Who is Debby Buchanan?

She's the minx who thinks she can entice me to join Twitter. She gave the Web 2.0 service this blog's email address. The message subject reads: Debby Buchanan wants to keep up with you on Twitter. Oh, how provocative!

This is exactly how I was lured to LinkedIn a few months ago when 'lert reader Missy Frye sent a similar message from that business networking site. There I discovered groups with discussions for writers and editors. I searched all the ones I've joined, but no Debby Buchanan appears, not even in the alumni group where I asked for help with Twitter!

So, are you the lone Debby on LinkedIn with no connection to me that I know about? The mystery writer/editor? The one in Kansas? The one in New Jersey and Facebook? You're not in my enormous email address book, at least not by name. Oh, horrors, do you write one of the blogs in my "Reciprocity" list, and I've forgotten the person tied to the title?

Sheesh. It will be easier to just go join Twitter and probably then I'll find out who kicked me in my writing pants. I need to anyway, so I can follow the addictive #queryfails conversation in which agents publish lousy queries and tell why they suck. The queries, not the agents. Maybe I'll start an #editfails.

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April Fool's Day Prep

Tomorrow we celebrate the feast of the fool. "All Fool's Day" might be a better name, for we can all be fooled on April first and every day. As Mark Twain said, "This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other 364."

One of the best roundups of information on the history of April Fool's Day is BBC NEWS | Special Report | 1998 | The silly season. In journalism "the silly season" is August, when people are on vacation, news is scarce, but advertising continues and blank space around the ads must be filled with a little text and a few photos.

The Internet became such a fertile field for hoaxes or "Urban Legends", that entire websites are devoted to perpetrating the jokes--or--to debunking them. See Snopes.com for the most prominent of the latter. For hoaxes specific to email, try Hoax Buster.

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Text Analysis Tools

We don't always say exactly what we mean. This is a problem for a website owner who wants the site to be readable and search engine friendly. Enter text analysis. Topicalizer is a free service that automatically analyzes a document specified by a URL (a web page) or plain text.

It spits out a report regarding word, phrase, and text structure and provides a variety of useful informational tidbits including the following: word, sentence, and paragraph counts; collocations (a sequence of words or terms which appear together more often than would be expected by chance); syllable structure; lexical density; keywords; readability; and a short abstract on what the given text is about (supposedly). The abstract part works less well when analyzing a web page because the tool also reads the semantic portions of images and advertising from the code that makes up the page.

You might think it's only useful for buzzword bingo (search engine optimization), but the main page contains a window into which you can paste any text. If your writing is online, you can direct the analyzer to a particular web page. It returns quite a bit of information on readability, including the usual indexes.

Using such a tool to develop keywords for your website, however, is an ass backwards approach that won't really help at the front end. You want to know what keywords people use in search engines to look for the type of information your site could offer.

Hint: peek at the metatags for your strongest rivals to get a better idea of what to use. Another tactic is to play with search engines, plugging in various keywords and combinations and noting which ones bring up the kind of company you'd like your site to keep or your strongest competition. Then tinker with your site and Topicalize it again.

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Find Professional Editors

If you are wondering about ellipses and em dashes, number agreement, the use of "there is" and other matters of writing style, but don't know where to turn for help, here's a list of places to find experienced and qualified editorial professionals. Resources courtesy Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, Author of Getting Started as a Freelance Copyeditor.

Editorial Freelancers Association membership directory
http://www.the-efa.org/dir/search.php

EFA Job List, post a job description and get responses
http://www.the-efa.org/job/joblist.php

Directory of Copyediting-L Freelancers
http://www.copyediting-l.info/freelance.html

Copyediting, post a job description and get responses
http://jobs.copyeditor.com/home/index.cfm?site_id=502

Council of Science Editors manuscript services
http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/jobbank/services.cfm

Board of Editors in the Life Sciences
http://www.bels.org/findeditor/bels_roster.cfm

Editors of the Bay Area Forum:
http://www.editorsforum.org/search_editor.php

San Diego Professional Editors Network:
http://www.sdpen.com/find/find.php

Society for Technical Communication, post a job
http://jobs.stc.org/home/index.cfm?site_id=360

LinkedIn (search on editor or editing)
http://www.linkedin.com/

American Society for Indexing Locator
http://www.asindexing.org/custom/locator/

The ASI Jobs Hotline, post a job and get responses
https://www.asindexing.org/i4a/forms/form.cfm?id=41

Editors' Association of Canada
http://www.editors.ca/hire/index.html

Society for Editors and Proofreaders (UK)
http://www.sfep.org.uk/pub/dir/directory.asp

You might also want to check out any individual editor with a simple search on Google, a check at Preditors and Editors (http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/peeslg.htm), and the local BBB and Chamber of Commerce where the editor does business. If he or she offers no physical address, move on to the next one on your list. These are some tips from my FREE article on How to Avoid Scams, found on the Writing Help page.

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The End

YouTube - UR END IS NEER (SIGN #1)

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Get Ready to Twitter

Twitter limits its twits to 140 characters. I'm ready. After nearly five years of blogging: devising succinct but SEO politically correct titles and often packing the most into the fewest words possible, sometimes composing on the fly, I can Twitter. Microblogging is posting on Twitter and similar ultra-short form Web 2.0 services.

In recent months with my post titles and snippets appearing in RSS feed-delivered apps on others' blogs and websites, I've become keenly conscious of the value of a well-designed hook. My decades-long appreciation for newspaper headline writers deepened into near-idolatry. We are not worthy!

This post is sparked by an article in today's newspaper [Ah, caught me! Yes, I sneaked over to Starbucks after all--canyoutell?] about stars hiring ghostwits. Twitter ghostwriters. That is exactly the idea I had during the visit in which I devised the 2 Rules for Starbucks. I was going to call it something like "Web 2.0 Persona Management".

But first I have to learn how to manage a Twitter account. Stay tuned and get ready to follow.

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Casual Friday Jitters

It's casual Friday and I'm too rattled to write intelligently, I fear. Not that it ever prevented me from spouting off in the past. Why am I all shook up? Several reasons:

* first Inspiration message just went out
* someone said this webpage has "too many icons"
* partly into 2666 I'm liking it (895 pp.)
* 2666 is due back to the library Monday
* invite to 376 MyBlogLog Fans to sign up for Inspiration left out the fact that it is #FREE#

This is how I calm myself (in addition to avoiding Starbucks and caffeine today):

^ newsletters seldom receive positive feedback
^ continue plans to add more space to the page
^ relax and enjoy the book I thought I'd hate
^ see if the library will renew the lending period
^ sigh!

Sorry, today that's all I got.

Oh, incidentally, I spotted an error in 2666 on p. 305. Describing the landscape of northern Mexico, near the border with Arizona, it reads "Past the hills, he guessed, was the dessert."

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Edit or Critique

Which comes first: copyediting, critique, or proofreading? What kind of help to seek for your writing seems to baffle people just starting out. By the time you're an established writer or author, you'll have many others (agents, editors, co-writers, critique groups) to assist. But right at the beginning, the process can be confusing.

Let me help make it simpler: a proofreading comes last (but it may not be the only proofreading a piece of work will have). Why? Because it is even easier to create typos, spelling and grammar errors in rewriting or during editing than at any other time. When you're in the final polishing stage of writing, you've already looked at the copy so many times that you've become blind, especially to repeated words and and to typographical errors. Your mind knows what the writing is supposed to say; it often overrides what your eyes see.

What about the decision on whether to ask for a critique or editing (any level, developmental, or substantive)? The answer depends on the kind of reservations you have about your work. If you're questioning the value or wondering if it has a chance of selling, then editing will not answer your questions. A critique estimates the current saleability, strengths, and weaknesses of a manuscript.

First novels are especially in need of a dispassionate, objective view by someone with whom you have no other relationship than business. Your friends and family will usually praise your work; and unless they are publishing professionals, they probably don't know what to look for or how to evaluate the work, how to feed back useful advice, or how to deliver bad news.

Many times in critiques, I've found the major problem to be a need for editing, but the authors were completely unaware of how inaccurate the writing was in the mechanical aspect. (Great story, lousy writing!) A new author recently told me, "An agent is interested in my book, but she said she won't read the whole manuscript until I have it professionally edited."

Nonfiction writers are usually less unsure about structure and content and more in need of editing services. One exception is in writing essays, which need to contain certain elements and follow a logical structure. The Bay Area Editors' Forum explains copyediting levels.

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Writing Accent vs Dialect

"How much dialect should I use in my dialogue?" That's a question often heard in writing groups. Another variation is, "Will people get tired of reading about a character with an accent?" Two different confusions muddle the waters here. One concerns whether you're asking about dialogue or narration. The other is the difference between accent and dialect.

Put most simply, an accent is only the way words are pronounced whereas a dialect concerns word choices. A dialect also involves grammar, idioms, sentence construction. If you wanted someone to turn off the overhead lights, would you say "Flip (flick, hit, etc.) that switch"? If you are from the deep southern U.S., you might say "Mash that switch." That's dialect. Written with an accent, it might read, "Mash dat switch."

Dialect and accent are ways of showing rather than telling readers about characters and settings. Accent must be shown by alternative spellings that demonstrate how the words sound. A little goes a long way (cliché!), I think, especially in dialogue. Establish how characters speak when first introduced, then let readers carry on the accent in their minds.

Using dialect and/or an accent in narration is tricky to pull off, and it's not a technique I'd recommend that beginners try. It is tied to point of view. For example, Robert Morgan's Gap Creek is written in first person, a story told by a southern woman, from her point of view and all in regional dialect. This is done so well that Morgan didn't need to display the heavy accent the characters would have had.

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Writers Inspiration Alert

A sign up form for the Inspiration series of weekly one-minute messages for writers is active in the top right web page header.

The first message you receive is a welcome (also inspirational). This week's note is about holding on to your dreams of being a published writer. I'm reaching out to touch you! Anticipate a gentle kick in your writing pants and a pat on the shoulder.

If you want to subscribe without visiting the website, Flare me through Feedburner (that's what they call emailing the author) or fire up your own email service, key in "SUB" in the subject line, and send the missive to editor[AT]writers-edge.info or to the usual Gmail address for this blog (Writers.Edge).

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Profit from the Recession

Write about all aspects of the current economic condition. You don't need to know high finance to find a timely article topic. Today's San Diego Union-Tribune carries a jobs supplement with three excellent employment articles by different non-staff writers. Diane Yohe's piece on coming jobs created by the federal stimulus package is a great example spinning gold from straw.

The article fills three half-page columns, about 30 inches in newspaper speak. A nice size for freelance work. In it Yohe quotes four local experts from Manpower Inc., San Diego Workforce Partnership, SDSU Research Director, and San Diego County Department of Public Works. She cites a multitude of numbers and facts from the San Diego Association of Governments, Summer Youth Program, and the federal government.

The meat of the piece for readers is in each expert's description of the kinds of jobs that will be created by the federal stimulus funding. It answers the target readers' deepest need and their question, "Where can I find a job?" Filling out the article is a sentence or two about each organization mentioned, giving readers a basic understanding of the perspective the quotations come from.

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Endorsements for Books

My first book endorsement appears with ones by David Brin and Mark Ellis, celebrity sci-fi authors. It's on the back cover of the newly released Gray Apocalypse. I'm not sure how to feel, especially with the creative misspelling of my first name. No one has ever left out the "r" and got the back end right. (It reads "Geoganna".)

Decades ago I developed immunity to seeing my name in a byline, but this is different. It's on the dust cover of a hardbound published book. Is that almost as good as having my own book published? Does it mean I've arrived? If so, the train was really late!

The quote is actually from the BlogCritics review I wrote last December. I remember a frisson of presentiment skittering through my body as I wrote the words. "That's a good quote," I thought. Apparently the publisher agreed.

But how do you get a testimonial or endorsement for your book?

• Sign up at WhoRepresents.com or PublishersMarketPlace.com to find agents, publishers and generally who is representing the person you'd like to contact.
• Too simple-sounding, but it works: Google them.
• Use an online phone book like Verizon's WhitePages.comAsk your friends. It's surprising how many know people who know people.
• Join LinkedIn and you'll undoubtedly discover how to get to the people you want to reach.

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World Water Day 2009

Your brain is bathed with water. Immersed. Fluid-filled. We write with our brains. Where would your brain be without an ample supply of water? A dried-up, shriveled walnut of concretized flesh. Arid. Devoid of thought, of words.




What a hideous picture. A world without words. A world without the pictures painted by words. Literature, information, intelligence and progress operate on the skids of water. Serve it. Save it. Spend it. Brave it. We have only a finite amount to enjoy, improve, and survive with.

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LinkedIn LIONs and Bahs!

Friends or "connections" on LinkedIn are more fraught with angst and danger than I ever imagined. Apparently there be LIONs lurking about. They are LinkedIn Open Networkers who will link to anyone. Reminds me of web link exchangers and equally without value.

I wrote about my near-escape from the folly of premature "unfriending". Activity on LinkedIn has progressed at a brisk pace since then. As I mentioned earlier this month, it really picked up when I joined a couple of groups and especially since participating in discussions.

The accelerating pace of requests for connections (becoming "friends") caused me to forget the management's admonitions to only link to people you really know. I accepted one from a person whose posts and profile I admired. A few days later came a querulous whine about being unable to see my connections when viewing my profile. He intimated I had a broken button and to let him know when it was fixed.

Broken button my skinny flat ass! I'd purposely set that feature to not reveal who is connected to me until I felt like it. Really, until I understood better what it is all about. I'm one who doesn't learn something until I try it out for myself, but then I try to play by the rules.

Others just barge in and set their own rules, apparently. That's what this guy is doing. He is there "to be seen" and to mine connections lists for people to link to his. I'm not quite sure why, but apparently there are those on LinkedIn who collect links like pockets accumulate lint.

It's a matter of selectivity and quality to me. Someone else might view this as snobbery and elitism, I guess. And I might do it differently if I were job hunting. I don't want to badger people to connect with me just because I want a big one (list) or think I can use them some day. And I certainly don't want someone else going through my connections and badgering me to introduce him so that he can continue burrowing through related social connections.

Speaking of related, I just noticed that I am only three links from the President. Yes! Seven of my connections are connected to his connections! Barach and me are like buddies! Quick, let me go join his group ... group ... groupie.

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Creative License to Kill Time

Isn't this too cute? I received it for entering a writing contest at the website Creativity Portal.

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REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS Mini-Review

REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS by Lisa Lutz didn't turn out to be chick-lit after all. More like aging girl gumshoe plays it for yucks. Apparently someone appreciates Lutz's sense of humor, because this is the third of a series about P.I. Izzy Spellman and her slightly dysfunctional family. No sex. No violence. Slight mystery. A few laughs. Really crazy expensive book cover.

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Casual Words in Writing

Casual clothing became 'Casual Friday'.

Then we had 'Casual Dining'.

Now comes on Sci-Fi.com, 'Casual Games'.

Dictionary definitions of casual from Answers.com:

adj.

1. Occurring by chance. See synonyms at chance.
2. 1. Occurring at irregular or infrequent intervals; occasional: casual employment at a factory; a casual correspondence with a former teacher.
   2. Unpremeditated; offhand: a casual remark.
3. 1. Being without ceremony or formality; relaxed: a casual evening with friends.
   2. Suited for everyday wear or use; informal.
4. Not serious or thorough; superficial: a casual inspection.
5. Showing little interest or concern; nonchalant: a casual disregard for cold weather.
6. Lenient; permissive: a casual attitude toward drugs.
7. Not close or intimate; passing: a casual acquaintance with avant-garde music.

I had a problem swallowing casual dining, but casual games absolutely sticks in my craw. As opposed to what--major league baseball? The Olympics?

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Tell us a Story

This Friday, as every year on the spring equinox, we celebrate

World Storytelling Day. It began in Sweden around 1991-92 and really took off in Australia (home of the consummate storytellers, the Aborigines):

In 1997, storytellers in Perth, Western Australia coordinated a five-week long Celebration of Story, commemorating March 20 as the International Day of Oral Narrators. At the same time, in Mexico and other South American countries, March 20 was already celebrated as the National Day of Storytellers.

So we salute the probable origin of all entertaining writing.

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Green Writers Make Gold

What I'm wishin' ye on St. Patrick's Day!

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VerveEarth for Writers

When Clayton Brown, CEO of VerveEarth contacted me about his new service for bloggers, which plots the content of the internet on an interactive map of the world, I asked him what's in it for writers?

VerveEarth is an entirely new way to surf the net. It shows spatial and geographic connections that a blog search engine could never reveal. He also told me:

VerveEarth provides a gateway to find bloggers around the world, and for writers to get noticed. On VerveEarth, a blogger in Fiji has just as much chance of getting noticed as a blogger in New York. The search interface we provide breaks down a lot of the barriers on the internet that make it tough for a lot of writers to get noticed. You can also find some really interesting and inspiring material as you cruise around the globe checking out blogs.

So there it is, straight from the mouth of the prez himself: get noticed and get inspired. Once the feeds from here were working again, VerveEarth allowed me to register. Looks like an interesting addition to the Web 2.0 world. See my widgetal thingie that I haven't yet figured out how to put into this blog (or any other place, for that matter).

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Writers Inspiration Coming Soon

You can sign up for email delivery of A Writer's Edge via Feedblitz in the right column. I'd really prefer you visit the web page, however. I put a lot of work into it.

I'm also putting work into something else you can subscribe to and have delivered by email: weekly one-minute inspirational messages for writers. I'm reaching out to touch you! Anticipate a gentle kick in your writing pants and a pat on the shoulder.

Soon I'll have a sign up on the site. When the feeds are working, I'll post again about this new service and maybe add it to the feed footer. If you can't wait, slip me a note with "SUB" in the Subject line. Send it to the editor[AT]writers-edge.info or writers.edge[AT]gmail.com and I'll hold a spot for you on the waiting list. I'll start sending the cheerful missives toward the end of this week.

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2666

"Remember that book, '2666' that I was all excited about and showed you the reviews of, and I read the precursor, sort of, and couldn't stand it?" I asked my friend Betsy who is one of the few people who keeps up with my stream of consciousness conversation style. "It finally came from the library and I started it, and it's just about the same and, oh, it's 895 pages!"

"And now you're sorry you started it?" she asked.

Even sorrier yesterday when I learned from the NY Times (at Starbucks, of course) that the author, Roberto Bolaño, won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction. Posthumously. Now I feel I must read it.

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LOLcat Spells

T-Shirts, Hoodies, & Tote Bags at Noisebot.com

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Pick on Me

This must be "Bash Georganna Week". When I posted my Starbucks Rules on a LinkedIn group, the first comment suggested that it is rude to eavesdrop on conversations. What? You can't help overhearing people talking right beside you, I thought; but I did not respond to that barb. There followed a flood of positive messages supporting my suggestions, offering more tips and exchanging interesting experiences.

Next came an email from "Richard Harrison", accurately pointing out a typo in something I had written about myself (I writes...) without telling me where he'd seen the flub. I violated my practice of not responding personal messages from unknown sources. I acknowledged his superior proofreading skill and begged more info. I should add that he included a phone number which I will not publish here, but I wasn't about to invest in a long distance call, cheapskate that I am. Before he kindly responded, I found the goof and corrected it.

On the whole, though, I appreciate having practices questioned and errors pointed out. It keeps me on my toes (cliché!) and pricks any unwarranted ego inflation.

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Mini-Review: MATALA

When I read the hardbound version of this book last year, I didn't think much of the slim volume. Ditto author Craig Holden's THE NARCISSIST'S DAUGHTER, which came out as a paperback then. Republishing the same sad story does nothing to improve it.

Holden does excel at developing intricate, twisting plots within plots about twisted people. And he writes short books (240 for the trade ppb. of THE NARCISSIST'S DAUGHTER and 180 for MATALA). The adjectives sick and perverted come to mind concerning the characters of both books and psychological thriller definitely pertains to MATALA. The latter is set in Italy and Greece, which makes the book minimally more interesting.

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2 Rules for Starbucks

Hi. I'm Georganna, and I'm addicted to Starbucks. Hanging at the local coffee shop isn't a total time sink, and it can be the source of good in a writer's life. This morning, lacking a free newspaper to read, I noticed a couple of men talking business. One appeared to be a marketing consultant, advising the other on building up his online presence.

Hello? I thought I might learn something, so I scooted closer.

Here's what I discovered:

1. never visit Starbucks without business cards
2. always eavesdrop

By the time I finished my tall, brewed, hazelnut & room for milk, I'd overheard practically a plea for someone to fill a need with a writing job that I could easily perform. And me without a card! This isn't the first time I've had to let pass an opportunity overheard at Starbucks.

In addition to finding freelance (nonfiction) writing jobs, fiction writers can mine conversations for character studies, even plot lines. I must admit listening to the adolescents can be a painful experience, but if you're writing Y.A., you need to know the lingo and style. A friend (also at Starbucks) clued me in to the tidbit that Generation Text no longer posts notices at head height: they put them on the ground because their peer group is always looking downward at cell phones.

A third, more personal, lesson learned this morning is that if I had wanted to jump into the overheard conversation and offer my services, it would have been mighty handy to have had a laptop with wireless Internet connection with which to demonstrate my talents or abilities.

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Free eBooks Week

Sorry, sorry, I'm a little tardy. This is Read an E-book Week. To celebrate, Lida E. Quillen, Publisher at Twilight Times Books, has been offering free downloads in .PDF or .HTML formats (not just for eBook readers). See TTB - Free eBooks.

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Plink a Post?

From the Buzz Blog:

The fact that there are tens of thousands of results for "blogger's block" suggests that more than a few of you have struggled to think of what to say on your blog at one time or another. If that sounds like you, you might want to take a look at Plinky.

Every day we provide a prompt (i.e. a question or challenge) and you answer. We make it simple to add rich media and share your answers on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Depending on the prompt, answers contain rich media elements like maps, photos, lists and cover art for books, movies and albums. It's easy to tell Plinky that you use Blogger and all your answers posted through Plinky can go right to your blog....

What's next? Widgets that deliver ready-made blog posts directly into your blog? Oh, wait. That was invented several years ago, producing thousands (millions?) of the most uninteresting content sites in cyberspace!

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Cox on Self-Publishing

From the latest newsletter by the founder and director of the Midwest Book Review, MBR: Jim Cox Report, March 2009, contemplating causes for the rising tide of self-published books submitted:

Most people write and publish books for a profit, for a cause, or for the simple fun of it. Then there are we who are driven to write and/or publish by irresistible compulsions and by the demands of our own egos to share with the world what we think about this or that subject or issue, concern or conceit.

You can find Cox's monthly reports at MBR: Jim Cox Reports Index and subscribe by email to: mbr[AT]execpc.com.

And, oh, this happens to be my debut month as a reviewer at MBR. See MBR: Reviewer's Bookwatch, March 2009 for my first clumsy attempt on the Reviewer's Choice page. Search with your browser on "The Book of Chameleons" to find my contribution.

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Book Review: Carpentaria: A Novel by Alexis Wright

Finally! I completed a somewhat literary review of Carpentaria: A Novel. This was the first review that I enjoyed laboring over. It begins:

Part mystical, part practical, an absorbing and eventually enthralling view of Australia and Aboriginals from the inside out - that is what Alexis Wright has achieved with her second novel, Carpentaria. Any depiction of the indigenous people of Australia would be sadly lacking if it did not point out the injustices of dispossession and prejudice visited on one of the oldest cultures in the world. Wright is aptly armed to tell their tales, as she is a social activist for their cause and a member of the Waanyi, who inhabit the real Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Queensland.

Read the rest of the review of an intriguing international bestseller on BLOGCRITICS MAGAZINE: A Sinister Cabal of Superior Writers, in the Books section, edited by Gordon Hauptfleisch.

Other books set in Australia:

The Thorn Birds
Colleen Mccullough

In a Sunburned Country In a Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson

Mutant Message Down Under, Tenth Anniversary Edition Mutant Message Down Under,
Marlo Morgan

Jessica Jessica
Bryce Courtenay

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International Women's Day 2009

International Women's Day 2009

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Famous Author

Title and copyright notice spotted on the web:

Unto the Breach!

Posted on 2007-07-13

Copyright © 2006 Your name here.

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Blogger Blogging Tips

Blogger lacks underline and strikethrough features, at least in the antiquated version that I use. So how did I accomplish doing just that? In a moment. Strikethrough is written as one word. In typography, it's also called strikeout and underline, underscore. In blogging, strikeouts express a first thought or a notion or emotion you want to reveal on the sly. Use in moderation, like adverbs.

To accomplish such typographical feats, you must be able to handle HTML code, but this isn't difficult. If you only write posts in the Compose mode, click on Blogger's "Edit Html" tab to see the code that creates links and special effects in the text.

I can't remember how to display the source code within the post, but to accomplish an underline, surround the text with "u" tags and for strikethrough, the tags are "s". HTML tags are special codes enclosed by <> to open and the same with a forward slash (/) to end. Learn more at Wikipedia Strikethrough. It has links to good pages on typography and HTML coding.

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Adverbs Banned

What's wrong with adverbs? Nothing, when they are used in moderation and judiciously. Whoops! There's one: judiciously. In this case it means "with good judgment". It modifies the verb used, telling how. I could have written:

Nothing, when they are used moderately and with good judgment.

However, that isn't exactly what I meant. There is a difference between moderately and in moderation. I want you to avoid an excess of adverbs. How can I get away with it when the editor slashes up your manuscript if you use adverbs? Because in my judgment, this post does not contain an excess of adverbs, and the word was an appropriate example. It fit the sentence and I did not throw it in on a whim or because I could not express the thought in any other manner.

The problem with adverbs is one that writers often create for themselves. Too many adverbs result in flabby writing. Sloppy writing. Weak writing. Passive writing. Whatever you call it, depending on adverbs is using a crutch instead of finding descriptive verbs and an active voice. That's why editors cut them out and send your work back for rewriting. Or worse yet, they dump your submission in the circular file. Consider:

The man walked drunkenly.
-- or --
The drunk lurched.

I was threatened by the cat hissing angrily.
-- or --
The angry cat threatened me with a hiss.

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Writers Time Binds

One major problem for freelance writers is uneven work flow. It's always feast or famine, to cop yet another cliche´. Either you're overloaded handling inquiries, ongoing projects, and rush jobs or your short of cash to pay bills and rushing around to scrounge up more moolah short term.

Today, it's the former for me. I've juggled three streams of communication about widely differing jobs. Just look how late it's caused me to post. I try to get something out early in the morning.

But today I began with a trip to Starbucks, knowing some of what the day held. Then back to the office promptly at 9 a.m. to balance a task vital to a client with setting up one important to my checking account. Inevitably other inquiries tumble into the inbox. When someone wants to know right now about a potential job, it is difficult to ignore. Ah, the curse of an always on, cable modem!

If I weren't aware of every email that arrives, I wouldn't see ones I feel need an immediate reply. But then, I was using email to handle the first two jobs, so how could I not see a new request?

After noon, I forced myself outside into the glorious California spring day, fragrant with mock orange blossoms, to shoehorn in the first of two daily perambulations for my weight and health. I suppose I could have skipped the soap opera hour, but I ate lunch while keeping abreast of my 40+ years of addiction to Days of Our Lives. And after several hours of combing someone's background, trying to create a resume that fits a job description, my eyes were crossing.

I know some of you only check email at fixed intervals or certain times. Others discipline themselves to work diligently on just one task at a time. That often doesn't suit my temperament. I enjoy variety. I need it, although after a point, multitasking lowers quality, I'll admit. Lists of tasks to do and schedulers (paper or software) help keep our lives manageable, but nothing can even out a freelancer's work load. Our only control is the ability to say, "No, thank you. I'm booked full right now."

You can stretch out the work to fit time, or a main dish to feed more, but I haven't found a way to stretch time. Have you?

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LinkedIn Update & Forewords

Self-promotional tool on LinkedIn: Groups' discussions, news, and job postings. More specifically, in reviewing a new contact's profile, I noted a group named Informed Ideas for Writers. I had to join to learn about it and found people using it to direct others to blog posts and articles as well as asking questions to which I could contribute bon mots of information. Tiny tidbits of assistance.

Perhaps I'll add a discussion point with a link to yesterday's post about the book on book reviewing. One of the most interesting parts of that, by the way, is the long foreword written by James Cox, founder and editor of Midwest Book Review, one of the largest such operations. It's also old and respected. Cox's cogent remarks then lead me to wonder about writing forewords. If you have this honor/task, here are a couple of resources for guidance:

How to Write a Foreword by Jesse Jayne Rutherford. It is a .PDF file that downloads, but you can read the same material in text for from a cache at Google.

Foreword March! How to Write a Fantastic Foreword by Ami Hendrickson on her lovely blog Muse Ink.

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Book Reviewing

You might wonder what someone who has reviewed books for years would want with a book on reviewing. Well ... I am tired of trying to understand how to do it like the big girls by studying New York Times reviews. Some of the information in this little tome by Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards did surprise me. Like, that I already must be a Big Time reviewer and simultaneously an amateur, but then, I'm also a blogger, so they cut me some slack.

No, seriously, I did learn quite a bit about constructing a review and enjoyed all the rest: controversies (who knew?), starting a web site, lists of outlets for both print and online reviews. I could have done without the judgmental attitude but hey, it's their book, just like this is my blog and I'll review their book as I wish. They should just be happy I didn't call them on the gross grammar mistakes involving singular subjects and plural personal pronouns and use quotations to illustrate my point, as they instruct.

Sadly, the next book in my stack to be reviewed is an ARC with a stern notice to not quote from it. Right there, I'm going to violate the steps Edwards and Calvani lay out for writing a decent review. And I really want to do right by Alexis Wright's CARPENTARIA. The language in the novel is a large part of its charm.

This blog post is not really a review, more of a mention of another reference for writers interested in how the publishing industry works. And don't think reviews don't play a major role in book sales, so it is good for writers, especially self-publishers, to learn how to treat reviewers.

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Writing Business: IRS Deductions

"It's a tax write-off!" I cringe whenever I see or hear that sentence. No such animal exists. You cannot "write it off your taxes", as in subtract from the amount of tax your owe. You can, however, deduct the cost of many items, services, subscriptions and memberships from your writing business income, which eventually reduces your taxable amount. Deductions are entered on Schedule C prior to calculating how much tax you may owe. For more tax tips for writers, see the free article, I.R.S. for Writers.

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