writing – Page 3 – Random Thoughts

Famous Author Trivia

Want to have a little fun with literature? Here are 6 bits of trivia about authors, see if you can guess who each famous author is. (Answers at the end, but don’t peek)

1) What name is this author better known by?

This author was born in 1904 in Springfield MA. He graduated from Dartmouth College and went to Oxford University in England to get a PhD in Literature. In 1954 his publisher read an article in Life magazine detailing reading troubles children were having in the US. He asked this author to write a book that would engage young children and encourage them to read. In 1960, this author was challenged to write an entire book using only 50 words. He successfully accomplished both of these tasks. This author was born Theodore Geisel. By what name is he better known? Continue reading “Famous Author Trivia”

The Writer’s Corner, A Work Space of One’s Own

Writers Desk I have always said that a serious writer needs a work space of one’s own in which to write. For one thing you need a place that is out of the main flow of family life where distractions abound. For another, if you work on the dining room table, you are always having to pack up your stuff and move out of the way. This is not much of an issue if you only write short pieces and have little in the way of notes to keep up with. But if you write longer or complex pieces – or a novel – you use a good bit of material you must pack away every time you pack off.

I have an office of my own in the building that is my woodshop: an old mobile home a 100 foot walk from door to door. That room served as my office for furniture making: communicating with customers, designing furniture pieces, ordering parts and materials, bookkeeping, and file storage. It also had a mini kitchen (tiny fridge, toaster oven, and a coffee maker) so I didn’t have to trudge through snow, rain, and mud to get home for lunch (and mess up the house).

This had many advantages. Continue reading “The Writer’s Corner, A Work Space of One’s Own”

Professional Jargon and the Turbo Encabulator

Those who work within an industry tend to develop a jargon of their own to express ideas quickly. Sometimes these are scientific terms, sometimes they are slang used as short hand, sometimes they are acronyms spoken out as words. As long as these folks are in their own element, communication is fine. Put a few of them in a crowd of the non-initiated, and most of the on-lookers end up bewildered. “What language are they speaking?!”

This can happen with motor heads, computer geeks, programmers, sports nuts, and medical professionals. Here is a fun look at what may be the very best example of confusing people with jargon. Below the video is the explanation of who this fellow is and how this short film came about.

This is the first time Turbo Encabulator was recorded with picture. It was shot in the late 70’s at Regan Studios in Detroit on 16mm film. The narrator and writer is Bud Haggert. He was the top voice-over talent on technical films. Continue reading “Professional Jargon and the Turbo Encabulator”

I and Me, When to Use, How to See

Do you have a hard time getting the usage of I and me right in your writings? I did too until I learned one simple trick that can be applied on the fly to get your prose in line proper grammar.

But first, I need to point out that this does not apply to dialog spoken by your characters. Not all your characters will (or should) speak with perfect grammar and sentence structure. Let their personality show through when they speak.

For non-fiction and expository text in fiction, getting I and me right will promote a professional appearance.

First, it is never proper to place the speaker’s pronoun first:

Me and Sally went to the movies and watched The Blob. Continue reading “I and Me, When to Use, How to See”

Is It Farther or Further, Father?

One of those grammatical faux pas that people sometimes make is in confusing the words “farther” and “further”. They do have distinctly different meaning and cannot be used interchangeably.

The easy way to remember it is that farther is a measure of distance: think, ‘is it far?” while further is a measure of degree: “how thick is your fur”.

Here are some example sentences:

I can throw the ball farther than you.
You can further your education with self-study courses.
How much farther will we drive before we stop for the night?
How much further will you read in that book before you turn out the light and go to sleep?

See the difference?

Farther is a measure of physical distance. Further is a measure of degree or proportion. If you keep the memory key of “How far – thick fur” in mind it should help you use these words correctly. Holly Jahangiri brings it all together for us with this example, “The son of a pro mountain climber attempting to scale Everest, furthers his career by climbing farther than his father.”

Editorial Quick Tags

While you are writing, it is generally best not to break your stride by stopping to puzzle out or fix some inconsistency or fill in a blank spot or detail. Keep writing so you stay in the groove, but toss in a tag so you can easily find the trouble spot later. When doing a read-through of a completed manuscript, you may want to tag problems rather than stopping to fix them so you can stay in the story. Editors sometimes use tags, along with pages of notes on those tags, to flag areas that need rewriting or revision.

Editorial tags need to be unique so they can be easily searched for when it is time to deal with them. Common tags are TK or TC, which mean “to come” and are used to mark gaps in the text where something else is needed. These are letter combinations that do not occur in words, so they should not provide false hits in your search.

I tend to like <<NOTE>> because it is visually catchy as well as easily searched for. I can amend NOTE with a quick comment on what needs fixing and still be able to find them by searching for “<<NOTE”. Others might be <<EXPLAIN>>, <<SHORTEN>>, <<NEED PHOTO>> or <<UNCLEAR>>. You might think you’d have to start keeping a list of tags you’ve used, but you don’t because you can just search for “<<” and pull them all up.

When doing blog posts or magazine articles, I use this same trick to mark photo placements: <<<MyPhoto140625.jpg 300 Left>>> which gives me the title, width in pixels and the alignment. I learned this from a magazine that accepted text and photos through e-mail but needed to format and assemble the articles for print in their own system.

Tags have a variety of uses in both the writing and initial editing phase of your manuscript.. I hope this helps you out as you write.

Taking Time For Reading

Good writers are avid readers.

I don’t have any statistics from scientific studies to throw at you, but based on what I know about the talented writers I’ve encountered, I stand by that statement. For most of us, a penchant for writing was the fruit which grew from our love of reading when we were young. We admired our favorite author’s ability to take us to other places, times, and situations, and we wanted to do this too. So we began crafting stories of our own.

Whether we did so consciously or not, we emulated our literary mentors. As we read their work, we began to dissect their stories, to see how they created the illusions. Like studying a magic act, we wanted to discover the slight-of-word that made it all believable.

Most of us still enjoy reading. Unfortunately, many now do not spend much time reading great novels. We’re spending so much time reading as research, or for education, or as part of our marketing efforts that the great masters lay on a shelf gathering dust. The library is thinking of closing our account because our card has not been used in such a long time. This is a shame. Continue reading “Taking Time For Reading”

Writing for Online Communal Publishers

If you’re just getting started as a writer and want to get your feet wet with minimal cost, communal publishing can be the answer.

This is the first in a series of detail articles which look more closely at the various means of publishing your work as a writer. The kick-off article gave a long list of these methods with a brief overview of each. Starting with this article we take a peek at the chapter in Writing for Profit or Pleasure: Where to Publish Your Work that covers each topic in great detail.

What is a Communal On-Line Publisher?

Most communal online publishers operate like enormous blogs with thousands of users. Non-members can read the articles and search by topic or author. Most offer writers a free account and encourage you to write often. The best of these offer community support through discussion forums where writers share tips and review one anothers’ work. Some also offer writing contests. Some of these even offer cash prizes, though most are for bragging rights; but bragging rights are good too! Continue reading “Writing for Online Communal Publishers”

Write Faster, Earn More

typewriter, writing, editing — A Hermes Rocket typewriter from the 1950’s

This article is not intended for novelists. While novelists are certainly welcome to read it, I doubt you’ll find anything useful to your calling here. This article is intended for those who write magazine articles, blog post/web content, and perhaps short stories or brief memoir pieces.

While the admonition of “write faster” may seem self-explanatory on the surface, it goes way beyond just hitting the keys at a higher rate of speed. Although that too can help. Isaac Asimov was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters. In between two of the segments she asked him, ”But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?” He said, “Type faster.”¹

One of the things I like best about being a freelance writer over being a cubicle dweller or factory worker is the aspect that it’s up to me to decide how much I work and how much I earn. As a corporate employee I worked so many hours a week and got a paycheck for a certain amount every two weeks. Other than the rare opportunity for overtime, I had little to do with how much time I put in or the pay I took away.

As a freelancer, it is entirely — well, mostly — up to me to decide when I work and how much I get paid. No work: no pay, work hard: get paid well, simple as that. Mostly. But it’s more than just keeping my nose to the grindstone longer. I can eek out more profit by making that time count for more by working smarter, not just longer. Here’s how that works.

Continue reading “Write Faster, Earn More”

1) What name is this author better known by?

See the difference?

Good writers are avid readers.

What is a Communal On-Line Publisher?

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