Week of January 26, 2014

Sorry No Blog This Weei.

Week of Jan. 19, 2014 - Writing Chocolate

By Joan Whetzel

 

Look up Writing Chocolate on the internet and you find a gazillion entries for a liquid form of chocolate that can be squeezed through a pastry tip. It's used to write chocolate messages on cakes, pastries, and candies. But for me, writing chocolate fulfills my chocolate cravings  - and feeds my muses - while I'm writing..

 

There are a lot of theories about why people - a huge majority of them women - crave chocolate. Some say it has to do with the hormones that are out of whack during "that time of the month" and during menopause. Since I am old enough that I am no longer experiencing these hormonal cravings, I can pretty much count these out as causes.

Some say the cravings are due to an addiction to caffeine (a cousin to chocolate). I can't drink that much coffee. it keeps me up and gives me a headache if I drink too much, which I don't get when consuming mass quantities of chocolate.

 

Some say that cravings indicate that the body needs more magnesium, which chocolate provides in spades. Well, that's a possibility I suppose.

Mostly, though, it is believed that chocolate works on the brain's chemistry, increasing serotonin levels that produce a calming effect. Okay, I'll admit I have noticed this effect.

 

For me, though, it also seems to stimulate my imagination and make it easier to write. That's why I keep a bowl of miniature size chocolates in my office. I do, however, have to keep my bowl of writing chocolate far away from my writing desk. Otherwise, I find I have consumed most of the bowl during the writing of 1 or 3 articles. Doling them out a few at a time keeps my writing muses happy, and the words flowing.

 

Week of Jan. 12, 2014 - Ghost Writing

By Joan Whetzel

 

Whenever I hear the word “ghostwriter” it conjures up images of a wispy specter clacking away at a turn-of-the-century typewriter, creating a novel that would even scare Stephen King. Of course, everyone knows that ghost writing bears no resemblance to this ethereal image. But who really understands the job completely.

 

Definition

Ghostwriting is a verb meaning to work as a ghostwriter. Duh! It is also defined as writing an autobiographical or “true” story/book/article on behalf of someone who will be credited as the author. The ghostwriter disappears and gets no credit whatsoever. He or she will, however, get paid – hopefully well enough to compensate for getting no credit. Ghost written material may be fiction or nonfiction, political, religious, academic, medical, music, visual art, a website, a blog, or a blacklisting countermeasure.

 

Who Hires Ghost Writers?

Ghostwriters are usually hired by celebrities, executives, and political leaders to write the and edit their autobiographies and autobiographical articles for magazines and web content. Musical ghostwriters write song lyrics and songs, similar to what occurred with popular music in the 50s and 60s. Sometimes screenwriters and playwrights hire ghostwriters to rewrite and tweak their scripts so that they read better. At other time, ghost writers are hired to clean up documents that already exist, but were written poorly., so basically they’re more like a ghost editor. Sometimes ghost writers are hired to finish another author's work or to take that writer's place to finish out a series of books if that author dies before the contract for the series has been completed. So I guess the original author dictates from the grave. Gives a whole new take on the term "ghost writing."

 

Ghost Writer's Pay

It can take a ghostwriter anywhere from several months to a year or more to research, write, and edit an piece for his or her client, so the pay had better be decent to make the ghost writing worth the effort. Some ghost writers charge by the word for a completed work (about $4 per word) for articles. Books are another story. Advances for a major publisher to ghost write a book for a major figure (the President), can run, on average, $30,000-100,000, where the average flat fee runs about @12,000-50,000 for books slated to sell less copies, depending on the public figure and the publisher. So I guess if you choose your ghost writing jobs well, it can prove quite lucrative. If you don't mind being invisible.

Week of January 5, 2014 - “Julie and Julia”

By Joan Whetzel

I visited my mother on New Year’s Day and we had a wonderful conversation. We talked about all kinds of things especially the events of last year and how our lives have changed. At some point our conversation turned to movies. And she showed me her “extensive” collection of DVDs (all 10 of them) and she offered me some to take home. I picked “The Music Man” and “Julie and Julia” – a movie I haven’t seen in a while.

 

I’d forgotten how much I loved that movie. It’s about a wannabe author, Julie, who works for an insurance company as a customer service rep. Some of her school friends have high powered jobs and look down on her for her job and her failed attempt to write a novel. Complaining to her husband about this, he suggests she start a blog about her favorite hobby – cooking.

 

Inspired by her admiration for Julia Child, she decides to cook her way Julia’s cookbook “The Art of French Cooking” and writer about the experience. The movie follows Julie’s life as she writes her blog as Julia Child’s life as she attends the Cordon Bleu in France so that she can learn to cook French cuisine and teach it to American cooks.

 

Although Julie’s replication of Julia’s recipes is always successful, her blog takes off. Julie’s writing earns her many fans, except the one fan she wants the most – Julia Childs. She even loses her husband’s admiration briefly. In the end, no one and nothing was harmed in the making of theism movie, except maybe the lobsters.  This is really a delightful movie about writing – oh, and cooking too. And if you are wondering  if I’ll be cooking my way through “The Art of French Cooking.” the answer is  “not on your life.” I don’t appreciate many of the recipes as much as Julie.