11.30.08
Posted in Writer's Resource at 4:34 pm by Administrator
This is a handy, accessible style guide for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. If commas confuse you or you’re not sure when to use italics, this guide may help you. Leland lays out the basics of grammar and usage and then tackles such topics as slang, offensive language, pacing, transitions, and more.
Unless you’re exceptionally studious, you will probably not want to read this, or any, style guide straight through. Flip through the pages to get an idea of what’s inside. You may see something that intrigues you; if so, read that section. Next week, flip through and find another intriguing tidbit. Before you know it, you’ll have read a complete style guide and you’ll be a better writer for having done so.
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Posted in The Word at 4:33 pm by Administrator
These two little words cause many writers to stumble.
It’s is a contraction of “it is.” That little apostrophe is very important; it tells you that something has been left out—in this case the “i” in “is.”
It is a perfect day for bird-watching. Look—it’s a red-bellied woodpecker!
You could also say,
It’s a perfect day for bird-watching. Look—it is a red-bellied woodpecker!
Its (no apostrophe) is an adjective meaning “of or relating to it or itself.”
The bird is grooming its feathers.
You wouldn’t say (at least I hope you wouldn’t),
The bird is grooming it is feathers.
So, putting everything together,
It is a perfect day for bird-watching. Look—it’s a red-bellied woodpecker grooming its feathers!
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11.27.08
Posted in Newsletter at 1:35 pm by Administrator
Editing your own writing is never easy; that’s why some people pay me to do it for them. But if you have a firm grasp on the basics of spelling and grammar, you’re not intimidated by dictionaries and style guides, and you’re willing to take the time to actually edit rather than “read-it-real-fast-one-time-and-hope-I-catch-everything,” you can make a significant difference in the quality of your writing.
Here are three methods I use to edit my work. These tips will help you approach your work with fresh eyes and a new perspective, which is exactly what you need to catch mistakes in your writing.
1. Set it aside.
Don’t write your last word and then go right back to page one and begin editing. Set the work aside for as long as you reasonably can. Hopefully you will be able to wait at least twenty-four hours. If you can wait a week or a month, do it. Even if you can only take an hour, do it. Go for a walk, do a load of laundry, watch a movie. When you come back and sit down to edit you’ll see your work with new eyes and catch errors you might have missed otherwise.
2. Read it out loud.
This trick is especially useful for catching any awkward phrasing. If you’re reading merrily along and suddenly your tongue is twisted, you may have some rewriting to do. Reading aloud can also help you spot repetitious passages and bland sentence structure.
3. Make it look different.
This is especially useful if you’ve already made one or two editing passes and you want to make sure you didn’t miss anything. Print the document out if you can. Errors you might miss on the computer screen will jump out from a printed page. If you can’t print your 300-page novel, try changing the font and/or font size (or even the color) and then edit on screen. Change the page size. Change the margins. Altering the appearance will give you fresh eyes for the document and help you see errors you hadn’t noticed before.
When editing your own work, anything you can do to approach things from a fresh perspective will help you. Try these tips, and please share any of your own favorite methods.
Write on!
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11.22.08
Posted in Editorial Musings at 7:39 pm by Administrator
My first “real” editing experience was as an assistant news editor for our college paper. This meant that, for a whopping $30 a week, I spent my Friday afternoons in the Retriever Weekly offices editing other reporters’ stories while frantically trying to write and edit my own. The editorial instruction amounted to “Here, edit this.” Did I know what I was doing? Heck no! Did I let that stop me? Heck no! I blundered confidently forward, totally oblivious to my own ignorance.
One of the first things you learn as an editor is that you don’t know everything, and you never will. Once you have accepted that basic truth, you become aware of the things you don’t know; you develop an instinct for when you need to double-check the rules for capitalization or comma use, for example. You admit that there are certain words you always confuse or misspell, and you learn to look them up every time you use them. You also learn there is no shame in not knowing everything, and stopping to look something up is an editorial virtue.
These days, I look things up all the time. I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t trust myself. During my brief career as assistant news editor, I rarely looked things up. I thought I knew it all already. It saddens me now to think of how many errors I must have let slip by. But that was before I understood what editing really is. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The second thing you need to learn is how to edit while allowing writers to have their own voice. This is not easy. What do you do if the writer’s “voice” is just bad English? Do you correct everything and take that voice away? Let everything go? Fix some things and leave others? It’s easy to let arrogance slip in. Often, we would get news stories that were little more than lists of notes, or that were so disorganized it was hard to know what to do with them. I would find myself thinking, This story would be so much better if I had just written it myself. (Yes, I was an arrogant twit.) I practically rewrote many stories. Now I wonder if that was always necessary, or if my overconfidence allowed me to take other writers’ voices away from them. Probably I stole some voices, and I regret that now.
You’ll be happy to know that I am more humble now. Experience will do that. I’m confident in my skills, and I know my weaknesses. I understand my role as an editor: to polish up someone else’s writing and let their voice come through loud and clear. My ego has nothing to do with it. I’m not here to impose my will on other writers’ work. In fact, if I’ve done my job well, you’ll never know I was here at all.
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11.18.08
Posted in Editorial Musings at 8:42 pm by Administrator
So many people dream of being novelists. The dream is perfectly understandable: You transfer your fantasies from your brain to a blank page, an agent snatches up your masterpiece, publishers fight over it until you decide which hefty advance to accept, and before you know it your bank account is a whole lot healthier and you get to meet Oprah. This actually happens once in a while, just often enough to keep the dream alive.
Oh, if only it were that easy. Writing is hard work. Writing well is even harder, and writing something people will pay money to read is harder still. Fame and fortune will not fall into your lap just because you have finally finished your novel. Trust me on this.
And that brings me to the actual subject of this post, which is: If you can’t get rich and famous writing novels, why bother to write at all?
My answer: If you’re writing a novel solely in pursuit of fame and fortune, you need to go do something else. I think there is only one reason to write fiction (or any form of creative writing), and that is that you feel compelled somehow to do so. If putting words together into stories or poems brings you deep satisfaction, or if writing is how you make sense of your life, you are a writer; you may not ever earn a dime from your writing, but you are still a writer. Material success is not the point. The finished product is not even the point. The point of writing is writing—it’s the process that matters, the things you discover along the way.
None of that means that material success is a bad thing. Hey, I wouldn’t mind having people read and enjoy my writing, and I certainly wouldn’t object to having a healthier bank account. I would prefer to skip the whole fame-and-fortune thing though. Honestly, riches don’t impress me, and if I suddenly became J. K. Rowling and had to read my work to an auditorium full of excited children I would vomit and/or wet my pants. Who wants that?
Most of us will never write a bestseller or be on Oprah. Our adoring fans won’t wait in line for our autograph. That’s okay—we’ll keep on writing, because we’re writers.
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11.12.08
Posted in Editorial Musings at 6:45 pm by Administrator
Okay, I was having a bad day when I wrote “5 Phrases to Raise Your Editor’s Blood Pressure.” Some authors are annoying, but they are in the minority, at least in my experience. As I wrote earlier, most of the people I have contact with are very pleasant, and I feel privileged to work with them. I’ve gotten my share of compliments over the years, and they outnumber the insults by a wide margin.
If you know an editor who deserves a compliment, try one of these:
1. I only found one mistake in the edited book. Great job! (Purrr…)
2. You make me look good in print. (Yes, that is my job, and I am rather good at it.)
3. I never dreamed my book could be this good. (I do love a diamond in the rough.)
4. Wow—I can work with this! (Who doesn’t love an author who is happy and excited about their book?)
5. Thank you, thank you, thank you! (Self-explanatory.)
I recently read a news article about employee burnout. According to the article, people don’t burn out simply because of heavy workloads; feeling frazzled on the job often has more to do with not being recognized and appreciated for the work you do. Writers, don’t forget to compliment your editors. We work hard to make you look good, and a simple thank you will warm our little hearts.
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11.08.08
Posted in Favorite Books and Authors at 2:22 pm by Administrator
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” at least, according to my favorite poem by my favorite poet. “One Art” has been my favorite poem for about twenty years now. I discovered it when I was twentyish, or even a little younger, back before I’d learned the “art of losing.” At that point I hadn’t lost anything yet—I didn’t have much to lose—and I’m not sure now what drew me to these lines. But I think that’s what great writing does sometimes; it seeps into your mind and changes you (or prepares you) when you aren’t paying attention.
“Then practice losing farther, losing faster.” None of us gets through life without losing some things. The trick is to become an expert at losing; then it won’t bother you so much. Sometimes losing brings freedom. I learned this the hard way when I got cancer. In only a few months I lost my health, my apartment, my ability to support myself, my sense of security, my assumption that I would still be alive the following year. I was very aware of having lost quite a lot. Strangely, though, I didn’t feel as if I’d lost; I felt free. I’d lost far and fast, and it wasn’t a disaster.
There’s always a catch though, isn’t there? After tripping along through line after line of minor and major losses, the poem takes a sudden turn:
“—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love)…”
I read these lines and feel that old familiar catch in my throat, and I remember that sometimes the pain of one particular loss will linger, no matter how many years it’s been or how practiced you are at losing. On some days, some losses still feel like disaster.
(Read the complete poem at Poets.org.)
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11.06.08
Posted in Darn Good Reads at 7:22 pm by Administrator
If you have ever wondered what sheep think about throughout the day, Three Bags Full will give you an idea. This is a “sheep detective story”; in fact, it is probably the only sheep detective story you will ever read. Let’s face it, there aren’t too many flocks of sheep that are interested in solving murders.
This inquisitive and talented flock turns to investigation when their beloved shepherd, George, is found dead in their field, with a spade stuck in his guts. Organized by Miss Maple, an exceptionally clever sheep, the fluffy detectives proceed to watch and listen to the various living humans who come to the field to investigate, satisfy their curiosity, or cover their tracks. Through their combined talents the flock members begin to assemble the pieces of this puzzle. Their task is a difficult one because they are sheep and don’t understand the ways of humans (who does, really?); however, they also have an advantage in that most humans don’t take sheep detectives very seriously (who does, really?).
The mystery is eventually solved, and the sheep attempt to communicate their findings to the local humans in a brilliant and unexpected way. But the mystery was only part of the fun. Imagining life as a sheep was fascinating (was Leonie Swann a sheep in a previous life?), although I did have trouble following some of the sheepy thoughts. Perhaps I should have gone outside to graze for a while and get in touch with my inner sheep. Even with the occasional confusion, I found myself laughing out loud and turning pages madly. Three Bags Full is a fun read, well worth the effort. And from now on, whenever I see a flock of sheep I will wonder if one of them might be the clever Miss Maple, or perhaps even Mopple the Whale, the memory sheep.
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11.05.08
Posted in Editorial Musings at 1:23 am by Administrator
For the most part, editors (at least the ones I know) are mild-mannered people. Of course there are exceptions, but most of us are thoughtful, pleasant, relatively quiet folks. Likewise, most authors I encounter are a joy to work with; they need someone to spruce up their writing, and I’m able to do just that. But every once in a while every editor will run into an author who is demanding, overbearing, and just plain rude. From some of these unfortunate encounters, I have put together the following list of phrases guaranteed to upset your editor’s equilibrium.
1. You left an error on page 97. I think you might be incompetent. (Of course this author will never notice that the rest of the book is now absolutely perfect.)
2. I don’t think you actually read my book. (I’ve gotten this one a couple of times, and it really ticks me off. I’m a Capricorn, and therefore I take my work very seriously. Don’t accuse me of not working!)
3. You ruined my masterpiece! (If by “ruined” you mean “corrected the atrocious spelling and put the commas in the correct places,” yes, thank you, I did. Thankfully, I’ve never been on the receiving end of this particular insult.)
4. Why did you change X, Y, or Z?? I demand that you change it back! (This came from an author who was absolutely outraged that I corrected the improper use of “lie” and “lay” throughout the book. By the way, I did not change it back.)
5. You want how much to edit my book? Pretty good money for just reading. (Editing is not “just reading.” And this little comment was especially annoying because it came on a beautiful Saturday afternoon when I was stuck in my basement office—working, all day.)
If you want to insult and/or anger an editor, try one of these phrases out on him/her. Of course, if you would rather have a productive working relationship with your editor, you may want to try a more professional, diplomatic approach. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an author disagreeing with their editor or asking questions about something the editor changed or didn’t change. Just remember: Editors are people too.
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11.01.08
Posted in The Word at 1:35 pm by Administrator
This is another pair of words that many writers use interchangeably. What’s the difference?
Than is a preposition or conjunction used in comparisons (bigger than a breadbox) or to express a difference (TV shows other than sitcoms).
Then can be a noun, adjective or adverb and often refers to time (then she was quiet; I was happy then). Then can also mean “in addition,” “in that case” or “consequently” (if she’ll be quiet, then I’ll be happy).
I turn on my TV that is bigger than a breadbox and watch shows other than sitcoms. Then I relax.
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