Writing and Publishing News

In a recent post, I suggested that you should take advantage of those articles that contain information and resources that you might be able to use in writing, publishing and promoting your book. Well, I followed my own suggestion this week and studied a few articles on subjects that attracted my attention. (Of course, I do this probably more than the ordinary writer because of my work as a teacher, editor/consultant and organization leader.) But I was shocked by some of the mistakes that I discovered in the writings that I studied. Here are a few problems I found in these articles written by writers and professionals in the publishing field:

• Two spaces between sentences. Some writers obviously haven’t learned the one-space rule. Yup, there are some out there who have not stopped to notice, nor have they taken the time to learn, that it is now one space after all punctuation. I’ve noticed that, in some cases, writers and authors have no desire to change their out-dated ways, even when their error is pointed out to them.

• The article was not proofed. A couple of the articles I read had not been proofed before being submitted. How do I know? From the number of errors throughout. Most of the mistakes had to do with the nature of the word processor and the fact that we can replace words so easily. These writers neglected to remove the words they replaced. We’ve all done it—but it’s important to catch the mistakes before submitting your piece for publication. If you continually miss seeing the mistakes in your work, hire someone with a keen set of eyes to check it over for you.

• Incomplete sentences. This seems to be commonplace today. We speak in incomplete sentences. We write dialog using incomplete sentences. But when you are teaching or providing information or resources, for example, complete sentences are a better avenue for presenting your material or message.

• Nonconforming items in a “list.” One writer did a poor job of listing a group of items. Most of them did not match her introduction. As an example, if the introduction or lead-in states: “When you fly to Honolulu, be sure to,” the items in the list should be written to follow. A correct item might be, “visit the zoo,” or “take a beach tour.” An incorrect item would be, “why not enjoy a sauna at the XXX Hotel?” or “how about attending a luau?” There’s nothing wrong with the ideas, it’s the way the ideas are written. When added to the introduction, they do not create a logical sentence.

• The tense and person was not consistent. One writer changed person and tense abruptly and often—sometimes within the same sentence—throughout his article. Boy was that distracting and unprofessional.

• Unnecessary and distracting sentence lead-ins. Here’s a style that really bothers me. Is it personal with me or is it universal? One author whose work I read yesterday used phrases such as the following to start his sentences: “What I recommend is,” instead of simply, “I recommend.” This is another one of those bad habits that needs to be broken.

• Sentences that are too cumbersome. Everywhere I go in search of articles and books for research purposes, I still find complex, complicated, over-the-top sentences that are too long, too confusing and lack clarity. My experiences this week were no different. (Note: my second sentence here is long, isn’t it? But it stays on track and successfully makes my point, don’t you think?)

I recommend that you print out this list and check it against your current writing project. Practice breaking any of these bad habits you might have. Also study Chapter Nine of my book The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book to discover other chronic errors you may be guilty of so that you can begin changing your ways immediately. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

Announcements
I was most pleased to open my email this morning and find one from a client whom I haven’t heard from in several weeks. She wrote to announce that her book, The News From the Master has won third place in the Xulon Press Winter 2009 Christian Choice Book Awards in the Christian Living category. The author is Virji Angelo. You can learn more about her book—a fascinating Christian Memoir—at http://www.xulonpress.com/book_detail.php?id=6420

Also, my formerly feral cat, and office manager, Max has joined Barbara Florio Graham’s cat Terzo’s MEWSical Society. I’m not sure which section he’ll be put in, but I’m leaning toward tenor. As you will see in the photo, he is certainly straining to hit those high notes. I imagine his photo will be among the rest of the chorus within a few days. So check it out at http://www.SimonTeakettle/Musical.Society.htm

Do you think of your reader while writing your article or book? As you’re writing, do you look at your message, story or instructions from their point of view? Or are you all caught up in how your words make you look?

These are important questions that many writers and authors neglect to consider. And this is the theme of my blog this morning.

Don’t lie to your readers.
We’re all familiar with recent incidents of fabrication by authors who claimed their stories were factual. Poor Oprah has been duped a couple of times by authors who wrote stories that seemed too good to be true. Come to find out, they weren’t true. These authors flat out lied, as I’m sure countless others, who have not reached any measure of fame, have also done. These authors tell stories that are larger than life, I presume, because they feel the truth is not as interesting. So why don’t they treat their stories as fiction? This, I do not understand.

This week, a client asked me if I thought it was okay to lie a little in order to, hopefully, attract a publisher’s attention. She wanted to strongly suggest, in her book proposal, that something she was struggling with was a result of foul play—that someone had put her in this precarious position. In reality, she was there by choice. She thought it would be okay to lead the publisher astray just a little since she planned to explain the truth in Chapter Ten.

What was my response? “NO! Absolutely not!” I believe that the true story is more interesting, anyway, and it goes right along with the whole theme of the book.

Before you “lie” to your readers, consider whether this will confuse them or damage your sense of integrity or even spoil your story.

Don’t tell the whole truth.
Okay, what does this mean? I don’t want you to lie to your readers, but I don’t want you to tell them the whole truth, either.

How important is it that your reader knows the character used his left hand to lift off his shoe? Does it really matter that each of the colors in the multi-hued plaid scarf is listed? Must you mention in your narrative that you stopped at the grocery store for tampons before arriving at the important meeting or the funeral? It is not always necessary to include every detail, and it’s sometimes downright distracting and annoying. So I suggest weeding out all of the distracting details and pumping up those that are important to the story.

Don’t try too hard to impress your readers.
We’ve talked about this before in this blog and in my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. Don’t purposely look up and try to use complicated, obscure words in your manuscript or your book proposal. Often, the words you find in your computer thesaurus are not absolute replacements for the word you are substituting.

But the main reason for avoiding those big words in a book or article designed for members of a general audience is that it confuses and bewilders your readers. It also tends to make you appear to be pompous and arrogant. In most cases, when you are not accustomed to using this sort of language, it comes across as forced and stiff—manufactured, if you will.

Be true to your readers and to yourself when you are drafting an article or a book manuscript. If you do, publication and a level of acclaim are much more likely.

When you work with an editor, it is lovely when you sing her praises—tell others about her work, hand out her business cards and so forth. We editors really appreciate it. But please, please do not give your editor credit for work that she hasn’t done.

Here’s what I mean. Yesterday, a client showed me a package she had sent to an agent she met at a writer’s conference. She introduced me in her cover letter as her editor. Nice. I was pleased. That is, until I read her sample chapters.

She had written over me. In other words, after I did my preliminary editing on her first draft some months ago, she did a bunch of rewriting. Without having me look at it again, she sent it off to this agent. The agent marked all over the manuscript, pointing out misused apostrophes, typos, misspelled words, a missing dash (which I had edited in and she didn’t use) and all sorts of other problems. He even made a note on the cover letter next to my name, “Editor? How so?”

Needless to say, I was embarrassed and a bit miffed. I know that this author did not do this maliciously. In fact, she was trying to give me credit. But I had to tell her that you never, NEVER write over an editor in any large measure and then give your editor credit. Your editor doesn’t get credit until the manuscript is in its final stage and you have accepted most of her edits and suggestions. If you rewrite the manuscript or large portions of it, without running this by your editor, and then you credit your editor, you may not be doing her any favors. In fact, you might even put a black mark on her reputation.

Learn more about how to do self-editing and how to work with an editor in my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

I read someplace that you are not supposed to apologize for being lax in posting at your blogsite. I find this a difficult policy to follow as I have pretty much spoiled you with fresh postings daily over many months. Some of you have become accustomed to hopping over to my blog every day and checking out my offerings.

This week, however, I have been remiss in posting. Why? I’ve been singularly focused on editing a manuscript for a client. This was the final edit, mind you. For months, I’ve been editing this novel chapter-by-chapter, ever eager to see the entire manuscript as a whole. Finally, I got that opportunity, and I spent the next 45 hours in editor mode.

One evening, as I was going over printed pages for a different perspective, after spending the day looking at the manuscript on the monitor, it occurred to me that I was treating this project as if it was one of my own books. Editing is definitely a complex, involved process, but the final edit is incredibly more intense as you must consider so many aspects of the manuscript.

This is when you finalize the story, triple check for inconsistencies, decide which spellings to use, make sure that the story events are realistic and reasonable or, in the case of a nonfiction book, that the organization is right on and the instructions are clear.

Is the person and tense consistent throughout? Will you use Americanized or UK English spelling? Have you made your point? When you changed a character’s name, did you make the change throughout? (Often, I discover discrepancies in this area, particularly in novels.) Are the dates true and realistic? (If the child was born in 1907 and his father dies 5 years later, you can’t later say he was a teen when his father died.) Which terms in your story are two words and which are one? Is it wood stove or woodstove, stair case or staircase, pack horse or packhorse, hand gun or handgun? Find out and then be consistent.

And then there are, of course, grammatical considerations: Are the sentences complete? Are they clear and concise? Do your sentences flow into one another so that readers can follow your story or the information you offer?

It takes a great deal of concentration, focus, thought and time to do that last edit. You must pay attention to detail like never before. I told someone this week that, when editing, I feel like my daughter’s Beagle when he is on a scent—driven and all-consumed.

How do you go about that final edit (which I have to say isn’t always THE final one—as, often, you are drawn to go back to your manuscript again and again to check on various aspects that come to mind)? Here are some of my techniques and tactics:

• I study the entire manuscript and make corrections and notations on the computer.

• I print out sections of the manuscript as I’m working and look at it again on paper. You may be surprised at what you will catch—things you didn’t notice, when viewing it on the screen.

• When I find a word I’m unsure of or a discrepancy, I check the usage, spelling or whether it should be one or two words and fix it. Then I do a search for other instances of this word or term so I can make them conform.

• I double check dates and spellings of names. In the manuscript I just completed for a client, for example, he used a name that required an accent over the “e.” Yet, sometimes, the accent was missing. These had to be fixed.

• I watch for red flags indicating that the order of things may be incorrect. Is the character coming from or going to the coffee shop? Did she already have the bicycle in this scene or did she attain it later? If she poured herself a cup of coffee, she cannot be now sipping tea…

• I make sure that the content is easy to understand and follow.

• Is the formatting consistent and reasonable?

• What about punctuation?

• Is the numbering of the chapters correct? I have seen authors delete a chapter or combine chapters and forget to change the numbering. Likewise, do the chapter titles in the manuscript match the titles in the Table of Contents? (We’ve all been known to change titles of chapters midstream.

• If the author has established a style of beginning each chapter with a Biblical passage or ending each chapter with a riddle, has he done so throughout?

• Are the historical aspects of your historical novel realistic?

• Are your facts and statistics accurate?

Yes, there’s a lot to think about before you finalize your manuscript and start pitching it to a publisher or agent or before you self-publish it. And this is precisely why you need at least one additional pair of eyes—preferably eyes that are trained to spot problems—to review your book before you consider it finished.

Learn more about self-editing in my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. You’ll also find valuable information about how to choose an editor and what to expect from him/her. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

For a quote on editing your book or article manuscript, contact me at: PLFry620@yahoo.com.

Are you trying to make ends meet by submitting articles to magazines? I think most of you, who read my blog regularly, know that I made my living writing articles for magazines for many years. Some of you do so occasionally. But, when times get financially difficult and you need extra money, you might decide to expand your article-submission activities.

Probably the number one problem facing article writers is, coming up with the article idea. And that’s why I blog about this from time to time. Today, I’m going to talk about discovering and creating article ideas when you’re not in work mode—sitting at your computer, brainstorming over your morning coffee or even meditating, for example.

Develop article ideas (and for that matter, story ideas, plots, subplots or even poetry) throughout the course of your daily life. Get out and mingle with people, visit over the fence with neighbors, exchange emails and phone calls, try new life experiences (take the train to the next town instead of driving, adopt a cat, tour open houses on Sunday, for example). And then observe, initiate conversation and become a good listener.

Just this morning, before I had my morning decaf—my eyes still a bit bleary from sleep—I read an email from a friend in St. Louis. Sandy wrote about one of her cats who seems to be under the weather. I know that she is in the middle of remodeling her home and I thought back to when we had some major work done around here and how much stress it seemed to put on a couple of our cats. Immediately, I decided to pitch an article to Cat Fancy Magazine on how to de-stress your cat or maybe how to keep your cat calm even when your household is chaotic. (I’ll do some research and see if this is something they’ve done recently or if there is an angle that hasn’t been covered, yet.)

I had a conversation with someone the other day about inside versus outside kitties. I won’t be suggesting that idea to the editors at Cat Fancy, unless the piece is totally pro inside cat, as this is what they advocate. Nor would I write a piece for them that would in any way upset cat breeders as these are Cat Fancy’s major supporters/advertisers .

What are you doing with the information, thoughts, points of view, observations, etc. that you come across throughout your day? Do you consider how you could develop an article from them or does the idea just dissipate as quickly as it appears? Think about some of the article ideas you missed just this week. For example:

1: Are you dealing with unusual weather for your area? How about an article for a regional magazine featuring some of the county’s worst weather over the years. Talk to local nursery-people about which plants/trees need to be protected from frost, wind, etc. and how to do so. What are some of your neighbors and friends doing to entertain themselves in the bad weather? Collect some warming, comforting recipes to share. Start a newspaper column designed to help residents of your town connect with people, services and situations they can use in dire weather conditions, disasters or life situaitons. For example, is there a group of high school students who are shoveling driveways for the elderly, folks who run errands for shut-ins, do people need nudging (through your article or column) to get out and check on their neighbors? What about keeping pets comfortable in extreme weather? Now there’s one or many more articles right there.

2: Get out and find some ideas. As I said, listen and observe. Strike up conversations with people. You never know when you’re going to hear a fresh point of view about the economy, for example. What about this: what’s going on in the economy is similar to a wildfire in the forest. While it is disastrous at the time, it is necessary in order to bring a natural balance back to the environment. (Let me know if you use this in an article or book.) I was talking to a former classmate at our Old Broads Luncheon last week and she told me that she really wanted to attend a mutual friend’s art show, but had another engagement that day. It occurred to me how important it is for friends to support friends in their endeavors, for writers to support other writers and artists to support other artists. How about a piece featuring the value in acknowledging the accomplishments and activities of others? I remember once, during one of my first book signings, someone I knew only slightly sent a fax to the bookstore congratulating me on my latest book. This was before the Internet and the fax were commonplace.

This week, Debbie and Karen emailed me with an opportunity to write a column. I emailed Karen back to say, “thank you” and to tell her that Debbie had already sent that to me. Karen wrote saying that she remembers meeting Debbie at a SPAWN function years ago and told me how much the talk Debbie gave that night helped inspire her move forward with her own writing career. I asked writer Karen if I could send her comments to Debbie. Of course, she agreed. Now, the Debbie is aware that she touched someone in a positive way and her day was made. Isn’t this a great reminder to all of us to tell others how their kindness or their message inspired, encouraged or taught us? And wouldn’t this make a good article?

3: Even if you’re stuck at home, you can come up ideas. Turn on the radio or TV, read the newspaper, dig out those magazines you haven’t had time to read, surf the net. Oh my gosh, you will be inundated with ideas for articles on many varieties of topics from walking dogs in the winter, to tips for creative ways to photograph babies, to what goes into making a baseball, to how to groom a Cairn terrier, to a philosophical perspective on any number of topics, to how to make sure your emails are read by what you type in the Subject Line, to how to appropriately clean a toilet.

I’ve been writing this blog for over 3 years and I’ve posted over 400 blog posts. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time or if you have visited my archives, you know that I write on a variety of topics in a variety of ways. And my ideas come from all over the place. You, too, can be a fountain of article/story ideas if you would only come out of your shell, listen and observe.

You’ll find more articles on this and other writing/publishing-related topics at my site: http://www.matilijapress.com