You Lucky People!!!
Such a steal! Such a deal!!
For the next three days my magnum opus Mahoney is on sale for a mere 99 cents. What a deal!!!
Please don’t all of you rush over to Amazon to buy it all at once. The line forms on the right.
Now, if ya’all will excuse me, I gotta go and read my reviews again (all great!) for the 10,000th time.
Authors, Be Your First Reader! – by Joy E. Rancatore…
Great advice for authors.
You’ve typed The End.
Congratulations!
Celebrate!
Live it up!
Now you send it straight to the editor to fix, right?
Wrong.
Continue reading HERE
The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep
Nature’s bounty for your viewing pleasure…
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Life Giver
My followers, few but all cool cats, will enjoy this. (Geez … no concoction my human puts in MY bowl ever gives me such an experience…)
We are here to create … I do it with words … but we all create … if nothing else, we create our lives each and every day as soon as we get out of bed.
I once had a mystical experience when I was quite young and on the road.
That experience forms my writing … it forms me … I spoke with God … once upon a time …
I swear this is all true. This is an abbreviated version of what happened on that magical, mystical night.
I was hitchin’ from LA to Miami. Along about sundown, a blue pickup truck picked me up on Old Highway 90. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I was spending the night with a young Apache Indian. His name was Jimmy.
After his grandmother fed me, we walked out into the desert and sat down…
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Writing Tips: Avoid Clichés – by Melissa Donovan…
Excellent piece!
on Writing Forward:
There are many writing tips that tell us what to avoid in our work: We should keep adverbs to a minimum. Don’t use verbiage, which is excessive and unnecessary language. Watch out for info dumps. And avoid clichés.
But why should we avoid clichés? What’s a cliché, anyway, and how do we identify them in our writing? What if a cliché is the best way to express something?
Let’s explore these questions and determine whether it’s really necessary to avoid clichés.
Continue reading HERE
The Two Basic Rules of Editing (and the Rookie Mistake) – by Jane Friedman…
Today’s guest post is excerpted from How to Work With a Writer by editor Allegra Huston
__________
Many people who find themselves in an editorial role make the same mistake. They think they’re supposed to fix the book. They’ve identified the problems and they expend a lot of mental energy on coming up with solutions.
The classic version of this is the film development executive who tells you to put in a car chase (yes, it’s happened to me).
The story is sagging, the pace is dragging: you need some excitement! In this case, the car chase solution is like a sugar hit: a rush followed by dissatisfaction.
Far better to address the underlying story issues—but it’s hard to do that if a car chase, or some other plastered-on idea, is occupying the center of the discussion.
