ASJA PACIFIC NORTHWEST NEWSLETTER
For ASJA members in
Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon and Washington
August 2024
https://asjapnw.org
In This Issue
From the Prez, Hidden in Plain Sight, M. Carolyn Miller, ASJA PNW President
Writing for Modern Love, Darlene West
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation, M. Carolyn Miller
Work is a PITA, Work is a Mind-saver, Fred Gebhart
Be Ready to Respond, Bruce Miller
Member News and Announcements
Join us for our August meeting!…at a new time…11 AM
M. Carolyn Miller is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: ASJA PNW
Time: August 21, 2024 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every month on the Third Wednesday
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87898612924
***Please think about what sort of speaker you’d like to hear from for the fall/spring speaker series (via Zoom).
You can email your ideas to Joanna Nesbit (joannanesbit@comcast.net) and/or bring them to the August meeting.
This newsletter publishes the first day of each month and welcomes article submissions and photos. Please email the ASJA PNW Newsletter Editor, Maxine Cass, at maxinecass@gmail.com
From the President
by M. Carolyn Miller
ASJA PNW Chapter President
Hidden in Plain Sight
I recently attended the Willamette Writers’ weekly brown bag lunch here in Portland. Willamette Writers is an Oregon writing organization open to both published and unpublished writers. Well-known in the state, it has multiple chapters. (And FYI, they are hosting a conference here in Portland July 31-August 4. The trade show is open to the public on August 2 from 5-7 p.m.)
I had dismissed this organization when I first moved to Portland after a visit to one of its events only to be surrounded by newbie writers. But this time, as I sat around the conference/lunch table, I was surprised at the publishing accomplishments of this group of writers. This group has been there all along over the past six years that I’ve been in Portland, and I never tapped into it until now.
This “hidden in plain sight” theme emerged again when I chatted with my book agent friend. I asked her whether the 14 years and numerous articles I’ve published with an association client, all related to my area of expertise, counted as part of my platform for the book. She asked for numbers. I found them in the association’s media kit and provided them. (The trade magazine I write for has a readership of 47,000!). Yes, she said resoundingly. I’ve been building a platform all along and never saw it.
Finally, in early July, after finishing the heart of the book proposal after three years, I was lost. I didn’t want to be home or in my office or at a coffee house working. I wanted to be OUT. With people. So, I got myself a little part-time, quasi-brainless, job. I got the pay I wanted, can set my own hours, take off whenever I want, and it’s 15 minutes away. Easy-peasy.
So what is the lesson here? Lighten up and look around. You might be surprised by what emerges.
M. Carolyn Miller, MA, spent her career designing narrative- and game-based learning. Today, she consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.cultureshape.com
by Darlene West
Writing for Modern Love
Hoping to get published in the most widely read personal essay column in the world? When it comes to writing The New York Times “Modern Love” column, material is everything. That’s the advice of Peter Mountford, an author, writing coach, and instructor based in Seattle, who delivered a webinar on writing for Modern Love as part of the Craft Talks series of webinars and workshops.
Peter used the analogy of a jockey entering the Kentucky Derby: you may be a great jockey, but picking the right horse will pretty much determine your chance of winning. So how do you pick the right story from your life to tell? Even if you have an idea in mind, Peter suggests putting it aside to come up with a list of five or ten more possibilities and considering which would be of most interest—not so much to yourself, but to a perfect stranger. The story should be easy to explain—i.e., have a distillable, “pitchable” quality, (even though you’re submitting a complete essay).
Besides writing his own Modern Love essay, Peter has worked with other writers on their columns, read hundreds of published pieces, and collected advice from the columns’ longtime editor Dan Jones (who was keynote speaker at ASJA’s 2018 conference).
Successful Modern Love columns tend to be about big life decisions and important relationships—abandoning a house that’s been in the family for 160 years, for instance, or losing a carefully cultivated career after falling in love with a colleague—which explains why it’s uncommon for the column to be written by people in their twenties or younger.
Other tips from Peter:
- Avoid pitching a column about losing a loved one to cancer or other direct explorations of grief and loss, since so many Modern Love submissions fall into this category. These themes could be a part of the story, just not the focus.
- Although your essay may include backstory and context about past events, it should be set in relatively recent times. To quote Dan Jones: “It helps if your essay explores some new angle on love, a way things are different today.”
- Modern Love focusses on stories about romantic love and familial love. Pets and other animals do appear in the column, but not as the central relationship. Stories about friendships are also uncommon.
- The essay should have a takeaway or reveal some wisdom, but as Peter says, don’t freak out if your material doesn’t have a strong theme at the start. “Often the takeaway only makes itself known to you once you’re writing.”
Peter Mountford teaches a number of courses and classes, including a self-directed class on writing a Modern Love essay.
Darlene West’s essays have appeared in The Smart Set, The Morning News, The Common, and other publications. She lives in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.
Story and photos
by M. Carolyn Miller
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation
Sometimes you have to go home several times to leave it for good.
In early June, I spent nearly a week in Colorado, a place I called home from my twenties to my sixties. Unlike the first trip mostly to visit family last fall, this one was focused on friends—in northern and eastern Colorado, and then up to the mountains. Unlike my first trip, which validated my longing for “home” in the time I’d been gone, this trip I saw Colorado more realistically, both its pros and cons.
And when I walked out of the Portland airport a week later, and inhaled the cool weather, the greenery and, later, the produce, I realized that one more trip home should seal the deal that I’m here in the PNW to stay.
Old boyfriends are old boyfriends for a reason.
I spent time with an old boyfriend. He was my chauffeur. He opened my doors and insisted on paying. He patiently waited while I visited old friends. This trip, all my projections on him disappeared and I saw him as he is: kind-hearted, smart, cute, funny, but with some unhealthy patterns that, well, gave me pause then and still do now. We’ve known each other now for 20 years. We’re good friends. We’ve toyed with the idea of reuniting. Would I like a partner this late in the game? Of course. Do I want someone who can’t see or doesn’t care that he’s got some less-than-desirable behaviors? I’m not so sure.
You never know where life will take you so cherish the now.
I visited an old friend who had checked herself into a mental health facility a month prior. (I’ve known this friend for 20 years and never knew she was bi-polar.) A nurse by training, she was my advocate during cancer treatment. After our visit, I vowed to be hers and began that process. I worry about her. I pray for her. I send cards weekly and occasionally reach out (although that can trigger her anxiety). Mostly, I remind myself to cherish the life I have here and now.
You have a choice: to see the glass half-full or half-empty.
New Age mystics call it “pivoting.” Narrative therapists call it looking for the new story embedded in the old one. And that is exactly what an old friend reminded me of.
We drove up into the mountains and stayed in a now-tacky tourist town. We talked as we drove. We talked as we ate out. We talked as we hiked. We talked and talked and talked and never ran out of things to say, as old friends are wont to do. And this wise and oh so gentle friend nudged me into facing the fact that all too often, I see the glass half-empty. (Sigh.) Reality check again. And pivoting. Again, and again and again.
Home, I have learned, is a place located within and outside myself, first as a dream, and then as a physical structure. So it was for Colorado. So it is now, here.
Carolyn moved to the top of a mountain in her 20s to write the Great American Novel. Thus began her writing career and love affair with all things western.
by Fred Gebhart
Work is a PITA, Work is a Mind-saver
Work is PITA, a pain in the ass. Except when it keeps me sane.
It’s not that I don’t like writing. Keeping up with breaking medical news is a brain teaser that never ends. Who is working on which clinical study? How to phrase questions to not give away competing results I already know? What can convince someone that I won’t leak information?
Work keeps me connected to a world far wider than Southern Oregon. An article I finished yesterday let me talk with researchers in Shanghai, Tokyo, Milan, Toronto, Tel Aviv, and Bogotá. It’s a different mindset from neighbors who see Portland as a somehow threatening foreign land.
And I do like getting paid.
But work takes time.
Pitching, researching, interviewing and writing all compete with managing two types of forest. Winter is the prime time for working in the woods, followed by autumn and spring. Which are also the prime seasons for my medical conference-focused writing.
Forestry is gardening gone gigantic. Think white and black oak, madrone, ponderosa pine, incense cedar, a few struggling Douglas-fir and bigleaf maple in place of rhododendrons, zinnias, tulips, wisteria and berry bushes. Gophers and ground squirrels are part of the mix, along with deer, elk, bobcat, bear, cougar, coyote and endless bird species. The oaks alone support many more than 200 different critter species, all showing up on their own, no feeders required.
Tree limbing and thinning for fire safety and forest health, clearing fallen wood, trying to keep invasive plants—and native (for us) thugs like poison oak—at bay, tracking which species are suffering with changing climate and which are thriving, deciding which dead trees come down and which might make good habitat for wildlife and whacking weeds — it all takes more hours and effort than two people can provide.
Most of the year is a changing calculus of paying work, which has to happen on schedule, and property work, with its own seasonal schedule. And nature is no more flexible than editors.
That calculus changes when fire season begins. Outside work is increasingly limited as the Oregon Department of Forestry ramps up the fire danger from low, with minimal restrictions beyond having water and shovel at hand, to extreme, no power tools or spark-emitting equipment allowed at any time.
Once wildfire smoke rolls in, approximately the second week of July the last few years, the world shrinks.
Mt. McLoughlin, a permanent fixture 40-some miles to the northeast, disappears. The Rogue River Valley visibility comes and goes with blowing smoke. Sometimes we can see the pair of Table Rocks four miles from the front door, sometimes we can’t even make out a large ponderosa pine 100 yards downhill. Neither of us goes out except for necessities like medical visits, food, and garden watering, and only wearing an N95 mask.
That’s when work becomes a sanity saver.
I can stare into the swirling yellow-gray pall, check the latest fire reports on Watch Duty (an amazing fire info app, free or Android or iPhone) and watch the air quality index bounce between orange, red, and purple at PurpleAir.com (we have our own air sensor). Or I can focus on my keyboard and screen to tap into a much larger world with its own news: flooding in Toronto, a typhoon in Guangzhou or killer heat in Chicago.
It doesn’t make the air any fresher in Gold Hill or douse the flames we can see creeping down hillsides a few miles away, but the work connection adds perspective. And puzzling through the biology of a potential new treatment for lung cancer or lupus beats obsessing over the murk outside.
Fred Gebhart juggles a chain saw, weed whacker and writing deadlines in Southwest Oregon.
by Bruce Miller
Be Ready to Respond
Tragedies and near tragedies often lead to new ideas, motivations and discoveries. I discovered something new as a result of my long-time friend from college days almost dying on July 18, 2024. He and I moved to Seattle together. I am good friends with his wife and baby-sat his kids.
On July 18, Bob was sitting in his chair working on his laptop. In the same home office was his wife Mary, also working on a computer. Mary heard a thump. Bob had fallen out of his chair. Within 30 seconds, Bob was unresponsive. Mary immediately dialed 911 and was coached in doing CPR while Seattle Fire Department responded. Through a stroke of luck, fast action, and nine cracked ribs, Bob survived and is back home.
After visiting Bob and Mary in the hospital, I finally got curious about Seattle Fire Department’s response to this near-death event. I found the dispatch log on the Fire Department’s website. That gave me the time and responding units. I then went back into the audio archives at OpenMHZ.com to find Fire Department transmissions about the response. I found about 11 different transmissions over 40 minutes.
I downloaded all the audio files and wanted to combine them into one continuous sequence. Combining audio files can be tricky because of the meta information contained in audio file headers.
I turned to chat.openai.com and asked for a list of online services that would combine — or merge — audio files. Among the results was Clideo.com – Online Audio Joiner. I easily added each file one at a time and was then able to download a single audio file. One minute and nine seconds did not sound good. But, because of infrastructure — phones, communication systems, and trained fire fighters among other elements — Bob got a second chance.
I should add that I’ve been in the Seattle Fire Dispatch center where emergency calls come in. No time is wasted during incoming calls. Call takers do not pick up the phone to answer a call. Each call-taker sits in front of computer monitors with a headset. When a call comes in, the call is automatically routed by computer to one of the call takers who hears a beep on the headset and immediately asks for the address of the emergency. If the address on the screen — from caller ID — matches the verbal report, units can be assigned and the alert to those units can go out in less than 60 seconds.
What we writers can learn from all this is: lay the foundation for success by having your infrastructure and training in place, be able to respond quickly, and be willing to use new tools and investigate options.
Seattle resident Bruce Miller listens to police and radio transmissions and wishes all emergency calls could have a happy ending.
Member News and Announcements
Catherine Kolonko wrote about a study on burnout and professional fulfillment among physicians and why some consider walking away from the job. The article Survey Reports Significant Frustrations Among Academic Physicians appeared in The Rheumatologist July 2024 issue.
James Carberry reports, “Local News Blues, a new site popular with local publishers, editors and reporters, published an article about our Pro News Coaches team of former WSJ editors and reporters. Now we’re getting requests for help from readers at local news outlets. That’s what we’re here for: to help.” Resident in Barcelona, Spain since the onset of the pandemic, Jim sends greetings to ASJA PNW chapter friends, noting, “Fortunately, we’ve gotten a lot more rain this spring and this summer than last year, alleviating a drought somewhat.”
Joanna Nesbit (joannanesbit@comcast.net) is seeking ideas and contacts for future ASJA PNW meeting speakers.
Maxine Cass recommends this article on using simple headlines: https://journalistsresource.org/media/simple-headlines-online-news-readers/
The ASJA Weekly (national) newsletter provides this excellent link: https://bernoff.com/blog/how-a-developmental-edit-differs-from-a-copy-edit-or-line-edit-and-why-that-matters
Fred Gebhart notes Free Media Training for Scientists. Talking with reporters can come back to bite them — just ask climate researchers or TV weather people who get death threats after talking climate change, hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather events. SciLine, part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is offering free media training to help US-based scientists and academic faculty through the election season.
As AAAS puts it, “Sharing your knowledge…with journalists is one way you can help get facts and evidence into the hands of the public. But speaking to the media about hot button issues can be intimating, especially if you don’t have much experience.”
SciLine is offering free on-line media training sessions in September on six of the year’s hottest buttons: immigration; energy resources & climate change; reproductive healthcare; economic outlook, equity, and mobility; crime & safety; and election security and voter behavior/access. Information and the application are at https://www.sciline.org/learn/scientist-media-election-training/
NEWSLETTER PRODUCED BY
EDITOR: Maxine Cass
PROOFREADER: Catherine Kolonko
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE: Bruce Miller
*All stories are copyright by their respective writers.
*All photographs and illustrations are copyright by their creative makers.
*All rights are reserved to each of them for their own material.