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Good Bones

Still need readers/reviewers. Contact me if you want a free bracelet. Approx $50 value.

I’m good at writing. (Should be a bit better at self-editing, but…) I have an BS in Secondary Education with a teaching minor in English (and one in Social Studies) from the University of Vermont College of Education and Social Services Class of 1983. I took courses in Creative Writing and Expository writing and got top grades. I’ve had pieces published in the Vermont Cynic (UVM student newspaper), Boca Raton News, on NPR (they read one of my letters on the air), the Miami Herald, and was supposed to have a short humorous essay published in the Boston Globe – on September 12, 2001. I’ve written comedy sketches that were performed, short pieces on Dog News Team and two filmed sketches on there, too.

https://youtu.be/qNs1WzQsybg

https://youtu.be/gZWlZsh_dzY

(I just watched them again, and I still think they’re funny)

I’ve also rewritten resumes, edited term papers, edited letters (Yes. People who want to chew out someone else and get results. They come to me. I just sent a nastygram to the Florida Division of Corporations based on the actions of one of their lower level functionaries. And I freakin’ won. 12 years of customer service experience paired with 3 years of legal writing education – I get results).

Bottom line: I have credentials. I can walk the walk. Or write the writing, if you prefer.

I have a couple of tall stacks of books written by friends I’ve made in the indie author world. My intent is to read and review. The blurbs promise stories that should keep me turning pages. The concepts are great: these stories have good bones. (You’re saying to yourself, “I know there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere” Well, here it comes) The execution…

…leaves a lot to be desired.

 

Image result for 1960s jaguar

This is a 1960 Jaguar convertible. It’s a beautiful car, a sexy car. You can see yourself flying down the Pacific Coast Highway in it (Or cruising A1A out here).

The truism about the Jag back then was you didn’t buy one, you bought two: one to drive and one for parts. If you watched “Mad Men,” you saw Lane Pryce try to commit suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide from his Jag’s exhaust.

He failed. He failed because the car wouldn’t start. And it was a new car.

You can have a great concept for a story, okay? You can dream up a riveting plot with intriguing characters that your audience wants to cheer for. However, you may not know how to effectively execute it. And that’s where you’ll lose readers like me. Bad mechanics, like poor grammar (unless  it’s in dialogue. That’s the only place to get a free pass), too many cliches, clumsy foreshadowing, not enough foreshadowing, continuity errors, anachronisms, or just plain being a rehash of someone else’s story that was a runaway bestseller but yours has enough details changed to avoid copyright lawsuits (Don’t get huffy. They exist).

“Well, what do you know?” You hardly sell any books and Gracie Twinkletoes just published her 25th Amazon #1 in Shapeshifter Science Fiction Military Romance! Why should I listen to you?” (Accompanied by a hair toss) It’s a fair cop. If I had to live on the proceeds of my book sales, I’d be dead before finishing this post. In fact, I would have been dead 4 years ago, but that’s beside the point.

Gracie Twinkletoes doesn’t know the difference among (and yes, that is correct because it’s more than two words) your, you’re, and yore. Or two, to, and too. Gracie talks about her characters “laying around” when it’s “lying around.” If you’re “laying around,” you’re putting down something, like pillows, candles, mousetraps, land mines, what have you.

Image result for dress shabbily

This adage is applicable to writing as well. Okay, let’s go with the clothing analogy because it’s easy to visualize. Let’s imagine we’re all in an office where the dress code is business casual (no jeans, flip flops, or tank tops). What stands out more in this environment: a guy in khakis and a polo shirt or the guy who wears a pressed suit and tie?

Image result for polo and khakis

 

 

Image result for suit and tie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the casually-dressed guy, but in a world of casual dressers, the man who looks prepared to sit down with a CEO gets noticed. It’s why people study the works of Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, Herman Melville, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I cringe when I read misspelled and  ungrammatical Facebook posts by authors and writers (that includes lifestyle bloggers, too). I get angry backlash if I point out the errors, usually along the lines of “It’s only Facebook. So what?”

It’s taking concepts from your head and putting them into words. It’s writing. It’s your craft. It may not be a book, but it’s you practicing your craft. Too many misplaced “yours,” “tos,” “aparts,” or BTW, OMG, LOL become bad habits; bad habits that will creep into the works you want to offer in the market place.  Practice is about honing your craft. Practice is about unlearning the bad habits. When you call yourself a writer or an author, ANYTHING you put to paper (or computer screen) is your craft.

I am mediating a panel on “Punctuation and Grammar and Why They Matter” at Indie Book Fest’s Industry Day on September 29th.

Okay, think of it this way: you get only one chance to make a first impression. Why not strive to present the best version of yourself even if it’s just a quick Facebook post about something crazy that happened at the grocery store? You never know who’s reading (like a top editor or literary agent that has entree into the major publishing houses. The ones that offer big advances).

As I’ve tried to read some of the stories in those two tall stacks of books, I’ve wanted to get a red pencil and edit the hell out of them. I’ve wanted to sit down with the writers (outside of a review) and say, “Look, this has the potential to be fantastic, but…,” or “instead of saying this here, say this instead,” or “don’t focus so much on the details unless they’re important later on.” Some of these folks are dear to me, and I don’t know if having a discussion like this will hurt their feelings. Some are selling more books than I am, and to a few, that’s all that matters. Fine.

If you are a writer, whether books, blogs, or essays (which is a blog post), I can help you become a better writer. If you listen to me, we can boost the quality of your work. I am offering my services as a copy editor and content editor. I don’t have a fee schedule yet, but if you submit a sample to me (there’s a contact form on this page. Use it), I will critique it for free. I know my stuff. You will learn something.

So, in  conclusion, bring your Jag convertible (or newest manuscript) to me. I can get that baby roaring down the road in no time.

 

 

Houston, We’ve Got a Problem

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Practioners of the English language…

Nous avon une grande probleme.

Wier haben eine grosse Problem. (Bigger even than auto correct’s attempts to turn French and German into English)

  
The National Spelling Bee is this week where grammar school-aged kids spell words that I swear were made up five minutes before being given to them, and TV news anchors try to guess the meanings…

while the scroll flying by under them is riddled with misspelled everyday words. 

I read articles by paid journalists in USA Today, the LA Times, various blog sites (presumably places with trained editors) contain errors of homonyms, usage, punctuation, and inability to differentiate between contractions and possessives. 

One site posed the question, “should we still teach spelling even with auto correct?” I was going to answer,  “Are you fucking kidding me? Hell, yes!”, but stepped back and toned it down to “Hell, yes!”  By the way, that comment got 20 likes.

I am a beneficiary of advancements in publishing technology in that I have been able to publish two books with it that had been rejected by every publisher and agent I approached (they liked the writing, just didn’t think there was a market). You can upload a file, push enter and voila;  you have a book available for sale. It’s that easy.

Unfortunately, too easy, in some cases. 

I have read offerings by some independent authors in which the mechanics of their writing was so bad, they completely distracted me from the story. Now, I KNOW these people have earned at least a high school diploma in the U.S., and that requires several years’ worth of Language Arts and English studies. 12 years worth of study. Couldn’t tell it by the writing. 

The truly appalling one was an article about a man reunited with his dog after several years. The author used this phrase to describe what the man had done in between losing and regaining the dog “He had became a dog trainer.” 

In case you don’t get it, the proper choices are either “he became a dog trainer” or “he had become a dog trainer.”)

I did some Google research on the author and it said she’d been a Language Arts teacher for several years. 

  
Too harsh?

 

I repeat myself. In other blog posts and on other blogs, I have urged the 5, 6, or 7 readers to not rely on auto correct or word processing programs in lieu of learning a broad vocabulary, mastering spelling, usage, punctuation, and grammar. 

“But that’s all memorization. It’s boring.”

Tough. Shit. It’s training.

In “The Paper Chase,”  the Contracts Professor, Charles Kingsfield, admonishes one of hi students for being unprepared for clas by telling him, “You come in here with a skull full of mush, but leave thinking like a lawyer.”

Training. He’s talking about training. Learning the difference between correct and incorrect; what is the proper word or arrangement of words for the given situation. 

We live in the information technology age, which makes the (rather small) dissemination of this essay possible. Computers can do a lot of great things for us, but we need to use our own brains or the skulls aren’t even going to be full of mush. More like month old oatmeal. One crucial things word processing programs and auto correct have not learned is that the English language is loaded with quirks, exceptions to rules, homonyms, and other holdovers from Angles, Saxons, the odd Viking raid, and a millennium long pissing contest with France. Word cannot completely grasp the tangle of Germanic and Latin roots that describe things like lactose (Latin) in milk (Germanic). 

In other words: the machines don’t have your back. You cannot rely on them to fill the gaps in your own Language Arts knowledge.

The current terminology to describe a seemingly random collection of words (usually to describe Sarah Palin’s utterances) is “word salad.” Without knowing the rules and how to build the solid structures for sentences and paragraphs, AND APPLYING THEM, it’s just a jumble without syntax.

Not only have these millennial (and Gen Y and Gen X) writers seemed to have ignored the rules of good writing, but they use beta readers (trusted friends who are avid readers that you choose to be an additional pair of eyes on your work) and editors who either don’t know them or don’t care to apply them. As a result, self-published authors as a whole get a bad rap for the poor quality product hitting the market from these sources. “This is why the traditional publishers don’t want work from self-published authors. They don’t know what they’re doing or don’t care as long as it sells.” 

It’s time for remedial Grammar School.

Find those DVDs of Schoolhouse House to learn parts of speech. (Everybody loved “Conjunction Junction” conjunction Junction)

Start following a grammar blog. I was considering starting a YouTube channel to teach spelling and grammar, but one of my cousins told me there was already a “hot chick” teaching grammar. 

  
Actually, that’s a picture linked to a grammar blog. You get the idea.

I love Weird Al word Crimes. #Yankovic

Someone who continually slapped a bunch of bricks and mortar together, yet never built a usable structure, could never call himself a mason. The same for hammering together a bunch of boards without consideration to measurement, support, and function ; that’s not carpentry. These are skilled professions.

Yet, we have stories, novels, articles, and essays made public that lack the basics in written communication because of electronic means of dissemination. No need to bring something to an editor for approval or rewrites.

Writing is also a skilled profession, but it gets as much respect as a public school teacher. In other words, none.

There is a scene from “All the President’s Men” (1976) showing editor Ben Bradlee with pencil in hand (the age of typewriter) copy editing articles by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that would expose the Watergate break-in as being the tip of a corruption iceberg in the Nixon White House. Bradlee was their highly trained and experienced pair of eyes to catch and remove errors, streamline, and improve the story. Woodward and Bernstein are not slouches as writers, but they know they aren’t perfect. (I couldn’t find a clip showing this scene) the quality of their writing, in terms of mechanics, was a helluva lot better than a lot I’m seeing lately. Bradlee’s blue pencil was in motion for a couple of minutes in that scene.

Get copies of Strunk & White, a good dictionary, Roget’s, Zinsser and USE THEM when writing. Train your brain. In fact, try writing the old-fashioned way; paper and pen. Do this as an exercise, then correct it or get it corrected. Think of this as a drill.

 

“Drop that laptop and give me 50 sentences. In cursive.”


Do you write? Get an editor, and not just your best friend Jo Jo, unless Jo Jo has been teaching writing and has a degree in it. There are sites to hire freelance editors for copy and for style. You need someone who knows more about this stuff than you do. Like maybe a professor at the community college, or a high school English teacher (although, that one woman with the “Had became”…be careful out there).

TLC channel just freed up hours per week by finally ditching those goddamn Duggars (Before anyone jumps: child molestation is neither godly nor moral. It’s sick. And we don’t know that he has actually stopped). Were it up to me, I’d have them filling that time with interactive educational programming hitting math and Language Arts (let the History Channel teach…I’ll go on a limb here…history), different hours geared to different levels. If AMC can create content to sync up your computer to program that’s on right now, then it shouldn’t be difficult for a student with a question about homonyms to be able to get it answered by a teacher on TV. We have the technology to make better, stronger, faster writers. 

 

And Now a Word From a Former English Teacher

(Okay, Language Arts for junior high school kids, but the age range is appropriate).

keep-calm-i-m-an-english-teacher-8

People of America:

I have detected a widespread error in English usage that should be addressed forthwith. Actually a lot of them (Look, spelling really DOES count. Don’t rely on Spellcheck or auto correct. THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND HOMONYMS). It is time to reclaim our intelligence and coherent communications. Break out the composition books, because class is in session .

(Great Britain? You’re lovely just as you are. You guys have your own spelling issues, such as an excessive fondness for “u” : flavour, etc. And there’s that whole “aluminium” thing. We Yanks may be brusque, but we don’t dally with excess letters)

Not only did I teach Language Arts, I’m an author (buy my books. See the link at the top of the page). While I enjoy the democratization of technology where anyone can now publish a book, the downside is there is an ever-increasing amount of material out there where the content may be great, but the execution is sub-standard. I belong to a lot of author groups on Facebook and some of the spelling/grammar errors I see in posts have been carried into the stories written by the authors.

First of all, if you are an author, Yea! (That is the correct spelling, not “yay.”) Word of advice: make sure your editor knows as much about spelling, punctuation, grammar, and sentence construction as you do, if not more. You are painting with words and while it may be acceptable for one of your characters to screw up language (in dialogue), it is not acceptable for the author to do so.  You don’t have to be an Oxford don, but you do need to know and understand the rules before you break them.

sarah palin

Easy starter here: Whatever THIS woman does, language-wise? Do the opposite and you’ll be correct.

LIE v. LAY

This is my pet peeve du jour because I see “lay” misused EVERYWHERE.  “I’m going to go lay down.” WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!

If you are moving yourself from a vertical (up and down) position to horizontal (side to side) position, e.g. taking a nap, you are LYING down. If you are placing an object (such as one of my books. Really, go buy them, they’re great) on a surface, you are LAYING down the object.

lay-versus-lie-poster

Thus, the act of lovemaking, when someone puts you on a bed (don’t nitpick here, I’m trying to make a point), YOU are the object and YOU are getting LAID.

See how that works?

Of course, the past tense of lie is lay, but just keep that handy-dandy chart around and refer to it often.

LIE = Recline, LAY = put or place

Lay down your weapons” (Put or place your guns down)

“I’m going to lie down from this migraine you kids have given me. I can’t wait until school starts again.” (Recline in a dark, quiet room and prayer for the school board to approve year round sessions)

Understand: I’m blaming word processing programs. They’ve been programmed to help us out but binary code is not artificial intelligence. They haven’t advanced enough to pick up on bad grammar or improper usage. We humans know ALL the rules for proper writing and sentence construction. Microsoft Word is still a few sandwiches short of a picnic in this regard. DON’T rely on SpellCheck, I beg you. Get a dictionary. Or pay to use Grammarly.

LIGHTNING v. LIGHTENING

One is a natural phenomenon seen in thunderstorms and volcanos.

lightning

volcanic lightning

And the other is an alternative term for bleached hair

lightening

(God forgive me for using a Whoredashian to make a point)

The confusion has become so widespread that when I went to look for images of “lightening” in Google Images, most of the first hits were pictures of lightning.

Again, they are both actual words, but word processing programs cannot deduce from the context which one is appropriate (I will be sending invitations to a “there,” “their,” and “they’re” seminar). It is up to YOU, the actual human being whom an over-stressed, underpaid teacher  attempted to guide through this minefield, to know the difference. If you graduated sixth grade, there is no excuse for screwing up vocabulary and spelling like this.

Of course, if you’ve read all this, shrugged, and said, “Meh. Doesn’t matter”, this is what you’ll become:

sarah palin

Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

(That’s a different English course. English lit. “Macbeth”).

One final shot to drive the point home:

Blog_Lie-v-Lay

July 17 PS: As of July 16, 2014, Weird Al Yankovic agrees with me:

Couldn't put it better myself.

Couldn’t put it better myself.

“Word Crimes” by Weird Al Yankovic