what they were thinking: 'Gypsies are great entertainers. You've got to admit that. In Russia they played and sang like angels. But you didn't dare turn your back on them. First thing you knew, they'd pick your pocket or steal your horse.'"

Tina rolled her eyes. How could Frank keep harping on the few stories he'd heard about Russian Gypsies? There were worse characters in Russia, far worse. She dropped the sheet into the rinse water and jerked her chin at it. "You could rinse that sheet now."

Frank swirled it through the water. "I'd rather visit with Scandinavians or British people any day. They don't carry all that Russian baggage."

Fictionalizing the lives of family members can be tricky. What if they don't like what you write? Fights could ensue. Your writing could cause a rift in the family. One way to avoid negative responses is to share your journey with the people you're fictionalizing. This is especially advisable if you plan to have your story stick close to the facts. Sharing can reduce the chances of hurting and/or angering people. It may also open a new channel of communication, giving you a better understanding of your emerging story.

I showed parts of Consider the Sunflowers to some of my relatives as I was writing it. They encouraged me to continue and mentioned details of our family life that I had forgotten or never known. Their input enriched the story.

On the other hand, suppose you don't want to discuss your writing with the real people you're fictionalizing? In that case it may be wise to swing the narrative farther away from the facts.

Suppose you'd like to write about your aunt, who abandoned her grandfather on a sinking ship and swam to shore. The trouble is you're sure your aunt will object to having this story told. Could you fictionalize her as a woman who abandons her baby on the steps of a convent? Or as a woman who abandons her mentally challenged brother in Surrey and returns to India to seek her missing husband? If you changed your aunt's name, background, mannerisms, and appearance, she wouldn't be likely to recognize herself.

Despite such drastic changes, your story's main ideas and emotions could still be the same. For example, your main character might:

-Weigh different courses of action.

-Try to justify an action though it seems doubtful or wrong.

-Undertake the action and then second-guess it.

-Wonder later what happened to the abandoned person.

-Try to reunite and reconcile herself with the abandoned person.

Write to understand human nature, to explore why people do what they do. How do their actions reveal their humanity—faulty, frail, sometimes despicable but also unique, interesting, and potentially redeemable? The prospect of discovering universal truths beckons us forward in writing. In fictionalizing, we may make stories even more real, closer to the heart of the human condition.

Elma (Martens) Schemenauer is a Kamloops-based author of many published books. Her most recent is the novel Consider the Sunflowers, published in 2014 by Borealis Press. For details, please visit her website http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs .

 

 

 

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

 

Friday, October 16, 2015

Debra L. Butterfield interviewed me

Debra L. Butterfield is an editor, author, and writing coach. Here’s her smiling face. She just posted the following interview with me . Thanks, Debra.
Today’s interview is with Elma Schemenauer, author of Consider the Sunflowers published by Borealis Press. She has written 75-plus books and is the editor of hundreds more. Elma was born in a Saskatchewan community like the fictional Coyote of Consider the Sunflowers. “As I grew up,” she says, “I sank deep roots into prairie life and the traditions of my extended Mennonite family.”
After teaching for a few years, Elma moved into a publishing career in Toronto. She’s the author of many books including Yesterstories, Russia, Jacob Siemens Family Since 1685, Ottawa, and Hello Winnipeg. She writes and blogs. Learn more about Elma and Consider the Sunflowers at: http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs
Why do you write?
It’s my lifeblood, along with my Christian faith. I believe God made me to work with words. If I don’t have a writing or editing project, I feel almost as if I’m shirking my duty. Writing has also opened doors to many interesting and fulfilling relationships, both online and face-to-face.
How do “pay it forward”?
I interact face-to-face and online with several writers and aspiring writers who may find my experience, advice, and feedback helpful. Sometimes I speak at writing conferences. I monitor the critique group ReVision under the auspices of The Word Guild. I also search out writing opportunities of various kinds: contests, calls for submissions, invitations to contribute to anthologies, and the like. I share these on my blog and with the writing groups I belong to.
You have quite a range of publication, fiction and non-fiction, books and articles for children to adult. Why is that?
I guess I have a free-wheeling personality in my own quiet way. My husband’s example encourages me in this direction. He has a specialty, physics, but he’s also interested in history, geography, biblical archaeology, etc., etc. Then there are practical considerations. Over the years I’ve made a fairly good income from writing and editing. To do that, I’ve needed to be willing to take on many different challenges.
What are the positives and negatives of this?
On the plus side, it’s exciting and keeps a person growing. On waking in the morning, I sometimes pray, “Lord, please prepare me for the surprises.” I’ve enjoyed many in my life. On the minus side, concentrating in one area might bring a writer more renown and might be more satisfying depending on one’s personality.
You have a tremendous amount of nonfiction. Was it difficult to shift to writing fiction?
That’s a good question. Actually I wrote both non-fiction & fiction from the early days of my writing career. My first published book was a picture book for children, Newton McTootin and the Bang Bang Tree. A few years later, my Yesterstories series was published—stories of mystery and adventure from Canada’s past, i.e. historical fiction. The reason I wrote so many non-fiction books was because that was where the opportunities presented themselves to me more readily. Generally speaking, there’s more of a market for non-fiction and it pays better.
What would you say to writers who are struggling to find their voice and where they fit?
Follow your enthusiasms and your interests. Write in the genre(s) you enjoy reading. Try different kinds of writing, too. One way is by entering writing contests. You’ll stretch yourself, maybe discover a writing voice you didn’t know you had, and perhaps even win something.
What advice would you give to writers about approaching agents and publishers?
  • Get over the fear of them stealing your ideas. Bona fide agents & publishers generally don’t. Ideas easy to come by, but not the execution of them.
  • Get over defeatist theories such as it’s all in who you know; people bribe to get published; it’s just luck
  • Get over fear of rejection
  • Send exactly what they want; submission guidelines differ from agent to agent and publisher to publisher
  • Write the best query you can.
  • Run your query past other people to see how it comes across to them. There are sites where you can do that, e.g. agent query connect, query tracker.
  • Keep a record of your querying activities, e.g. queried with date, rejections with date, possibilities for future queries.
Thank you for being here with us today, Elma. I have no doubt you’ll have many more publications in the years to come. Leave any questions you have for Elma in the comments below.
About Consider the Sunflowers
Consider the Sunflowers paints a colourful picture of life on the Canadian home front during World War II and beyond. As the story opens, it’s 1940 and Tina Janz doesn’t want to marry the man her pious Mennonite parents have chosen for her. He’s as boring as turnips compared with her half-Gypsy boyfriend Frank Warkentin. Obsessed with the dashing Frank, Tina leaves her job in Vancouver to marry him. However, her joy is soon overshadowed by loneliness on Frank’s farm in the prairie community of Coyote, Saskatchewan.
When Frank shuns local Mennonites because some of them scorn his mixed parentage, Tina is torn between her Mennonite heritage and her husband. Their son’s death drives the couple farther apart. Then Tina’s former Vancouver boyfriend shows up, setting off a series of events that send her and Frank stumbling toward a new understanding of love, loyalty, faith, and freedom.
AVAILABLE ONLINE FROM
Chapters Indigo http://tinyurl.com/nsylp5j
OR Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf



Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

Saturday, October 10, 2015

plan a great book reading

Good article here: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/how-to-plan-a-great-book-reading-5-tips

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

 

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

writing action & fight scenes: Fonda Lee

Good article here: http://www.yamisfits.com/2014/11/writing-club-wednesday-guest-post-by.html

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .

 

Monday, October 5, 2015

anthology seeks personal essays on faith

Chasing the Divine, a new anthology, invites personal essays up to 4000 words on the subject of faith in today’s Canadian context. Stories from all faith traditions are welcome. Deadline October 31, 2015. Here’s the link: https://chasingthedivineanthology.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/

 

 

Elma Schemenauer CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS: 1940s-era novel about love, Mennonites, faith, & family. Set in Vancouver & rural Saskatchewan. Order from Chapters online http://tinyurl.com/ny8smwk or Borealis Press http://tinyurl.com/lfdo9pf  . More info at http://elmams.wix.com/sflwrs  .