Guest blogger Celestine Chua writes, “Top bloggers of excellence have 8 consistent habits – 8 habits, which, when we practice duly, are guaranteed to bring you results.” I don’t see wordiness on the list, so that may be a ninth habit thrown in for free. [/snark]
Category Archives: Writing
Twelve Literary Journals Your Future Agent is Reading
Writer’s Digest “polled 40 literary agents to see which journals they read with an eye for new talent. Then, [they] rounded up 12 of their picks and contacted the publications’ editors for an inside glimpse at each one—and exclusive tips on how you can break in.”
Ten Writing Mistakes
Mary DeMuth has some common writing mistakes, like weak verbs and wordiness. That needs another “ness,” doesn’t it? Wordiness-ness. Wordliness. That’s better. How about verbessence?
"When everyone's a writer, no one is"
Garrison Keillor writes about the days when being a tortured literary soul, wrestling for your livelihood with the printed word over a typewriter, was worth something. Money, to be specific.
Poor Writing Skills, If U Can Call'em That
What is the purpose of public education? Is it only to employ teachers? If I was were an English teacher with hopes to achieve certain goals with my class, I would scrap those goals if my kids couldn’t write. See another sad example: failure to communicate. The writer observes, “Many of the students whose work I correct are smart, motivated, and quick to incorporate suggestions. But they have either forgotten the rules of writing, or they never learned them in the first place.”
At the End of the Day: Voted Most Popular
Chris Pash reports the phrase at the end of the day “is the most popular cliche in journalism globally. It is all-pervasive.” Headline writers also love “Man Bites Dog” in some fashion. For example:
- “Man bites dog: Pawlenty has kind words for Obama” from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on May 4
- “The Nation: What Happens To Welfare Mothers?” Lead sentence: “It’s the man-bites-dog story that never ends.” from NPR today
- “Groin ailment slows St. Louis Cardinals’ Holliday” leading with “This is man-bites-dog material.” What the? That’s from the St Louis Post-Dispatch May 8.
- Get more fun journalist’s cliches through the link.
P.D. James on Detective Fiction
Author P.D. James has a book about detective fiction with an excerpt here. She writes:
And why murder? The central mystery of a detective story need not indeed involve a violent death, but murder remains the unique crime and it carries an atavistic weight of repugnance, fascination and fear. Readers are likely to remain more interested in which of Aunt Ellie’s heirs laced her nightly cocoa with arsenic than in who stole her diamond necklace while she was safely holidaying in Bournemouth. Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night doesn’t contain a murder, although there is an attempt at one, and the death at the heart of Frances Fyfield’s Blood from Stone is a spectacular and mysterious suicide. But, except in those novels of espionage which are primarily concerned with treachery, it remains rare for the central crime in an orthodox mystery to be other than the ultimate crime for which no human reparation can ever be made.
To make a long story short, takes work
Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall links to an interesting piece by jazz musician Eric Felton over at the Wall Street Journal. I don’t think Felton will make a whole lot of enemies with his complaint about the unnecessary length of much current entertainment, such as movies, music and books.
It will be objected that any number of canonic masterpieces are gargantuan. Yes, of course. But even many of those could stand a trim. Did “Moby Dick” really need the chapter called “Cetology,” Melville’s rambling effort to prove that whales weren’t mammals?
One of the constant occasions for worry in my novel-writing career has been that, once I write the story I want to tell, I generally find it’s only about 60- to 80,000 words long. Jim Baen liked novels to come in around 100,000 words. I believe he felt (and many publishers today are of the same view) that when a consumer plunks down $7.99 for a paperback novel, he wants to feel he can take a short vacation in that book’s world.
The idea of publishing shorter books, and charging less, is not up for discussion, it would appear. Continue reading To make a long story short, takes work
Free Book on BadLanguage.net
Matthew Stibbe is giving away his ebook on his website, BadLanguage.net. No, it isn’t about that. It’s called 30 Days to Better Business Writing.
Theory Into Game
Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do is a guessing game from Albert-László Barabási who claims that “despite the seeming randomness of human behavior, humans actually act in very predictable patterns.” Looks like fun.