Hobbies

As many authors are fond of stating, “Ideas are all around!” when asked to be more specific. Well, in a way, that’s true. Ideas ARE all around. You just have to know how and where to look for them. If anything, you will have to read like a writer.

Reading like a writer means focusing on items that catch your attention, make you wonder, or make you angry or happy. So after you’ve read the paper or a magazine, don’t throw it out or put it aside yet. If that paper or magazine belongs to you, go back and mark or clip stuff that caught your attention and held it. Perhaps you read the entire article or skimmed it for information that mattered to you.

Chances are that you may have come across a sentence or paragraph that stated an idea much too briefly in passing. But there was something about it that engaged your curiosity and for a few seconds, raised questions. Perhaps you felt that it was too bad that the author did not explain his or her idea just a little further. Pay attention because this may be just the idea that you can develop into an article, story or book with more research.

First impressions count in writing too! So it is always a good idea to carefully check documents such as letter, reports, and proposals before submitting them. Below are five of the most common errors.

1. The document isn’t tailored for its audience. For example, a proposal does not speak to a client in a “you” tone. Sometimes, it includes terms that a client may not understand. After giving your document some time to cool off, reread it as your client would. Remember to mark jargon and underline unclear sentences.

2. The document isn’t organized well. In other words, its paragraphs do not flow smoothly from one to the next. That is, a given paragraph may cover a totally different aspect instead of clarifying a point. This problem can be fixed or avoided altogether by numbering paragraphs in a draft and writing a few words that summarize what you said. What you’ll have is a quick outline of the entire document. You’ll also see any organizational flaws in a glance and be able to deal with them directly.

At first, I noticed that I could have written many of the articles that appeared in Instructor magazine. Having earned a B.A. in elementary education and taught for a short time, I had some experience in dealing with challenges in the classroom and wanted to capitalize on it. I also read writer’s magazines and reference books, which encouraged me even more.

Initially, my biggest challenge was summoning courage to just go ahead and describe my idea to the magazine’s editor. My query letter began with a hook that lead to my working title and a brief description of the article’s contents. Toward the end of this letter, I explained why my related experience made me the perfect writer for the job! A few weeks later, a reply arrived from the magazine. They were interested in seeing my article and would I please submit it on speculation.

So I wrote an article, which filled a single page, and submitted it. A few weeks later, it came back in the mail bearing a rejection slip. Feeling discouraged, but unwilling to give up, I developed and submitted an idea to another education magazine. I really felt good about this idea. Evidently, the editors did as well and a few months later, accepted my article, paying 75 dollars for it. Subsequently, I submitted ideas to Instructor and after a few more months, saw my work featured in the magazine.

Want to write an article or book, but are stuck for ideas? Here are a few practical ways to awaken that muse.

- Keep a writer’s journal. A hardcover notebook will do nicely for keeping entries on a variety of topics including, but are not limited to: problems, daydreams, quotes, bits of conversations from “real life” or your characters, character sketches, anecdotes about you, your family and friends, jokes and quotes that caught your attention, names of books that you plan to read and have read, the newest craze, letters that you wish you wrote to the editor but didn’t, reasons why something did or didn’t work out, musings about trends, the good old days, cute quotes from the kids, frustrations, interesting stuff that you heard on the radio or TV. For example, I heard about a guy who was shaving his head while driving at 80 mph on the highway and another who was changing his wardrobe while driving at about the same speed on a radio talk show. These tidbits might be great triggers for a short story or novel, especially if you can create answers explaining why and/or how these guys could do that.

Maybe you should write a book! This is not as difficult as it sounds. You’re already an expert in a field by virtue of your work experience and/or academic credentials. And even more important, you are enthusiastic about your field and would like to share it.

Fine, but with whom? Decide what specific group of people, such as lawyers or gardeners or teachers or social workers or colleagues, as an audience for your book. What would your audience be most interested in and why? How would your book address that audience’s needs?

Next, make a list of tentative titles for your book and keep adding to it. Words such as “how to” are effective. Find other possibilities by visiting a bookstore and browsing in the stacks of related books. Pay attention to books that you pick up and leaf through and glance at their tables of contents. What material do those books cover and who are their publishers? What aren’t they covering? How could YOU fill in what is missing?

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Suppose he or she wanted a book in your topic, but was unable to locate it in a library or bookstore. What material would he or she be most interested in?

Have you ever had a student write to tell you they’ve achieved Grade A’s at exams? I have, and one of them was a grade A in English!

The apostrophe seems to be the most misunderstood punctuation mark in the English language, and yet its use is really very simple.

There’s really only one rule: an apostrophe is used to replace one or more missing letters.

Nothing more - nothing less.

Contractions

A contraction is a word that is a shortened form of on or several words through the removal of one or more letters.

The following are examples of commonly used contractions.

Do not -> Don’t
Did not -> Didn’t
Can not -> Can’t
Was not -> Wasn’t
We have -> We’ve
They are -> They’re
It is -> It’s
It has -> It’s

The following are examples of contractions used within a sentence:

The boy is walking the dog -> The boy’s walking the dog
I did not steal the buns -> I didn’t steal the buns
They were not walking to town -> They weren’t walking to town

In the 7th grade I wanted to be an architect but it turns out math is involved. Who knew? My 8th grade English teacher talked me into working on the school newspaper and I was hooked. It seemed like easy lifting compared to architecture.

This quote from newspaper columnist Russell Baker sort of sums up how I felt about writing as a career:

“The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.”

Baker and I, however, soon discovered that being an adequate writer is hard work, never mind being a great writer and doing it consistently. I thought that if I could speak the mother tongue that I could be a great writer. Wrong. But thank goodness Baker and I didn’t know that when we decided what we would do with our lives.

According to one of my previous articles, whenever a Southerner says “Y’all watch this,” get out of the way because those are probably the last words he will ever say.

Well, I’m a Southerner. I used to live in the southeastern United States, but I moved to the southeast of China. And, I’m about to say the magic words:

Y’all watch this.

The word is “week.” If I want to talk about more than one week, like what I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ll use weeks. No apostrophe. If I want to talk about something belonging to a week, such as “last week’s newsletter,” I’ll use an apostrophe.

That’s the rule. If it’s a noun, s makes it plural and apostrophe-s makes it possessive. It’s just that simple.

If I were still in the US, and I wanted one of those fancy carved signs that are so common on southern lawns, it would not read “The LaRocca’s.” The LaRocca’s what? His lawn? His sign? That apostrophe makes it singular possessive, so The LaRocca (one person) is surely claiming ownership of something. If that wasn’t his intent, and he whacked in an apostrophe anyway, he’s an idiot.

The purpose of this article is to consider Print-On-Demand publishing as an alternative for the aspiring author. It has its strengths and its weaknesses. You may wonder as you begin reading this, but in the end I’m going to say some good things about it.

The title explains the technology. The way that literature has traditionally been printed involves running many copies simul- taneously in order to bring the price per copy down. Smaller print runs, such as advertising, brochures, or concert programs, cost more per copy because they are small print runs. Until recently, printing a single book was all but unthinkable.

In the case of novels, the traditional print publisher begins by printing several thousand copies. His goal is to run off the smallest number of copies he can while getting the best possible price per copy.

These books are then sent to bookstores, which tend to prefer something along the lines of what has succeeded before. The remainder sits in a warehouse somewhere. Perhaps to be shipped as the orders come in, perhaps to be joined by any “remaindered” copies the bookstores couldn’t move.

Don’t they drive you nuts?

You can visit all the rules of style you want, and you can read all the books and articles you want. You’ll still be confused. You’ll see inconsistency. You’ll see experts who don’t agree with each other. And, you’ll pull out your hair. Unless you’re me, since my hair’s falling out all by itself. I think it’d do that even if I weren’t an editor hunting down errant commas.

Well, folks, here are some rules. A bare minimum. Internalize these and ignore everybody else.

(1) Never put a comma between a subject and a verb. It’s always wrong. The dog, barked. What is that? Idiocy. Read it aloud, and pause at the comma. Don’t you feel stupid?

(2) If you want to separate a clause, put a comma on both sides of it. Otherwise, no commas at all. “The dog, who held a bone in his mouth, ran to the porch.” See how there’s a comma on both sides? That’s because you could skip that whole clause entirely and it’d still be a complete sentence. “The dog ran to the porch.”