Lois Reynolds Lautenschlager

Lois is an avid fiction reader and English teacher in Northwestern Ohio, where we went to high school. She and I were classmates. Her support of my work has been consistent and unflagging, notwithstanding how humble and inadequate it's been at times, especially at the beginning. She has emptied many a pen of red ink, reducing my lawyerly Latinate parlance to its simpler, more reader friendly style. She has been a continuous source of encouragement and belief in the value and potential of my writing, since the day I began in 1995. What an inspiration and a blessing she has been!

 

Phyllis Taylor Pianka​

Speaking of blessings, no list would be complete without mentioning Phyllis. She was an accomplished fiction writer with 23 published novels and 7 non-fiction how to write (most notably romance) novels. In 1995, she pulled one of my fiction samples out of her slush pile after a conference I attended and invited me to participate in her writing group. For 15 years, we labored, read, wrote, socialized and struggle to give birth to the best stories that any of us were capable of writing, largely under her tutelage. Sadly, she died in 2010, unexpectedly, at the age of 81.
 

Thursday NIght Group​

The experience with Phyllis' Writing Table would not be complete without mention of the other writers, who added their constructive criticisms and positive suggestions to our writing framework. They include--in no particular order--Meera Lester, Joe Cagnina, Cynthia James, Deb Atwood, Jim Hammond and John Creighton. With them, we went on countless journeys into the world of the make believe, only to find it contained more reliable and poignant truth than the one in which we live. We grew together, both as friends and colleagues in ways in which none of us were capable on our own. A special shout-out and thank you must go to Deb Atwood for her continuing support, dedication and tireless efforts on behalf of my writing goals and ambitions after Phyllis' death.

 

Bryce Courtenay​

 Bryce was a good personal friend, a mentor and an outstanding writer. I first met him at the Maui Writers Retreat, where I was assigned to his mentoring group to work on his leading strength and my leading (at the time, I hope) weakness, character development. One of the highlights of my career was when he exclaimed in one of our sessions, "That guy can write!" He will be remembered (died in 2012) by most through his work and as the best-selling Australian fiction writer of all time. I will remember him for his empathy, his human qualities and the lasting congratulatory (for Sugar: A Hawaiian Novel) warm hug he gave me the last time I saw him.

 

Elizabeth George

Another of my mentors at the Maui Writers Retreat was Elizabeth George. Before she became a novelist, she had been a teacher and told us that, "When I started writing, I just wanted to be competent. My mother had always challenged me on that point and I had something to prove." I guess she's proven that by now! My big takeaway that has endured all these years since her mentoring is the proposition that writing rules are made to be broken--with the right reasons, the right motives and sufficient skill (AKA competence.) This has been liberating to me as a writer and I've enjoyed and used the passion with which she shared this many times.

Terry Brooks​

Outline! Outline! Outline! Sayeth the master. I put it in this frame of reference, because Terry is a fantasy writer, whose most famous work is the Shanara series. He taught me the technique of imagining, then organizing, then executing the telling of a tale in very concise, straightforward, no nonsense terms. Each writer has his or her own technique or approach and what works best for one does not necessarily work for others. My creative process requires that I flounder through a draft or two, using the Ernest Gaines technique of knowing the general direction the train is going, but not which exact station it will be its ultimate destination. Terry, you'll be pleased to hear, if you ever read this, that THEN I outline the story as complete and unequivocally as you proposed. Thank you, my friend, for your sincere and constructive help to all of us whom you so generously mentored at the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference before it went dark.

 

Jackie Powers

Out of 175 women in the United States named Jackie Powers, I wish to thank the one in Sedona, Arizona for her marvelous story editing in my early days as a novelist. Jackie has since retired. She had a wonderful sense of story that enabled her to quickly and authoritatively see the flaws in mine. Fortunately, the framework of my stories was sound enough that what we really did was a lot of important tinkering, during which time I recognized both her gift and the resonance that we shared as we worked through the stories I had written to purge their flaws and heighten their impact. I am sad that she retired so early in my professional writing career.