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Health & Fitness

Award-Winning Mystery Book Writer Ira Berkowitz Shines At Greenburgh Library Meeting

Remember the proverb, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again?"

Hope was delivered to an aspiring group of fiction writers at the September 3, 2013 meeting of "Writers Gathering" at the Greenburgh Public Library in Elmsford by mystery book author Ira Berkowitz.

Berkowitz is the author of a series of award-winning books about retired New York Police Department detective Jackson Steeg (the fourth book in the series was recently published). He held an appreciative audience's attention with a low-key style of speaking, the recalling of his career as a Madison Avenue advertising executive at Ogilvy & Mather and Grey Advertising before turning to writing, and, of course, several tips about writing.     

The rejection of his first book by 50 agents didn't deter him after he embarked on his book writing career, Berkowitz said. In fact, comments from a few of the rejection letters encouraged him to keep going as did the full support of his wife Phyllis.

Berkowitz related his experiences, good and bad, encountered after becoming a mystery book writer seven years ago. His talk included strong praise for the work of crime novelist James Lee Burke and the suggestion to heed advice put forth by Elmore Leonard, an acclaimed author of 45 novels, who died only two weeks ago from a stroke at the age of 87.  

Leonard's ten rules for writing success, cited by Berkowitz, are: 

  1.  Never open a book by mentioning weather
  2.  Always avoid prologues
  3.  Never use a verb other than "said" with dialogue
  4.  Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”
  5.  Keep exclamation points under control. Use no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose 
  6.  Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose"
  7.  Use regional dialect sparingly
  8.  Avoid detailed descriptions of characters
  9.  Don't go into great detail to describe places and things
  10.  Try to leave out any parts that readers tend to skip
Leonard, Berkowitz said, felt that any passages that sounded like writing need to be rewritten.

Family Matters, the first book in the Jackson Steeg series, was published in 2006 and it won the Washington Irving Award for literary merit. Sinners' Ball won a Shamus Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel Of The Year. Black Angel, the newest Berkowitz novel, was inspired by a chance meeting on the street with a homeless young women in a tattered wedding dress.

Berkowitz was introduced at the talk by Writers Gathering's Lyn Halper.
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