Butterflies Flutter By

Marty’s Muse

Something to think about . . .

Nov 2010

Do you want to be a better writer? Three things you must first do, Grasshopper. You must Read, Watch, and Listen. No, this is not a “wake up and smell the roses” moment. This is a “make your writing come to life” moment.

Read – for entertainment and relaxation, of course. But you must also read with the eye of the critic, the editor, the writer. Re-read all or part of your favorite book or story. Read it as if you had to find every example of poor usage, grammar, or punctuation. I’ll just bet you found at least one sentence you could make better.

Read outside your genre. Just for the exercise, read something from a genre you usually prefer not to read. Analyze (not “criticize”) and compare as you read: lyrical description vs. short, spare description, etc.

Watch – I recommend old black and white movies because you don’t have the distractions of colorful glitz and glitter, modern technical effects, and computer-made enhancements. It’s bare storytelling. As you watch, think about the different ways to tell a story: book vs. movie or play. Compare character and scene development, dialogue, setting and its influence on your perception of the story.

I also suggest you become an unrepentant voyeur. Now, don’t go peeking at windows. But wherever you are, watch people. How do they interact; how do they talk? Observe mannerisms. Notice small details. Think: how would I write this scenario?

Listen—to what is going on around you. Just exactly what does a brook sound like when it’s babbling? Listen. It will come to you.

How do people talk; what do they sound like when they talk? What do they talk about? Notice phrasing and pacing of “real” dialogue and how they influence or frame the conversation. Listen for small sounds around you. Do they alter or intrude upon your perception of the scene? Now draw the scene with words.

Becoming a better writer involves more than simply writing. You must know the basics of the craft, of course, and hone them. But you must also hone the senses: the standard five and that unique sixth sense—call it intuition, call it perception, call it “whatyouwill”—that innate ability to convey image and thought through word. To hone that sense, you have to Read, Watch, and Listen like a writer.

About the title of this article: Every book, article or seminar I’ve seen says every story must start with a good hook. That one is pretty good, don’t you think? Not that it has much to do with the article. And that’s the point. If you take the dictates as—well, Dictates—you’ve missed the point. I think of them more like guidelines. Know the rules, apply them to your writing; but apply them in ways appropriate to what you are writing.

Best to all, and,

Just Keep Writing!

Marty “I-read-you” G.

Life’s Like That, Sometimes

Marty’s Muse

Sept 2010

Something to think about …

Life’s Like That, Sometimes

Okay, yes, the past few weeks have been a bit hectic, thanks for asking. So this month I’m taking a free turn and re-circulating a previous entry. Here is a list of (some) of my favorite websites for authors, edited and updated—sort of:

Favorite Web Sites

[A partial list]:

· Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

• Lots of info here: http://www.writing-world.com/index.shtml

· Dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

· The Word Detective: http://www.word-detective.com/

· Online Thesaurus: http://thesaurus.reference.com/

· Get some free business cards at http://www.vistaprint.com

· Writer’s Digest: http://www.writersdigest.com

· Writer’s Digest 101 best sites for writers http://www.writersdigest.com/101BestSites

· OWL, the Purdue Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

· Grammar Errors: http://www.grammarerrors.com/siteindex.html

· Guide to Grammar and Writing: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm

· and the companion page, Principles of Composition: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/composition.htm

· Strunk and White online: http://www.bartelby.net/141/

o Here is the entire volume in PDF format: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~jms/doc/elos.pdf

o Find a summary of the rules here: http://www.tcnj.edu/~penny/cmsc485/strunk_summary.html

· Extraordinary Literary Journeys: http://www.inkwaterpress.com/index.php

· Adventures in Reading For Lovers of Fiction: http://tri-studio.com/index.html

· Writing advice and more: http://www.writeradvice.com/index.html

· Over 800 pages about writing: http://www.write101.com/

· How To Do It Frugally: http://www.carolynhowardjohnson.redenginepress.com/

· The Write News: http://www.writenews.com/

· Try Writing on the Run: http://www.writingontherun.com/welcome.html

· Wizard of a resource: http://wordwizard.com/indexresources.htm

· Michael Quinion writes on international English: http://www.worldwidewords.org/

· Submission service: http://www.writersrelief.com/index.asp

· Professional e-zine for writers: http://www.writer-on-line.com/index.html

· Another e-zine: http://www.writersweekly.com/

· Educating writers: http://www.writersbreak.com/

Trim the fat!

Trim the fat!

Summer’s nearly over. Is your current project wearing it’s bikini body, or is it still packing a few pounds of last winter’s over-indulgence in words? Time to trim the fat, get that project honed-down to fighting weight and beach-perfect body.

Every short writer (short stories, short features, short essays) knows that wordiness can kill a submission. Strunk, and White, in their treatise on style admonish, “Omit needless words.” Shakespeare wrote “Brevity is the soul of wit.” In his “Sweet Thursday,” Steinbeck puts it another way, through the voice of one of his characters, “I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

Is your work full of hooptedoodle? (Define that any way you like.)

Okay. Maybe. Mine too—sometimes. So what’s the solution? How do we trim the fat? Ken Rand, in his concise “The 10% Solution” puts it simply: Cut ten percent. First then, I suppose we ought to attempt to differentiate between what is and what isn’t “fat.” We want to “trim the fat without cutting the meat.” We can all probably agree on things like redundancies, bloated phrases, too many examples, too much description. Do a quick scan. You might be able to lop 5-10% right there. Let’s fine tune that, though, take it a little farther. Our editing goal is to be accurate, clear, brief. Yes, even novels. Think about what makes you stop reading. Some of the best advice I ever got was “Leave out the stuff readers skip.”

Another great piece of advice was avoid adverbs. Do a search-find in your document for “ly” I’ll bet you found a lot. Now go back and replace those adverbs with strong, active verbs. The same for most adjectives. Pepper your writing instead with solid, vivid nouns and verbs. That said, not all modifiers are bad, are they? Well, no. It might be important to know the get-away car is blue.

Exercise: take one short writing example or excerpt, up to 1000 words for instance, and deleted every word ending in “ly.” How much ground did you gain? Did you reduce the example by 10%? Good. There’s more to cut, so let’s make a list. Remember, we strive for accuracy, clarity, and brevity. We are in “editor” mode here. Think of it as the need to justify every word to the Boss. What to look for (you can use your word processor’s search-find to great advantage here):

1. Eliminate redundancies and bloated descriptions – “He ran quickly” is the same as “He dashed.”

2. Delete adverbs (“ly”); reduce adjectives. Less is more. Don’t use two words where one will do.

3. Examine every instance of “to be,” especially was and were. These two verb forms often indicate passive voice. For stronger writing, avoid passive voice. (As in “Mistakes were made.”)

4. “That” indicates that there might be a problem. You can get rid of it most of the time. (Or, “That indicates a problem.” Cutting four words reduced the sentence by 50%.)

5. “Of” - The second sentence in item 4 above can be re-phrased: “In general, you can delete it.” (Four words, 40%). Still, I wouldn’t write America’s United States, not without a good reason.

6. Use only “said” as the attributive in dialogue. (If you’ve wiped out most “ly” words, you may have satisfied this all ready.)

7. “By” often indicates a problem area. “By the time” could be reduced to “when.” However, if accuracy and clarity depend upon knowing it was the bus and not the train—well, that is where you, as writer, must decide.

8. Him and her – when used as modifiers. Not talking about gender here; talking about redundancy. “His car was blue” (passive voice) or “he had a blue car”?

9. –ing – okay, it’s a gerund, whatever that is. I leave it to you to look up. They are not bad words, but they slow things down, and if you can find a better way to write the sentence, good.

10. “Like” – Like everyone, I like a good simile like I like a good cookie; but like anything else, you can carry a good thing too far. Time flies like the wind; fruit flies like bananas.

11. “About, very, sort of, kind of” and other weasel or wishy-washy words.

This is my list, or part of it. I encourage you to use it and expand it. Mr. Rand lists 22 words he calls problem indicators. Some of them I mention here. If you want to give your editor side some keys to writing tight, I suggest you find and read a copy of his book. Use the search-find in your word processor to help you trim the fat.

Just keep writing!

Marty “10%-less-fat” Gorsching

April Fool 2010

Marty’s Muse
Something to think about …
April 2010

1 April

All fools’ day

I think I was crowned king

And such a court I had today

No other king in any Age

Could sport

Or match me

In my reign

-M.L. Gorsching, A Little Book of Poems, PublishAmerica LLLP, 2007

April, the Month of Fools and Lovers

Tradition. Ever notice how our long held religious events, beliefs and traditions grow out of some much older custom seemingly unrelated to the current celebration, from a different culture, or even from pagan rites and rituals? So why do we hold them so dearly and defend them so passionately?

Because, it’s Tradition. [Cue music: “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye sings.]

Easter, the religious event we sometimes observe in April, and the term Easter both arise from the Anglo-Saxon celebration of Oster-monath or Eostur-monath, the period sacred to Eostre, the pagan Saxon goddess of spring (see also: Ostara, Astarte, Aristarte and Astaroth). The good monks of the Christian mission to pagandom merely superimposed the celebration of the Christ’s resurrection over an existing holy day.

So where does All Fool’s Day (or, April Fool’s Day) come into this picture of religious celebration? And what does that have to do with the writing life? I’ll get to that.

As with many of our traditions, this one has a long, varied, and mostly obscure history. We’re not quite sure where it comes from. The tradition of the tradition is that in the 1500s, when the Greco calendar replaced the Julian, the celebration of New Year moved from the first of April to the first of January. Some people insisted on continuing to celebrate the arrival of the new year on April 1, and earned the sobriquet “April Fools.” On the first day of April, those with a prankish nature would drop in on these unsuspecting neighbors, trying to convince them that it was a New Year celebration visit; thus garnering gifts and a meal from their foolish neighbors, and thus giving birth to the plague of pranks which descend on this day.

However, there are other contenders for the title of Origin of April Fools Day Pranks:
· The fickleness of Mother Nature and her weather fool us into thinking spring is sprung; so we’re all April fools
· The day commemorates the fruitless mission of the rook (a crow), which was the first envoy sent out from Noah’s Ark
· It commemorates the Vernal Equinox
· It ties-in with Hilaria, Rome’s year-end celebration, or, the end of the Celtic new year festival

I like the Rites of Spring connection for “Fool for a Day.” Is there anything more foolish than a young man in springtime or in love? An April fool if there ever was one. So why celebrate “love” in February? April is by far a more romantic month. April is warm and snuggly compared to February. Heck, February feels like winter. February gets the honorific as the month of love because, according to Tradition, St. Valentine died on February 14th. Also, in the Roman world, Feb. 14 was the day the Romans kicked off their annual Feast of Lupercalia. Marriageable young men and women participated in a sort of love lottery. The boys picked the girls’ names from a jar, and the couple spent the day together getting to know one another. These pairings often resulted in marriage. From which arises our tradition of the Valentine Card.

Maybe.

That’s the trouble with tradition: it’s been going on so long, no one remembers why or how it all got started.

So what does all this have to do with writing? Well, you just read a 650 word essay about the month of April and the origins of April Fool’s Day. Get it?

[Use your favorite research application to find out more about the Feast of Lupercalia, St. Valentine and his Day, and why Easter sometimes is celebrated in March, sometimes in April.]

Just keep writing!
Marty “I’m-a-fool-for-you” Gorsching

Story Flow

Marty’s Muse

Something to think about …

Mar 2010

Story Flow

Often I’m asked (okay, one person asked me one time) how to make a story flow, how to keep it moving forward. Readability. That’s the key. Make it readable. A reader won’t keep reading—or even start—if it’s not readable.

So, how do you do that, make it readable? Some things to look for and eliminate:

Redundant, intrusive dialogue that does not add to the story or move it along. It’s simple. With each piece of dialogue you write, read it aloud, then ask yourself these questions: Does it sound natural? Does it sound like people talking? Does it make sense? Does it fit (is it appropriate to the storyline?)

Wordiness and run-on sentences disrupt the flow of words, distract the reader and detract from the story. Cut the fat. Trim down adjectives and (especially) adverbs. Strive for strong, evocative verbs. Break long, complex sentences into a series of shorter ones. Shorter sentences lend impact to action scenes and tension to suspenseful moments. On the other hand, too many short, Dick-and-Jane sentences are an equal distraction.

Sexually or racially biased or obscene language – I leave this one to your discretion. If the language is appropriate to the story, use it, but do so with discretion. If you’re writing a non-fiction piece, these elements require closer scrutiny.

Shifts in tense, voice, point of view. Some authors have achieved great success manipulating the “rules” of tense, voice or point of view. Explore outside the norms, but do not go swiftly into that strange land. Remember that misuse or misapplication of standard forms (rules) of grammar, syntax, usage, structure, punctuation can be interpreted as just plain bad writing.

Blatant misuse of punctuation: too little or too much. Writing is communication and communication is about understanding. If you throw around punctuation haphazardly, no one will understand what you mean, and you will not have communicated what you want to communicate.

Loose application of fundamental grammar rules. As with the other elements mentioned here, play with the rules of grammar at your own risk. Learn them first. New or struggling writers especially have to be extra cautious so their works do not appear amateurish and unworthy of appraisal.

Just keep writing!

Marty “Flow-on” Gorsching

No Muse is Bad Muse

Marty’s Muse

Something to think about . . .

February 8, 2010

Hmmm. . . Ever have one of those times when nothing creative materializes? Words should be buzzing, jumping out of your imagination and onto the paper. But they’re not.

My companion Muse is on vacation—again. Visiting her family, somewhere in Greece I guess. She left a message on my voice-mail: “You’re on your own.” Gee. Thanks. Not even a postcard.

I would never admit it to her, but I feel at a bit of a loss when she’s not around. I mean, she’s intelligent, and not bad looking either, in an ethereal, wispy sort of way. Not that she’s flighty; although, she does zip in and out rather unexpectedly sometimes. She’s really quite bright; if she just wouldn’t keep piping in my ear about things like sentence structure and subject-verb agreement and split infinitives—whatever the heck that is. And commas. Who worries about commas? They’re no big deal. You just stick ‘em in wherever it feels right. Right?

She always rolls her eyes at me when I say something like that. The way she goes on, you’d think the whole paragraph was going to Hades in an ink pot without commas. She’s always saying things like, “The improper division of material into sentences destroys unity of thought,” and “Because a series of short, simple sentences is totally lacking in subordination, the relation of one thought to another is not adequately expressed.” Where does she get this stuff?

Still, despite her tendency to harp on certain topics, I do like her company. Seems like the words flow a little more easily when she’s at my elbow. Dang it, writing is just more fun when she’s around. Hope she gets back soon.

Happy writing!

Marty “No-Muse-is-bad-Muse” Gorsching

Writing and Publishing Changes

Marty’s Muse

Something to think about …

Feb 2010

Writing and publishing opportunities have changed since 2000.

In fact, there have been some pretty significant changes in these last 10 years. Back then, many of us still searched the web using dial-up connections; social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace didn't exist. Instead, there were things called “bulletin boards” and “chat rooms” and the ubiquitous IM (instant messaging.) The word “blog” had not yet been coined, and a social network was the group of people you had coffee with down at the local espresso shop. So in keeping with the fine tradition of once-a-decade look-back pieces, I present the following gems I’ve gleaned from WritersMarket.com, which launched 10 years ago*, and other sources:

1. Publications and publishers now accept, and often require, electronic submissions online or via e-mail. Rarely, 10 years ago.
2. These days, writers have to brand themselves. (Please, no red-hot metal applied to the flesh; this is a different type of branding.)
3. Every writer has to carry shameless self-promotion in his or her tool bag. Writers must be market and marketing savvy to promote themselves to agents, editors, publishers, and readers. (Considering the rise of POD, blogs, and eBook publishing, perhaps to readers foremost. It’s sometimes easier to attract an agent or publisher if you can lay claim to an existing readership.)
4. Personal networking and blogging sites have made it easier for writers to attract and cultivate an audience. (See item #3 above.)
5. Internet- and Ethernet-based models dominate, and print media resources (magazines, newspapers, traditional publishing houses and book sellers) have to remold themselves, adjust their content, business strategies, and pricing models to compete.
6. Both print and online media, whether or not ad-based, are relying extensively on freelancers.
7. Free, online content providers (web and blog sites, etc) have opened up vast opportunities for writers of all genres and experience to have their works read by wide audiences.
8. Online tools help writers research and write with knowledge and effect.
9. Social media and website forums offer numerous ways to network with publishing professionals, other writers, and potential contacts.
10. The rising trend of online “content marketing” (ad copy) and other types of “entrepreneurial” writing is giving writers a broad range of money-earning opportunities. Businesses and organizations rely heavily on powerful, captivating content to attract customers, sell products, provide information. (See item #6, above.)

Opportunities abound for the writer today. If you are not finding an avenue of expression for the frustrated writer in you, you just aren’t looking in the right places.

Just keep writing!

Marty “Caught-in-the-Web” Gorsching

*The Writer’s Market, Jan 2010