The post Missouri students focus on philanthropy, funding appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The post Whitewater writing appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lake

By Jerry Dennis
The University of Michigan Press, 839 Green Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104; 738-764-4388; http://press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=4560965; 168 pages; Cloth; 22.95.
Grounded by a knee injury, Dennis learns to live at a slower pace while staying in houses ranging from a log cabin on Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula to a $20 million mansion on the northern shore of Lake Michigan. While walking on beaches and exploring nearby woods and villages, he muses on the nature of time, weather, waves, agates, books, words for snow and ice, our complex relationship with nature, and much more.

Hunting with Teddy

By Michael Levy
Five Valleys Press, Missoula, MT; www.FiveValleysPress.com; 178 pages; softcover, $14.95; e-book, $6.95.
An obsession to know Theodore Roosevelt drove the late Michael Levy to read great histories, newsprints, memoirs, and letters about “Teddy” to help Levy understand the man to write what OWAA Past President Tom Huggler says is “…an accurate, true-to-life narrative that is as close to the real TR as any modern reader can expect.”
Levy’s novel about America’s 26th president originates with Roosevelt’s ranching and hunting buffalo on the Western Plains. This tough, funny and witty narrative parallels Roosevelt’s Rough Rider days and documents his quest for power and rise to the presidency after President McKinley’s assassination. In a recent Buffalo News (N.Y.) review, reporter Gerry Rising called Levy’s book “a must read” for Teddy Roosevelt connoisseurs.

Sharks: The Sleek and the Savage

By Mary L. Peachin
August 2011, CreateSpace Publishing; http://tinyurl.com/3uxjwgb; 550 pages; paperback, $20.00; e-book, $9.99.
Originally published as “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sharks” (Alpha/Penguin) in 2003, this new text includes updated information, all presented in non-scientific terminology, including new shark species as well as up close and personal shark encounters experienced by the author as well as her dive buddies and others. Mary L. Peachin is an award-winning freelance writer, with her writing and photography published in newspapers, magazines and Lonely Planet travel guides. She has publishing an adventure travel newsletter since 1996, visit www.peachin.com.

Sport Fishing in the Caribbean

By Mary L. Peachin
July 2011, CreateSpace Publishing, http://tinyurl.com/4yva8px; 376 pages; paperback, $14.95; e-book, $9.99.
Mary L. Peachin’s third book, “Sports Fishing in the Caribbean,” proves to be the ultimate guide to sports fishing in the Caribbean. A succinct, easy-to-use handbook with tips on where, how and with whom to fish, Peachin gives those who love to fish the upper hand when it comes to luring, trolling and baiting the warm crystalline waters of the Caribbean. Peachin is an award-winning freelance writer, and has had work featured in newspapers, magazines and Lonely Planet travel guides.

Sweeter than Candy – A Hunter’s Journal

By Paul F. Vang
Five Valleys Press, Missoula, MT, www.FiveValleysPress.om; 236 pages, 38 illustrations; softcover, $14.99; e-book, $6.99.
This book is an unabashedly sentimental look back at many seasons of hunting pheasants, grouse and waterfowl, along with the occasional elk or white-tailed deer. Above all, it’s an intimate examination of a hunter’s partnership with his Labrador retrievers and other dogs that have been hunting buddies and best friends in their many outings with shotgun and flyrod. Book author Jerry Kustich writes: “Over prairies and through woodlands Paul Vang shares memories … from years when dreams were bigger than life, and life was measured by endless hunting trips.”

The Beginner’s Guide to Hunting Deer for Food

By Jackson Landers
September 2011, Story Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247, 800-441-5700, http://www.storey.com/book_detail.php?isbn=9781603427289; 176 pages; paperback, $16.95.
Hunting deer is the an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to acquire organic, grass-fed meat. Even if you’ve never held a gun before, the author shows you how to supplement your food supply with venison taken near your home. He addresses everything a new hunter needs to know. He includes chapters on field dressing and butchering after the kill, recipes for using the meat, and a chapter on the politics and psychology of hunting. Whether you hunt to be more self-sufficient, to eat the safest and most nutritious meat possible, to protect the environment, or to save money, this book is the perfect guide.
[/level-membersupporter]

The post Letters to the Editor appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

• “Anglers fishing from the bank are nailing good numbers of stripers,” informed Bob.

If, however, you’re striving to make a point, let your verb make it. “Good numbers of stripers,” bragged Bob is far and away better than “Good numbers of stripers,” said Bob proudly.

• “Our last trip produced four salmon to 17 pounds,” Shirley related.

“Only four salmon …” moaned Shirley tells us not only the fish report but hints at her hopes for more.

• Jake fished the north side of the point. “We landed limits of blues and blacks,” he explained.

If those limits of blues and blacks were the reason Jake fished where he did, explained fails to explain that, because more information is required to explain to the reader that the fish moved from the south side of the point after a recent storm.

• “Close to a million anglers descended on the Eastern Sierra for Opening Day,” revealed Dan.

If multitudes congregated on the Eastern Sierra for the trout opener, someone will have noticed. Those too far away to notice are too far away to care. Dan doesn’t need to reveal it, although he is welcome to say it.

• “The weather was the best we’ve seen,” quipped Mason.

A quip is an attempt — whether successful or not — to be clever. If the speaker is saying something mundane, your dressing it up as a quip does nothing to add interest to his comment or to your story.

• “We will probably drop the water level four inches down,” the agency official claimed.

Be cautious when using the verb claimed, especially when quoting an official, more so if you wish to interview the official again. Might as well call him a liar as to claim that he claimed something when all he did was say so.

• “Angling pressure is light now,” Craig tipped.

A generous tip about tipping: Don’t do it! Not as a synonym for say, anyway. Without going into all that tedious stuff about transitive and intransitive verbs, I’ll just say that to use tip is inevitably to misuse it. Just say nope — and say say.

• “Early morning, top-water action has warmed up,” Jason told.

Another commonly misused transitive verb is tell. When used properly, tell is a lovely substitute for say, being just as invisible. But you must remember that tell needs an indirect object, someone to be told to. “I told you so” may be a regrettable comment, but it is at least grammatical. “I told the fishing report” is not.
Look on the bright side. If you get paid by the word or have a certain size space to fill, adding that indirect object here and there is invisible padding.
Tell also has the virtue of adding intimacy to your story, when it is used correctly. “Nixon knew far more than he admitted,” Deep Throat told me is more interesting than if Deep Throat simply said it, because it reminds the reader that the interviewer was actually conversing with the subject and not hearing him speak to a vast crowd.

• Also, a frequent error that drives me up a wall is when a reporter sums up everything the interviewee had to say, then quotes the chap saying practically the same thing.

“I hate it when a reporter gives the gist of the story and then quotes his source without adding anything of interest,” the author said. “Why would they do that?”

• Finally, shun the urge to quote the mundane. Don’t quote long lines of verbiage, like this: “We switched over to trolling with night crawlers at 11 a.m. By 2 p.m., the two anglers fishing with me caught and released three trout. They ranged in size from 12 to 22 inches. Only one boat had a salmon that I know of.”

Be careful when your subject experiences grammar lapses. Quoting his exact words may seem like good fun — until you need a follow-up interview.
Summarize quotations as much as possible. Quote only the colorful and the controversial. And when in doubt, say say.
—A member since 1986, Kathie Morgan is from Santa Rosa, Calif. Morgan is a special features editor for Fish Sniffer and research editor for Stienstra Outdoor Books. She is also a freelance writer. Contact her at fishrap@att.net.
[/level-membersupporter]

The post You don’t say! appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The post Make money on the e-book gravy train appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The post 10 tips for shooting on snow appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

[level-non-member]
Members, remember to log in to view this post.
[/level-non-member]
[level-membersupporter]
BY SHELBY GONZALEZ
When it comes to writing — and, I suspect, other endeavors — beginner’s luck has less to do with luck than with three other factors: freshness, willingness to take chances and lack of limiting beliefs.
Allow me to illustrate with an embarrassing story.
It was my third year in college. My oeuvre comprised six published articles — mostly short, humorous essays — and an undergraduate research paper about “the meaning of the open road in 1950s America.”
Eager to make my literary mark and unencumbered by notions of paying dues and working one’s way up, I nosed around for a publication that might be interested in an article based on my paper. Eventually I found what sounded like a promising market: American Heritage.
Remember, I’d never penned a journalistic magazine feature. And American Heritage had a circulation of 400,000 (I noted with mild interest), roughly an order of magnitude larger than that of any publication I’d written for before.
Big deal. I composed a two-paragraph email summarizing my qualifications and proposing a 5,000-word feature. Clicked “Send.” Waited.
According to conventional wisdom, I should have been ignored at best and mercilessly mocked at worst. Not only did I have a meager amount of experience relative to the prestige of the publication, I was capital-G guilty of the cardinal freelancing sin: I had never even glanced at a copy of the magazine.
Two weeks later, after some back-and-forth with the editor, I got the assignment.
The embarrassing part comes later. Right now, pick your chin off the floor and let’s figure out how this happened.
Luck: Lady Luck’s fingerprints are all over this one. Mainly I was lucky the editor was willing to give a green writer a shot.
Freshness: I presented an unusual, ambitious and relevant story proposal. Also, my writing samples showcased a raw but distinctive voice.
Willingness to take chances: Whipping up that query, I wasn’t fretting about whether writing it was a waste of time because no way would a magazine like that publish a writer like me. I had an idea and I figured I’d give it a go.
Lack of limiting beliefs: I hopped from the peewees to the big leagues whistling “Dixie” all the way because I didn’t know that’s not how it usually happens. I hadn’t absorbed the narrative that says you need to start at the bottom and claw your way up.
You may be thinking, “If this little pipsqueak can nab a plum assignment like that, I oughta … ”
Fill in the blank with your own secret ambition — you know, that thing you want to achieve but have convinced yourself is impossible.
That’s what I hope you’re thinking. If you don’t regularly challenge your own assumptions, ambitions and self-perceptions, you may be hamstringing yourself.
That said, overconfidence in your experience and skill set can result in a painful face-plant. Exhibit A: The embarrassing conclusion to my American Heritage saga.
The same youthful hubris that had netted me the assignment led, Greek-tragedy-style, to my downfall. I didn’t bother reading the magazine to get an idea of its style before I wrote the article. No wonder the freewheeling, sociology-spattered treatise I turned in earned a swift “no thanks” from the editor.
I was crushed and appropriately humbled. Perhaps too humbled. Now I’m 27, with upwards of 150 articles under my belt. In acquiring experience, I’ve lost a bit of fire. I bet some of you could say the same.
Does this describe you?
You know which markets you belong in and which you don’t. You know what you’re good at and the types of stories you’re qualified to write. You’re comfortable. You hang back on querying your dream publications or launching your dream project because you suspect the effort would fail. Sometimes you wonder why your career hasn’t advanced further.
Knowing your abilities, interests and, yes, limitations is part of being an adult. But there’s an aspect of learned helplessness to it that can hold you back in a big way.
Think of the hackneyed but useful story about the baby circus elephant. The baby elephant is roped to a stake. It tries to get away but isn’t strong enough to break the rope or pull out the stake. So it wears a circle in the dirt around the stake — marking the limit of its abilities.
The elephant grows to adulthood, gaining many times the strength it had as a baby. But it stays within the dirt circle, mindful of the stake and the rope, because it “knows” it isn’t strong enough to break free.
You may be suffering baby-elephant syndrome if you often use words like “never,” “always,” “don’t” and “can’t” in relation to yourself or the outdoor writing industry. (“Books like that never sell.” “I can’t do that — I’m not the type.” “Those magazines only want big-name writers.”)
Such proclamations on “the way things are” not only reinforce and spread your possibly erroneous perceptions, they also shape the mindset you bring to your career.
One way to reclaim what Zen Buddhist practitioners call “beginner’s mind” is to find a mentor who will needle you out of your comfort zone. Another is to interrogate your assumptions. Do you know for a fact that Magazine X wouldn’t go for your story idea, or are you assuming they wouldn’t like it because you’re afraid of rejection?
This winter, as you hunker down to work on the longer-term projects the season is made for, try channeling a beginner’s boldness and outsider perspective. Cultivate a blank-slate mind. Release your expectations, attachments and preconceptions. You just might conjure some beginner’s luck.
—OWAA member Shelby Gonzalez is an outdoor writer, adventure columnist (“Miss Guided”), and managing editor of Northern Wilds. A former rock climbing instructor, she is based in Duluth, Minn. Check out her work at www.shelbygonzalez.com or follow her at www.twitter.com/shelbygonzalez.
[/level-membersupporter]

The post Beginner’s luck, beginner’s mind appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

RADIO 106

When you are interviewed on radio, there is a strong possibility the host or hosts will want to include a Q-and-A session with listeners. Be prepared for listeners who call in often. They are not interested in your viewpoint; they just want to make sure you hear their viewpoint. Do what you can to control Q-and-A time before it goes too far off the topic.
The majority of radio programs, even small local shows, are streamed on the Internet. A week in advance, take a few minutes to listen to the same radio show you are doing an interview on. This allows you to get a sense for how the host controls (or doesn’t control) callers and how much time they normally allow for Q-and-A.
My experience is that most radio hosts do not have a solid handle on breaking up the monologue from a caller. In this case you are on your own and should be prepared with what I refer to as “Radio IT.” Radio IT is not about computer information technology, it means “radio interruption techniques.” When a caller gets on the air, give them a few moments to get to their point. Remember, radio audiences are very fickle! They cannot see a face or body language; they only hear voices and a caller droning on will cause a listener to change the station rapidly.
Make sure to write down the caller’s first name (which they always announce) and use it with authority to sum up the caller’s question. Or if the caller is droning on and never gets to a question, then have one ready for them. Offer it up as, “So Paula, it sounds like you are concerned about the new legislation pertaining to the state’s concealed weapon carry law.”
Once you have interrupted the caller, be ready to roll with an answer. There is no reason to go back to the same caller. Instead, go on to the next caller or return to the interview with the host.

RADIO 107

Radio interruption techniques take practice. If a caller is droning on and on during your radio interview, be ready to nudge them back to your subject. For example, “Roger, I appreciate your calling in and there are a lot of other listeners who want to weigh in on this subject, so stay tuned and we’ll get more feedback on this issue.” Typically, the radio guest does not have to cut off a droning caller, but it never hurts to be prepared. I’ve used this technique more than once when a radio host does not control the flow.
Keep in mind that a radio interview is fast paced — it lives and breathes. Practice with your own tape recordings to make sure you aren’t droning on and on.
In an email to your host prior to the interview, mention that you welcome call-ins as long as they are not toxic. Sharing with a radio host what you expect during the interview might seem a little pushy, but be aware that some hosts think on-air jousting is enjoyable, and it probably is when it is offered as a one-on-one with the host responding to the caller. I have no problem with jousting as long as I know the rules of fair play going into the interview.

RADIO 108

This is where we start to get into the “nitty gritty” of a radio interview. You — yes, you, the guest — may need to help the show host limit the number of callers in each segment and control the tone of the interview. For a little test, close your eyes and picture three people (show host, you and a caller) all trying to talk over the top of each other.
It is confusing to listeners if all three parties are talking over each other, or even worse, doing any type of verbal mudslinging. Think of it in terms of watching a tennis match, except you can’t see the ball volleyed back and forth Frustrated listeners will turn off the show. No one wins if listeners don’t stay engaged in the topic being discussed.
If you are taking your time to do the radio interview, I assume you want listeners to hear what you have to say. More importantly, are you clear about what you want the listener to buy — whether a product or the idea behind your program or mission?

RADIO 109

How many sound bites do you have down pat in your radio interview? If the answer is less then two per segment, go back to the drawing board and work on more. For each 12-minute segment, have a minimum of two or three products or product pitches that could be integrated into the interview.
Take a look at a product other then your own. In this case, I’ll use gun safes. If I were a manufacturer with a new product line and I was being interviewed on radio, I would make up a list of pitches based on firearm vaults, safes and lockers.
Each of these three pitches is about a different type of product for a different use. I’d hone pitches that highlighted something unique in each product line, using a simple word or short phrase that could stick in a listener’s mind.
—Deb Ferns, of Tucson, Ariz., is co-founder of the women’s action shooting camps, Babes with Bullets, held across the country since 2004. She also writes a column, “Outside My Comfort Zone,” and is the executive producer of the Babes with Bullets webisodes hosted at OutdoorChannel.com. Contact her at dferns@earthlink.net.
[/level-membersupporter]

The post Be the best on radio – Part 3 appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The post Alaska fishing is off the hook in September appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The post From nuclear engineer to outdoor writer appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.