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Everyone — And I Mean Everyone — Is Working On A Book.

Categories: publishing, writing Tags: , ,
By HulaMonkey on March 25, 2013

Excerpt reprinted Mashable.com by The Daily Muse   Everyone — and I mean everyone — is working on a book.

Everyone — and I mean everyone — is working on a book. For some, it’s just a spark of an idea that hasn’t quite made it to paper; for others, it’s thousands of words socked away in a drawer or saved on an old laptop. Either way, the same question is bound to come up eventually: What does it take to get this thing published?

There is no easy way to get published and become a successful author. I can safely say this after years of reading submissions for a literary agency and a Big Six publisher (including everything from amazing books that bombed to titles I hated but everyone else in the world loved). Writing books is a weird, long haul, but — thankfully! — there are a few things you can do to help you on your journey. Here’s the advice that I give every aspiring author.

Read. A Lot.

More specifically, read in your genre. You need to know what good books look like, so you can take note of what makes them so successful and incorporate those things into your writing. But don’t limit yourself to the best-sellers — reading mediocre and even bad books can be just as helpful by showing you where authors miss the mark and what common missteps to avoid.

All genres — from romance to self-help to literary fiction — have certain conventions that you should be aware of as an author. By reading published books in your genre, you’ll be able to make some useful comparisons: Is your YA character too young? Your New Adult novel too chaste? Your literary fiction too low on 20-something male angst?

If you’re not somewhat on par with the standards of your genre (e.g., if your 25-five year old protagonist reads like a 12-year-old or your plot twists are clones of the only book you’ve read), it doesn’t matter how good your writing is — publishers will notice and reject you immediately. Editors buy books because they love them, but they also need to be able to sell them to readers — and if the saucy chambermaid in your romance novel dies of consumption instead of marrying the Duke, we’ve all got a problem.

Write the Whole Book

Don’t hope to sell a publisher on an idea alone — agents won’t pick up new clients without a complete manuscript, and most publishing houses don’t take un-agented submissions. (And honestly, if an editor agrees to take your book without an agent, then you have to worry about the possibility of a predatory contract — so I always advise authors to go through an agent to have an expert on their side.) At the low end, books for teens and adults usually range between 80,000 and 100,000 words, although some make it up to a couple hundred thousand (I’m looking at you, Harry Potter).

The only exception to the “write it first” rule is nonfiction — with this genre, you can query an agent with just an outline and some sample chapters. (Memoirs don’t count as nonfiction in this regard — sorry.)

To read more CLICK HERE.

Are you @##* kiddin’ me, Lesley?

Categories: writing Tags: , ,
By HulaMonkey on December 28, 2012

By Lesley Kagen

For me, one of the most difficult elements of writing to get a hold of isn’t found in my daily struggle to create a catchy phrase or draw a reader into a good story or even lay down sparkling, believable dialog.  They’re tough, sure, but when I peel away the layers and really look at the core of what I’m hoping to achieve, it isn’t found in the intricacies of craft.  It’s a wispy intangible that’s much more difficult to nail down.  The hour by hour, minute by minute, maintenance of belief in my ability to successfully navigate what’s in my heart and head onto the page.  And that someone, someday, will want to read it.  Maybe even find it somewhat worthy.

This business of believing in one’s writing doesn’t come naturally, not for me anyway.  It takes muscle to shove away the fierce voice of self-criticism. “Are you @##* kiddin’ me, Lesley?” it hollers.  “Really?  My dog can write a better book than you!”  Some days, it can turn into an out-and-out brawl.  And in this corner…

So if you find yourself struggling to complete your first novel or poem or magazine article or blog or new journal entry, how about you resolve to be in your own corner this year?  Root for yourself.  Practice pom-pom waving, splits-in-the-air cheering for that character description you came up with.  Give the bird to that nasty little voice that is more than happy to pound the ever-loving daylights out of your last chapter.  Shout huzzah! in its miserable face with your early morning coffee breath when it suggests that your plot is, “Derivative, at best.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that’ll be easy, but trust me, if you keep at it, one of these days when you place your fingers on the keyboard or put pen in hand, you might find that heckling, “I can’t do this…I should throw in the towel…I reek” voice has diminished to a choked whisper.

You got it on the ropes.  In a headlock.

Show no mercy.

 

Lesley Kagen’s latest book MARE’S NEST is featured on the BookTrib Giveaway this week. Click Here to learn more..

You can watch BookTrib’s very funny Live Chat at Home with Lesley’s  Fall 2012 by CLICKING HERE.  Did you know Lesleywas in a Laverne and Shirley episode?

DEATH IS EASY; COMEDY IS HARD

Categories: humor, writing Tags: ,
By HulaMonkey on December 7, 2012

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

“Dying is easy; comedy is hard” is the actual quote, which has been variously attributed but appears to have first been spoken by the English actor Edmund Kean upon his deathbed in 1833. I’ve tweaked the quote here because I’m not referring to actual dying but rather, fictional death.

The problem with comedy is that it’s all so subjective. This was brought home to me yet again the other day when I peeked in at my favorite online watercooler. Someone had posted a link to a video making the rounds that I gathered features Hitler in full-Fuhrer furor with a rant on publishing dubbed in. Initial comments called it hysterical, in a good way, but then the naysayers piped up, some saying they’d never click on such a link. I didn’t say anyone nay – if an adult finds something funny, who am I to tell them they didn’t or shouldn’t – but I didn’t click either. Having been raised Jewish, having spent my early years going to synagogue most weekends, a synagogue that had some congregants who had numbers tattooed on their arms, I think it likely I’ll go to my grave without finding anything funny about Hitler. But that’s me. I’m simply, subjectively speaking, the wrong person for that particular kind of humor.

But, if there are times that I don’t laugh at what other people find funny, there are plenty of times people don’t laugh at what I find funny; or at least the things I write as funny.

Nine years ago, my debut novel was published. The Thin Pink Line, published by Red Dress Ink, is a dark comedy about a sociopathic Londoner who fakes an entire pregnancy. Publishers Weekly called it “hilarious and original” and Kirkus – the Mikey of pre-publication reviews, sometimes thought to “hate everything” – gave it a starred review, making it the first book in all the thousands upon thousands published by any Harlequin imprint to ever receive that honor; nice for me, but not all readers agreed. The book was variously compared to Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift and $#*! You’ll understand if I prefer the first two comparisons but the truth is, $#8! is an apt description too, completely valid. As I said, when it comes to humor, it’s all subjective. In fact, I would submit that comedy is the most subjective genre out there.

In less than a decade, I’ve had 26 books published for nearly all age groups: adults, teens and young children (the only age I’ve bypassed is babies) and in a wide range of genres. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all that writing – not to mention a reading habit that extends to a couple hundred books a year – it’s that it’s relatively easy to write the scene that will make a wide range of people cry or at least move them. Death, so long as it’s well-executed, is always a literary crowd-pleaser. But writing a book that is humorous, that a wide variety of readers will agree is funny? Even writing one scene people agree is funny? That’s hard.

Years ago, my husband and I went to see a film version of Much Ado About Nothing with my brother and his wife. Afterward, my brother remarked that some of the comedy simply wasn’t funny, but I had an answer for that. I told him that the shocking thing shouldn’t be that some of it is no longer fully, but rather that any of it still is funny, that so much of it still stands up, over 400 years after it’s written.

Trying accomplishing that as a writer: writing a scene today with an eye on people in the year 2412 finding it funny. Never happen.

And yet, still I write comedy; at least in some of my books. If I’m lucky, some readers find those books funny; if I’m really lucky, more than some do.

But some days, it’s enough, having read the day’s output over again, to be able to say, “Well, I laughed.”

 

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of 20+ books for adults, teens and children, the most recent of which is the romantic comedy for adults, Pursuing the Times.

You can read more about her life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com or follow her on Twitter: @LaurenBaratzL

CAN THE INTERNET SAVE THE NOVEL?

Categories: Fiction, writing Tags: ,
By HulaMonkey on December 3, 2012

This article originally appeared on the L.A. Review of Books. By

IN CASE THIS IS the first article you’ve come across about the relationship between the internet, novels, and their authors, here’s a quick recap of the last few years: the internet is eroding attention spans and triggering the novel’s demise, click by deleterious click.

Philip Roth saw it coming in 2010, when he expressed concern that the “multiple screens” vying against the novel were causing its decline: “The concentration, the focus, the solitude, the silence, all the things that are required for serious reading are not within people’s reach anymore.” So did Michiko Kakutani, who wrote at length about the subject in her seminal essay “Texts Without Contexts,” that same year, exploring how “most emailed” lists and social media shares were causing writers to pander to audiences. Kakutani posed the question, “Are literary-minded novelists increasingly taking into account what their readers want or expect?”

Even Mortimer Adler intuited the internet’s detrimental effect on the novel— before it was invented. In his 1972 classic How to Read a Book, Adler compares the “artificial props” of television and radio to drug addiction: “We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we when cease to grow, we begin to die.” Were Adler writing in the digital age, one wonders just how stunted he might consider the modern reader.

But that discussion is now moot. The internet is a permanent fixture in modern life, and that it influences the way we read, write and think is simply fact. So instead of lamenting how digital ubiquity is nibbling away at the novel’s purview, what if a novel were to pull a fast one and swallow the internet whole? What if, rather than putting novels online, we downloaded the internet into a novel? What if there was a character so drawn in by the internet’s gravitational pull that her every send, post, cut and paste determined her trajectory, and her page views informed the plotline? This is a character whose native tongue is the online vernacular of IP addresses, URLs and animated GIFs, a character who is shackled to her Smartphone, who brings her laptop to the bathroom. In other words, perhaps a novel depict the place where so many real people live today: online.

Author Jessica Groseshould depict the place where so many real people live today: online.

Enter Alex Lyons, the protagonist of Jessica Grose’s Sad Desk Salad and a writer for the fictitious women’s website Chick Habit. Alex works from the Brooklyn apartment she shares with her boyfriend, ostensibly off the F train. From sunup to sundown, she scours the internet for gossip and scandal, pumping out 10 posts a day while being harangued over Gchat by her boss Moria, whom she rarely sees in person. Glued to the computer, Alex cannot even run to the bodega without her iPhone for her pathetic lunch of wilted romaine (which she’ll eat at her desk, obviously) for fear of missing a crucial dispatch from her editor. Sure, it’s not an ideal gig. But the intelligent and earnest Alex, who graduated from Wesleyan and totes around a Paris Review canvas bag, didn’t even hear back about internships from Mother Jones or The Nation, where she thought she’d write and report on groundbreaking topics. (Oh Alex, didn’t we all think that?) Instead, Alexdoes what she must do to live the dream, in all its compromised glory, by churning out clickable snark instead of actual stories.

To read the rest of this article click here

THE GENESIS OF A NOVEL

Categories: thriller, writing Tags: ,
By HulaMonkey on December 2, 2012

by Mark Rubenstein

Readers often ask how an idea for a novel comes to an author. I’ve been asked how my new novel, Mad Dog House, came into being. It was a very strange—almost dreamlike—process for me. I’ve found ideas the same way for the other three novels I’ve written (which will be published over the next two years).

It’s as though my mind went through a semiconscious period where things from the past and present coalesced and began building on themselves. In all honesty, once the story was on paper, I was unable to precisely recall its genesis. It seemed very strange, almost the way you feel when you wake up some mornings knowing you’ve dreamed, but the dream dissolves before you’re completely resurrected from a sleeping state.
The novel begins with a scene in a classroom in which the class bully (named “Cootie”) is “finger-snapping” the ear of the boy in front of him (the protagonist). So how did this setting become the start of my novel?

When I was in the seventh grade, there was a kid in the class nicknamed “Cootie.” He was the class clown, unlike the Cootie in the novel. It was a strange nickname, and through all these years, the moniker has stuck with me. Many years later, while at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, tending to paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, I worked with another medical corpsman whose laugh sounded like the howl of a hyena or an insane dog. We jokingly nicknamed him “Mad Dog.” That name, too, stuck with me, and I often think of him.

In addition, as a high school freshman, I sat in front of some wise guy who constantly finger-snapped my right ear. At the end of the period, the ear felt like a hot coal. It was, to say the least, annoying. At thirteen years old, I weighed a prodigious 105 pounds, and this bullying kid was far bigger—and very intimidating. I sat there day after day, feeling helpless and humiliated by the enforced passivity of the situation.

One day, after the third or fourth finger-snap, I turned to the bully and looked him dead in the eye. I was smoldering with rage. Not thinking, I challenged him to a fight behind the candy store near the school. He looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I detected a hint of fear in his eyes. Then he laughed. But somehow, my animal instinct kicked in, and I could almost smell his fear. He’d never expected so brazen a challenge from such a skinny kid.

When class ended, we walked outside and headed for the candy store. In an empty lot, out of view of the school, we went at it. Long story short: I beat the hell out of him.

So all of these very disparate elements wove their way into the first page—actually, into the first sentence—of Mad Dog House: “When he was twelve years old Mad Dog ripped off Cootie Weiss’s ear.”

Fist-fighting was a way of life in the neighborhood where I grew up. I eventually earned a degree in business, served in the army, learned plenty about acute medical care and guns, became a physician and then a psychiatrist, and now practice adult and forensic psychiatry. I’ve always loved and had an interest in restaurants but, wisely, never owned one. However, I could never have predicted that these vastly different elements from my life (past and present) would come together, be reconfigured, and coalesce into part of the plotline of a novel.

Writing Mad Dog House was a matter of letting one “what if” play off another, and the process of storytelling took over. One thing morphed into another, and the plot began taking unforeseen turns. By the time I reached, say, page 150, I had to go back and change page 35 to make things consistent. Eventually, I’d written the story as it now exists. And I simply cannot remember exactly how I put it all together.

Mad Dog House is the story of a successful suburban physician and his two friends owning a Manhattan steak house, with the protagonist, Roddy Dolan, and his best friend, Danny Burns, being silent partners. Things go very awry, and bad things begin to happen.

When I look back on the genesis of the novel, it’s clear to me that, on some very basic level, bits and pieces of my own past, my strivings, my knowledge base, my fears, my wishes, and my inner emotional landscape merged into the narrative. Everything came together and told a story—a crime thriller that seemed somehow to have leaped from my brain and its imaginings.

It’s all pure fiction, of course.

Mark Rubinstein
Author, Mad Dog House

http://markrubinstein-author.com/

Kindle edition now available! http://amzn.to/SdcjEI
Follow Mark Rubinstein on Twitter: @mrubinsteinCT

8th Annual Write DearReader contest results – 1st Place: 32 Princess Street (Watch out for Pink dragons)

Categories: Uncategorized, writing, Writing contest Tags: , , , ,
By HulaMonkey on September 28, 2012

BookTrib has the honor of sharing this year’s winners for the 8th Annual Write a DearReader contest. Winners were selected from hundreds of entries. DearReader offers this competition each year just to encourage writing. It’s all about writing for fun.

Today’s story is DearReader’s 2nd place winner. Watch for the posting of the 1st place winning submission this week.2nd place has already posted you can find it by clicking here .  Maybe you’ll consider entering your story in the 9th annual DearReader contest happening summer 2013.  – Enjoy

 

Dear Reader,

Karen Friez had thought about entering the annual writing contest for the past few years, but always missed the deadline. Fear got in

the way. But thankfully not this year, because Karen’s entry won 1st place in the Write a Dear Reader contest. A copy editor for the past

13 years at a daily newspaper, Karen loves her job because while she’s editing stories, she gets to read stories she might not otherwise take the time to read.

“Kind of like the book club,” she said, “I’ve been a member for years and I’ve found some great books I might not have been aware of.” Karen has developed one of the traits of a good writer–she writes every day in her diary–which is really a Happiness Journal. “A woman from my church told me that when she was going through a difficult divorce, she started a daily happiness journal. When you keep a happiness journal, you’re always looking for something to write down. It changes your day.”

Reading Karen’s entry certainly changed my day. What a beautiful story.

Congratulations Karen and thank you for entering this year’s contest.

- Suzanne Beecher
Author, Muffins and Mayhem

 

 1st Place Winner
Karen Friez

32 Princess Street

 (Watch Out For Pink Dragons)

 

The doctor is in her office, which is a relief. You see, my giraffe’s spots have turned into stripes. As a responsible pet owner, I am deeply concerned about this turn of events. So I have loaded my giraffe onto my imaginary school bus and driven to 5 year old Dr. Emily’s office at 32 Princess Street, heeding her warning to watch out for pink dragons ambling across the road. As the young doctor studiously examines my giraffe, she informs me the problem is my pet food. It is turning my giraffe’s spots into stripes. She doles out the proper food and medication and then disappears back into her office at the top of the playground’s jungle gym. As the sun begins to set on the park, the veterinarian’s office closes for the night and we begin our trek home, stopping for an imaginary dinner of grass soup with acorn bread.

Actor John Leguizamo once said that, in parenting, “the days are long and the years are short.” This is the best description of parenting I’ve heard. As my daughter grew, she stopped visiting 32 Princess Street, her imagination captured by other things. I have traveled through each stage with her, from tea parties to Barbies to sleepovers, feeling both proud of her budding independence and sad for the things left behind.

As we go with our children minute by minute, hour by hour, sometimes we are too close to see the growth that is taking place, a lesson that was brought home to me by two photographs of my daughter taken at the same location one year apart. The physical differences in my daughter in just one year are striking. In the first photo, she i still a child, running away from the ocean’s waves. But, in the second photo, she has developed into a young woman, standing her ground and greeting the water with open arms. I wonder, as I look at these photos, why I hadn’t noticed the changes in her.

And I know there will be many more changes to come. There are still many firsts on the horizon, like her first boyfriend, who may also be become her first love, her first kiss and her first broken heart. From her first car to her first child, there are many milestones still to come in her life. As her mother I want everything to go smoothly, but I know that there will always be those pesky pink dragons (otherwise known as problems) trying to block her path in life. Sometimes those dragons will just be a small nuisance, but other times they will seem immovable. I hope, through it all, she learns that the power to overcome the dragons is within herself.

And so, for now, the office at 32 Princess Street is closed, relegated to the realm of childhood memories. But there are still many more memories to make in the years ahead. And perhaps, one day, she will have a daughter of her own, and they will return to 32 Princess Street and the land of the pink dragons.

8th Annual Write DearReader contest results – 2nd Place

Categories: writing, Writing contest Tags: , , , ,
By HulaMonkey on September 27, 2012

BookTrib has the honor of sharing this year’s winners for the 8th Annual Write a DearReader contest. Winners were selected from hundreds of entries. DearReader offers this competition each year just to encourage writing. It’s all about writing for fun.

Today’s story is DearReader’s 2nd place winner. Watch for the posting of the 1st place winning submission this week.3rd place has already posted you can find it by clicking here .  Maybe you’ll consider entering your story in the 9th annual DearReader contest happening summer 2013.  – Enjoy

 

Dear Reader,

Congratulations to Brenda Green, this year’s 2nd place winner in my Write a Dear Reader Contest. Brenda’s been a member of the book club for years and decided to enter the writing contest because she “is a writer,” which is the perfect mindset to keep her in the habit of journaling every day…

“I started out writing in college, but ended up working as a computer analyst for the government for 30 years.” Now retired, Brenda sells Avon, and she’s able to take her mother with her in the car when she calls on customers.

One of the things I loved about Brenda’s entry was that she started writing her column with one topic in mind, and at the end realized she’d written about something  else. Getting out of the way of yourself, is a writer’s best friend.

What will Brenda do with her $200.00 prize? “I’ll tithe 10 percent and spend the rest on buying my mother something really special.”

Congratulations again, Brenda. Thanks for entering this year’s writing contest, and please give your mother a big hug from me.

- Suzanne Beecher
Author, Muffins and Mayhem

 

2nd Place

Winner:  Brenda Green

My mother will be 96 in October. She has dementia and is now in an Assisted Living facility. Her body, praise the Lord, still goes strong but her mind has slowly drifted away. When I visit her, I ask questions or bring favorite objects, sometimes old photographs, to bring her back to me. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. Often we just sit beside each other and hold hands, saying nothing.

When I was young my parents divorced. My father moved away and we had little contact with him. Mother was both father and mother. She would work all day then come home and act as referee between m sister and me, help with our homework, clean house and pay the bills. I was an extremely selfish, self-centered child and took everything she did for granted. I was not much help. When my grandmother came to live with us after my grandfather’s death Mother had help. But then “Big Mama” had a massive stroke. She never left her bed from that day on. My mother quit work, we went on welfare and she took care of her mother. Big Mama had the master bedroom. Mama, my sister and I all slept in the full size bed in the other room, sharing closet space.

Ten years later when my grandmother had another massive stroke and died, my mother was proud that her mother had never, in 10 years, had one bed sore or any other health problems. Life went on. I was married, my sister was married and mother was left alone. My husband (who is beyond wonderful) suggested we ask her to come live with us. She did so for 32 years, until dementia became more than we could handle.

Funny, this story started out to be how you should write names of people on the back of pictures, because I have so many old pictures with no idea who they are and now when I ask mother she shakes her head and says, “I don’t know.” Instead this is a love letter to the most wonderful woman I have ever known, my mother, Evelyn Wade Green.

8th Annual Write DearReader contest results – 3rd Place

Categories: writing, Writing contest Tags: , , , ,
By HulaMonkey on September 26, 2012

BookTrib has the honor of sharing this year’s winners for the 8th Annual Write a DearReader contest. Winners were selected from hundreds of entries. DearReader offers this competition each year just to encourage writing. It’s all about writing for fun.

Today’s story is DearReader’s 3rd place winner. Watch for the posting of 2nd and 1st place winning submission this week. Maybe you’ll consider entering your story in the 9th annual DearReader contest happening summer 2013.  – Enjoy

 

Dear Reader,

Take a peaceful stroll today with Bruce Squiers, 3rd place winner in this year’s Write a Dear Reader Contest. My husband and I take a walk every morning on the same familiar route. You’d think familiar would get a bit boring, but instead the familiar sights I see make me feel right at home.

Bruce Squiers is a recently retired, daily newspaper photographer, who now works part-time assisting elderly folks in their homes. He’s a delightful, fun guy. What you’ll read in his winning column, is what you get when you talk with him. We chatted like old friends for 45 minutes.

Congratulations Bruce. Thanks for entering this year’s writing contest. Your $100.00 prize and a copy of my book, “Muffins and Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if disorderly) Life” are in the mail.

- Suzanne Beecher
Author, Muffins and Mayhem

 

 

 

3RD PLACE
Winner: Bruce Squiers

 

Is it spiritual renewal? Mental therapy? Perhaps even self-prescribed psychotherapy? At its least, it’s physical therapy. I simply call it my morning walk.

My thoughts and body get in synch as I leave the porch, sometimes with a cane, sometimes not, and I pace along the road. Often as not, I turn at the bridge which spans the river, and there I stretch and work those battered legs.

A Great Blue Heron passes along the river, looking for its breakfast.

I stretch some more, then pass through the morning shadows and pass a parking lot where a fisherman puts on his waders, hoping to snag himself a trout. He tells me he’s going to try his luck by walking up the tracks to a nearby railroad bridge.

I turn where the bridge road meets the county road where I will meet its hills. Almost immediately, a doe and her fawn stand briefly in the road and stare at me. It’s a sight I often see in June and never tire of it. I’m convinced that in some mystical way, that mom is showing off her new baby. They then glide into a woodland which nearly touches the highway.

I could even see a bald eagle as it courses along the river. I will see cows from a nearby farm. I might have to stop as a neighbor drives past and has to ask how I’m doing.

This day is warm and sunlit. Some are cold and raw and cloaked with clouds. Sometimes i walk this route at night, and the stars put on their evening performance. It’s always the same, and always different at once.

The time and conditions vary daily, but somehow, as I return to my little home along the river, I am renewed.

I’ll repeat this process tomorrow.

REDNECK RIVIERA

Categories: writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
By HulaMonkey on September 11, 2012

Like Southerners everywhere, I’m amazed and perhaps a little apprehensive about the current popularity of reality shows portraying the Redneck South.  Think Small Town Security, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Swamp People, Hillbilly Handfishin’.  Not that I’m denying the “reality” of the folks profiled in such shows, but for an area of the country still forced to defend itself from the stereotypes portrayed in Deliverance and 30 Rock, it’s bound to cause some concern.  (My daughter once attended a conference at a prestigious prep school in the Northeast where one of the participants asked her if we had shopping malls in Tennessee.)

As a writer, I’m constantly at war with my Southern heritage.  I cringe every time I see a Red State Map (believe it or not, there are Democrats in the South), and I can appreciate Tina Fey’s satirical handling of Kenneth Parcell, the son of a  “pig farmer” who hails from Stone Mountain, Georgia.  When Kenneth talks about majoring in “Television Studies” and “Bible Sexuality” at Kentucky Mountain Bible College, I roll my eyes and chuckle.  I get it.  The South is an odd place, filled with odd people.

Perhaps it’s our embracing of these oddities that are part of our Southern charm.  (My grandmother’s neighbor, who lived with ten cats and spoke to her dead husband, was considered “eccentric”, not “crazy.”)  In small Southern towns we accept these eccentrics, we know their “people”, we remember that the “Masseys were always peculiar” and the “Carrs were prone to fits and red hair” and “the Doolins were good people but bad to drink.”

The truth, of course, is that just like anywhere else, the South is a multi-layered, diverse society.  College professors live here, captains of industry, artists, writers, even Democrats.  You don’t see well-educated Southerners on shows like Honey Boo Boo, because what would be the fun of that?  It’s more entertaining to watch Crazy Tony play “deer hanger” in a local mud pool.

When I write about the South, the place where I’ve grown up, and moved away from, and eventually come back to, I try to portray the culture as I know it, with all the peculiarities, and contradictions, and class distinctions that make it unique.  I try to give a well-rounded view of this place that has shaped Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee and William Styron.

Not that I’m knocking Honey Boo Boo and Sugar Bear and Crazy Tony.  These are good people.  A little odd, perhaps, but as everyone now knows, here in the South we embrace odd.

We’re proud of our peculiarities.

Which is probably the way of small towns everywhere.

 

Buy It Now

Click to go to Cathy’s website

by Cathy Holton, author of The Sisters Montclair, Summer in the South, Beach Trip, Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes, and Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes.

 

 

5 Stupid Grammar Myths

Categories: writing Tags: ,
By HulaMonkey on August 1, 2012

Ever been chided for doing something you know isn’t wrong? Your brother-in-law insists that guacamole is made only with lemon—never lime—and that you’ve ruined it with your tiny green citrus. His mama taught him to make it with lemon, and he doesn’t care how much you cite Alton Brown.

The same goes when you’re writing at work. Although modern grammarians and reference books firmly assert that all five of the “rules” I’m going to give you are baseless, they’ve been taught as law in many schools—especially to people old enough to be your boss.

So read up. Be informed. Know they are myths—and follow them in your writing at work anyway. Believe me, it makes life easier.

 

1. “Data” Can Only Be Plural

In Latin, “data” is the plural of “datum.” Therefore, some people insist that “data” can only be plural in English (“the data are here,” not “the data is here”). Now, these same people would never ask you to send them the meeting “agendum,” even though the “agenda/agendum” pair is just like “data/datum.” And that’s because English is a rogue and has no problem giving a makeover to words it takes from other languages.

Nevertheless, you’re safest keeping “data” plural. If it sounds weird to you, use a different word, such as “information” or “results.”

Don’t: This quarter’s data is going to get us fired.

Do: This quarter’s results are going to get us fired.

 

2. Never Split an Infinitive

You split an infinitive when you put an adverb between “to” and a verb—for example, “to boldly go.”

The rule against splitting infinitives was made up by a few fellows in the mid-1800s, and even they weren’t that adamant about it. They generally thought it was better to avoid splitting infinitives, but they didn’t say that splitting was the unforgivable sin that some people seem to think it is today.

Even though splitting isn’t wrong, moving the adverb rarely changes the meaning of your sentence. Just do it.

Don’t: She wanted to loudly tell her boss to pound sand.

Do: She wanted to tell her boss loudly to pound sand.

 

3. Don’t End a Sentence With a Preposition

This “rule” was made up in 1672 by John Dryden—a writer so famous in his time that some refer to the years of his prime as the Age of Dryden. His influence assured that the rule made it into schoolbooks, and it’s been widely taught ever since. Nevertheless, there’s no logical basis for the rule, and modern language experts have fought back in force.

The only reason you’ll find in most current language books for avoiding an ending preposition is to save you from offending someone who still thinks it’s wrong. But, in the workplace, that’s actually not a bad reason.

Don’t: Now that’s something I hadn’t thought of.

Do: Now that’s something I hadn’t considered.

 

4. “Slow” is Never an Adverb

Fussbudgets will tell you that signs shouldn’t say “drive slow”—they should say “drive slowly.” The bearers of this news ignore the existence of flat adverbs (those that don’t end in -ly). Even William Strunk Jr., of Elements of Style fame, used them: Co-author E.B. White reported that Strunk often told students, “If you don’t know how to pronounce a word, say it loud.”

Still, the belief that flat adverbs are wrong is so widespread, it’s safer to use the non-flat adverb form.

Don’t: He talks so loud we can hear him three cubes down.

Do: He talks so loudly we can hear him three cubes down.

 

5. Only Food is Done; Projects are Finished

You’ve probably been chided by someone at the dinner table for saying you’re “done” instead of “finished,” but that aunt or grandfather was holding on to a belief that doesn’t make any sense. This “rule” surfaced in the early 1900s, but the style guide that started it gave no reason. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage speculates that the advice was based on bias against the usage’s “Irish, Scots, and U.S.” origin.

You can argue the point with Aunt Millie, but at work, there’s no harm in sticking with “finished.”

Don’t: I’m done with this project.

Do: I’m finished with this project.

 

In the workplace, it’s not always about what’s right and wrong—it’s about how you play the game. And yes, that includes grammar.

 

Reprinted:  The Daily Muse  by — July 31, 2012

 

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