Meeting minutes for Thursday, November 12, 2009

Our November 12 meeting featured Starshine Roshell, voted Best Columnist in the Independent’s 2009 Reader’s Poll. She started out by saying she loves speaking to writers, and she loves to hear “I love what you do.”

Her recipe for successful writing includes a balance of creativity, discipline, patience, and intelligence among other things. She aims for refined wordplay and rhythm. Her goal is to create an unusual voice, a recognizable style, like one of her favorite writers Keith Spencer Waterhouse. Because she has little patience, she needs to hear the rhythm in her writing to be satisfied with it, and encourages writers to read their work out loud. “It’s not what you say, but how you say it,” Starshine said. To illustrate this she read from her book, Keep Your Skirt On.

She relishes bad experiences for material for her columns. Other story ideas come out of conversations with her BFFs and from posting questions on Facebook. But sometimes after sending her columns off to her editor she thinks, “What did I just say?” She feels a rush by saying things other writers are afraid to. These columns get responses and get her invited to church. Some of her readers say, “it must be so hard, you must be so brave”—she says she’s not. She just speaks before she thinks. An example of this is when she used to work for the News Press, but wasn’t part of the first wave of employees to leave the newspaper. At that time, when her former co-workers asked her why she hadn’t left yet, she said, “I think I have more balls than brains at this point.” But this style of writing is working for her because, as she said, “People like to hear uncensored talk.”

One of her heroes is Erma Bombeck and like the best-selling columnist/author, Starshine writes about her family. As a result her husband’s basketball buddies rib him, but her son likes being famous more than being cool. As long as she makes a living by writing about them, they’re happy.

Starshine Roshell speaks at next meeting

Screenwriters Association of Santa Barbara

Presents an evening with journalism professor, magazine writer, award-winning columnist and overwhelmed mother of two

Starshine Roshell

Voted 'Best Columnist' in SB Indy Reader's Poll ‘09

Thursday, November 12, 7 pm*
*Come a half hour before our usual time (7:30 pm) to join in interactive discussion, get to know each other, and network with local talent.
Downtown Borders (Upstairs)
900 State Street
(805)899-3668
Email Us

Starshine Roshell named for a song in the 1960s musical “Hair," in which her father starred, Starshine grew up in Los Angeles on the soap opera sets and in the Sunset Strip nightclubs where her parents worked.

She graduated UCLA cum laude and wrote for The Hollywood Reporter before joining the Santa Barbara News-Press as news reporter, theater and rock music critic, Sunday columnist and deputy features editor. She resigned with dozens of colleagues in 2006.

Her syndicated column won a first-place award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and she has a second-place CNPA award for Business/Financial reporting.

Starshine lives in Santa Barbara with her husband John, a graphic artist, and their two sons.

Here is a sample of Starshine's advice to writers: