Are you ready to publish?
by Anne R. Allen
If you’ve used the pandemic lockdown as a time to write that novel you always knew you had in you, congratulations! You’ve taken the depressing, horrific lemon that was 2020 and turned it into literary lemonade.
You deserve a great big “Congrats!” and several pats on the back. You are awesome.
But if you’re thinking of publishing that novel now that you’ve finished it, you might want to hold off for a bit. Especially if you’re hoping to make some money from it.
Even though you’ve typed that satisfying “the end” on that book, chances are good that it’s not ready to publish. Or even to go to an editor.
Self-publishing has freed up a lot of writers and allowed them to express themselves without the restraints of corporate publishing. But just because you CAN publish that magnum opus with a minimum of fuss doesn’t mean you should—yet.
The truth is it takes a long time to learn to write well. Even if you were an English major. If you’ve only written one novel or memoir, you’re still in the learning phase. Keep writing and start something new. Write some short pieces and start sending them out to journals and contests. Work on your next book. Start a blog and learn to write for an online audience.
And read, read, read. Read books on craft and marketing as well as novels in your genre.
Then when you go back to that book, you’ll have fresh eyes and new skills. I promise your work will improve because of them and you’ll be relieved that you didn’t publish too soon.
Signs You Aren’t Ready to Publish
Here are some tell-tale signs that writers are still in the learning phase of their careers.
1) Wordiness
There’s a reason why agents are wary of long books. New writers tend to take 100 words to say what seasoned writers can say in 10. If your prose is weighty with adjectives and adverbs, or clogged with details and repetitive scenes, you’ll scare off readers as well.
2) Writerly Prose
This was a hard lesson for me to learn. It turns out those long, gorgeous descriptions that got so much praise from your English teacher and your college boyfriend can actually be a huge turn-off for the paying customer who’s searching for some kind of story in there.
We need to learn to use description to help the reader get oriented in the scene, not to show off.
3) Episodic Storytelling
I admit my own guilt on this one too. I could never end my first novel, because it didn’t actually have a plot. It was a series of related episodes—like a TV series. I will always be grateful to the agent who read my whole manuscript and told me I’d written a fine sitcom, but a novel needs one big, over-arching plot.
Learning to plot and pace a novel is way harder than it seems. Seasoned novelists make it seem effortless. You’ll learn, too. It took me a longer time than most, but I got it eventually.
Critique groups often don’t catch this problem, if each episode has a dramatic arc of its own.
4) A Hackneyed Opener
Beware overdone opening scenes. The most clichéd opener is the “alarm clock” scene—the one where your protagonist wakes up and gets ready for his day. Film teachers say, “78 % of all student films start with an alarm clock going off.”
Why? Because it’s an obvious place to start.
But obvious is not what we want. That’s what makes something into a cliché—a whole lot of people have used a phrase or situation before you. So if your opener is similar to one you’ve seen in a ton of movies, and read in lots of books, you’re probably going to want to change it. Try moving your story ahead a few scenes. Or behind. Do something new and different and creative.
5) Raw Personal Pain and/or Revenge Fantasies
It turns out that having a terrible childhood doesn’t actually make a great story. Neither does surviving a life-threatening disease. That kind of experience needs a lot of processing before it can be worked into an entertaining book.
Writing about a traumatic event can be a wonderful release. But that cathartic prose will need a lot of work before it’s readable for others.
Also, readers probably won’t be enthralled by endless analysis of a guy just like your toxic ex, even if he gets hacked up by his ax-murdering trophy wife in the final scene. (Yes, I know that was fun to write.)
We need to be very careful when we’re writing about real people. Ruth Harris wrote a great post on turning “real life” into fiction.
6) Semi-Fictionalized Religious or Political Rants
You have to be a seasoned, gifted writer to find a readership for political fiction. Carl Hiaasen manages to throw quite a bit of politics into his comic mysteries, and Chris Moore gets in some digs in his hilarious horror/fantasy tales. But if you aren’t as funny as those guys, you might want to save the political writing for a letter to the editor.
And if you’ve written a novel just so you can send everybody who isn’t exactly like you to Hell, your reader will want to send you there, too.
7) Dialogue Info-Dumps and Desultory Conversation
Another of my personal pitfalls. After 25 years in the theater, my brain’s natural habitat was the script. It took me years to learn characters don’t have to say all that stuff out loud. And “hello how are you fine and you nice weather” dialogue may be realistic, but it’s snoozifying.
Readers don’t care about “authenticity” if it doesn’t further the plot.
For more on spiffing up your dialogue, here’s Ruth’s piece on 15 Keys to Writing Dialogue and my post, “Do Your Characters Talk Too Much.”
8) Tom Swifties
Dialogue tags are hard for the beginning writer. “He said” and “she said” can seem boring and repetitive, even after we hear that the reader finds them invisible.
But the writer who strains to avoid the word “said” can rapidly slip into bad pun territory, as in the archetypal example: “‘We must hurry,’ exclaimed Tom Swiftly.”
Bad dialogue tags may have crept into your consciousness at an early age from Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. They’re great fun, but they were written by a stable of underpaid hacks and although the stories are classic, the prose is not.
These days, writers try to avoid dialogue tags altogether. Instead we use action to show who is speaking. So instead of saying “I’m not going without Fido,” Tom said, doggedly,” you can say, “I’m not going without Fido.” Tom patted his dog’s furry head.
9) Mary Sues
A Mary Sue is a character who’s a stand-in for the writer’s idealized self. She’s beautiful. Everybody loves her. She always saves the day. She has no faults. Except she’s boring and completely unbelievable.
The term “Mary Sue” was invented by readers of fanfiction, and she’s a favorite of beginning writers. Sometimes the Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) is an attempt to create a “likeable” character. But in order to be liked, a character needs some flaws.
Here’s my post on Mary Sues and Creating Likeable Characters.
10) Imprecise Word Usage
This is what snags a lot of newbie writers. And it doesn’t help at all that those guys in Silicon Valley who invented the grammar check software are often dead wrong in their “corrections.”
A professional writer needs to know the difference between similar words like aesthetic and ascetic, affect and effect, elicit and illicit, ensure and insure etc. Otherwise, they have to hire somebody who does know before they can publish that book.
11) Incorrect Spelling and Grammar
Do note: I’m not talking about dialogue here. You certainly don’t want to make all your characters sound like English teachers. Anything goes in dialogue.
But it’s good to be aware that the buying public expects a book to be written in standard English. (or whatever language used by your target demographic.) The average reader isn’t your third-grade teacher and they won’t give you a gold star just to boost your self-esteem. Even if you survived a childhood in an orphanage right out of Dickens, readers need that story to be written in standard, readable language.
Words are our tools. Think of it this way: would you try out for professional baseball if you didn’t know how to hold a bat? Electronic spelling and grammar checks can only do so much. And they’re often wrong. Buy a grammar book and a dictionary, or take an online course.
12) English Major Showing-Off
I know my early prose was full of annoying literary name dropping. It feels so clever to start every chapter with an epigraph from a literary icon.
But unless those quotes give insight into the chapter, that stuff will probably irritate rather than impress readers. Ditto oblique references to the Cavalier poets or Thomas Mann. People want to be entertained, not worship at our personal literary altars.
And yes, there’s a quote from Richard III at the beginning of each section of my mystery So Much for Buckingham. But I figured since I present the ghost of Richard III as a character, I’d better let Shakespeare have his say. 🙂 If I annoyed any readers, I apologize.
***
If you’re still doing any of these things, RELAX! Enjoy writing for its own sake a while longer. Read books on craft. Build inventory. You generally need to publish some short fiction and have at least two polished manuscripts in the hopper before you launch your novel-writing career.
And hey, you don’t have to become a marketer just yet. Isn’t that good news?
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) February 7m 2021
***
What about you, scriveners? Have you ever put a book out there that wasn’t really ready to publish? Were you ready to be a published author when your first book launched? Did you do any of these things when you were learning to write? How did you overcome them?
BOOK OF THE WEEK
A satire of the dark side of online reviews and the people who make a game of them…a game that can lead to murder.
Camilla and Ronzo see their reputations destroyed by online review trolls who specialize in character assassination, while Plantagenet Smith heads over to England, where he encounters a dead historical reenactor dressed as the Duke of Buckingham. Plant is promptly arrested for the murder. In jail, Plant meets the ghost of Richard III, and hears what it’s like to live with character assassination “fake news” that has persisted for half a millennium.
“This wonderfully satiric comedy is a joy to read. On the surface, it’s a frothy romance cum suspense story about a whacky writer, Camilla, whose life is threatened by trolls and who topples from one hilarious disaster into the next.
But underneath, it provides a perceptive insight into the mad world of modern publishing, the sub-culture of Internet lunatics and the mindset of cultists who can – and do – believe ten impossible things before breakfast.
The reader is left with the question: how much of the story, perish the thought, might be true? Tremendous fun, wittily satiric and highly recommended”…Nigel J. Robinson
So Much for Buckingham is available at:
All Amazons Kobo Nook Smashwords Googleplay Scribd
Available in paper from:
AmazonUS AmazonUK Barnes & Noble
Also in AUDIOBOOK!
available at Audible and iTunes
Featured image: Young Cicero Reading. Vincenzo Foppa c. 1464
Anne—Thanks for the great roadmap about how to avoid the pitfalls every writer—especially beginning writers—must learn to avoid.
Here’s a link to my post about the 15 keys to writing dialogue. Hope our readers will find it helpful.
https://selfpublishingsites.com/2020/01/15-keys-writing-dialogue/
Many thanks for the link, Ruth. I’ve put it in the post. 🙂
Ruth–I thought I ought to share this here, since this is our first genuine piece of hate mail. I figure we really rate now. Victoria Strauss gets some fabulous hate mail. I’m not sure if this was in response to this post or yours from last week. Obviously this person had a problem getting a comment by the WordPress elves, so they sent this as a DM on my FB “friend’ page (where I have close to the limit of “friends” BTW.) I wish I knew why commenting is so difficult for some commenters and easy for others. Personally, I have to comment from “backstage” of the blog. It’s annoying, but I never thought of sending myself hate mail. Or calling myself Karen. Sigh.
“Why are you so desperate to put others down!? Is it because otherwise no one else cares about what you write?! Love how you make fun of others yet I never heard about you!? Funny enough you not let people comment why is that gate keeper of Shakespearen literacy!? If you such a marvel why does my cat has more followers then your self claimed brilliant literal genius. You know what gives bad names of the industry!? Your behaviour. Bye Karen!”
Bye Karen, indeed. We’ll never know what set her off, but it’s rather nice to be called a “brilliant literal genius.” 🙂
So painfully accurate, Anne. I’m sure I did all of these as I got started, and now.. who really knows? Best to stay humble. I think 7 resonated with me the most- I just love people talking, debating a plan of action, that sort of thing. But seven heroes arguing around a campfire is a recipe for disaster: stuff has to happen!
As for 10, I’m currently wrestling with the rarified prose of Clark Ashton Smith, a man for whom the smaller word was never better. I’ve already had ten or more occasions where my Kindle dictionary shrugged at me. And never mind the meaning, I can often suss that from context- but what about the pronunciation!
Will–I’ll have to admit I had to Google Clark Ashton Smith. He sounds brilliant, but, well, wordy. What literary writers could get away with a hundred years ago would make most contemporary readers cry. I found this quote about his aim in writing. He said he wanted to create “verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources.” I can imagine a contemporary reader would have to keep a dictionary tab open to read that. Thanks for introducing me to a writer I didn’t know!
What. A. Great. Post! Thank you for that.
I recognise quite a few of these things, coz yeah, been there, done it…
Some of them I seemed to have avoided, phew. But, generally, I do think my writing/wording has improved as I am writing my second novel. It does annoy me even (because I’d say a few things differently in my first novel now but of course it’s too late – but I’m still okay enough with it).
1) and 2).
Hell YES! ???? I remember I’d told a friend I had finished my novel. It sat at 269K words. He said, “Well done. Now sit back and enjoy for a moment before the editing starts.” And I was like “What editing?”
Seriously!
I ended up making 11 drafts in total, cutting words like never seen before, reading (as you recommend!), taking classes, rewriting almost every sentence…
After 5 years I published it at 99,727 words ‘only’.
4) I’ve heard before that a common problem is that a novel starts at the wrong place.
My second starts inside a confessional booth. Hopefully different enough from an alarm clock scene. ????
Also, I’ve started it with a brief dialogue.
7) Talking of dialogue and info dump.
When I read your headline, I was also expecting (or hoping) you’d say that dialogue is sometimes being ‘mis-used’ for info dumping by replacing a scene. Does this exist?
Because I once read a local writer’s friend novel and noticed how the the plot was so much wrapped in dialogue. Like, characters constantly told each other what had happened to them or another character (on the phone; at the front door…). The reader seldom got to actually SEE it while it happened. Instead it was reported afterwards in dialogue.
I believe some writers might think as long as it’s wrapped in dialogue, it’s showing and not telling. But it’s not, or is it?
Katja–Congrats on bringing your magnum opus in under 100K words! As for info dumps in dialogue, that’s what’s sometimes called “As you know Bob” dialogue. As in “As you know, Bob, we have just slain the dragon so I can marry the beautiful princess, but now her father is refusing to give me her hand, so you and I must do battle with the King’s army.” Yes, Bob knows that because he was there. Telling Bob what he already knows rather than letting the reader see the action happen in a scene is the kind of thing that drives readers nuts. Or sometimes the author can simply “tell” the story. Sometimes we need to “tell not show”. More on this in my post on characters who talk too much.
Oooh, thank you for that. I didn’t know this had a ‘name’ – As you know Bob dialogue. Interesting!
And the best was to cure all of that is continue writing and reading and improving.
Another set of eyeballs on your work often catches the stuff you miss. You might not even realize you are doing in the dialogue tags – but someone else will see it.
Is un-wordiness an issue? I still struggle with that one.
Alex–“Unwordiness” is a great word, and yes, it can be a problem for some writers. Especially if they’re major fans of Kurt Vonnegut, who made unwordiness into high art. 🙂 But sometimes if a book seems too thin, what it needs is some extra scenes or another subplot. It’s true that beta readers can really help with this stuff. Many new writers are afraid to show their work to anybody until they hire an editor. But an editor can’t teach somebody to write.
Terrific post for all writers to revisit, Anne! And definitely one for my college students. I love your wrap-up, particularly. Enjoy writing! Don’t be so anxious to enter this hellish pit of publishing – grin.
Melodie–That’s the message I try to convey to first time novelists who are desperate to jump into the marketplace. “Wait a bit. Enjoy the luxury of writing without marketing. You’ll never be this free to write again.”
I’m starting to learn this, after dipping a toe into the hellish world of submissions.
Here are two newbie errors that made it into my personal Hall of Cringe:
Not knowing enough about current titles in my genre before pitching my book and not knowing how to write an authentic query letter without sounding like a crazed television executive. (Still a work-in-progress.)
I found out that learning the art and craft of writing is only one of my jobs. Learning about publishing, agents and the submissions process is a whole new glass mountain to climb.
Question: Do you think that writing short fiction is a good idea for middle grade, children’s writers, too?
Thanks for another great post!
Linda–I see an awful lot of new writers who say they can’t get published and think there’s something terribly wrong with their books. But the problem isn’t that they can’t write a novel, but that they can’t write a query letter.
You’re right that earning the ropes of the publishing business is a big part of learning to have a writing career.
And yes! I think writing short fiction for children’s magazines is a great way to get your work and name out there. I have a friend who won a contest run by Highlights that opened many, many doors in the children’s literature field. Go for it.
I will confess I am guilty of episodic storytelling. There is a reason those stories remain my “trunk novels”.
But this quote made my day:
“And if you’ve written a novel just so you can send everybody who isn’t exactly like you to Hell, your reader will want to send you there, too.”
I’d been telling a few friends this for years and they don’t listen. I guess they are writers who don’t think like a reader. Thanks for expressing it better than myself.
Yes, readers wants to be entertained, not preached at, and not coerced to vote a certain way, become vegan, or support a cause they don’t believe in.
The best writers let the readers reach their conclusions through character empathy.
Great post, Anne!
Ingmar–You’re right that very few preachy novels find an audience. There are some of course, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that did change minds and move civilization in a better direction, but as I say, you have to be a pretty good storyteller to pull it off.
Very helpful post, she opined.
Yes, I fell into the episodic novel trap/self-delusion. It was really a series of stories, which have now been appropriately cannibalized from the larger work and published as stories.
Liz–Haha! she chortled. I think episodic storytelling is the most common problem with new novelists. It’s natural to tell a story in small chunks that can be told around a campfire. But a novel is an unnatural construct in some ways.
It probably didn’t help that at the time I went to college (late ’70s, early ’80s), episodic short fiction was a “thing.”
Such great tips, Anne. While reading your post I couldn’t help smirking because I saw myself in so many of these paragraphs in 2009 onward, after I started writing. It took years to learn how to write a book that was “worth” reading. Your suggestion to “read, read, read your genre” really helps and having good editors is invaluable. Thank you for this.
Patricia–Even now, when I read a new mystery or funny women’s novel, I find new things that I realize I might have done in my last book. The classics do it too. Reading is the best way to learn to write well. I think when we’re starting out, we feel guilty when we’re reading and not writing. But the reading is essential to the writing.
OMG, Anne. You’ve hit the nail of the head. When I’m sitting here reading, I feel like I’m not working and I’m taking a vacation. But I, too, have learned some of the art of writing women’s fiction by reading women’s fiction. You are so right!
Wonderful post, Anne. Many of your points were spot on. I tend to write lean and usually edit in more than I remove. However, pacing it my particular bugaboo. Finding the balance between setting and action makes my brain hurt.
I’m working on my 3rd book now, and seems I’m always looking for that right spot to up the stakes.
Brenda–Good pacing is probably the toughest thing for a novelist to learn. I still get it wrong. That’s when a good developmental editor can really help. Constantly upping the stakes can be tough, but without it, we get saggy middles.
I’m pretty sure i did a good chunk of those things early on, and it took me a long time to undo most of those things. My daughter came across a book that I had lent to her that basically covered the majority of those issues. Her review of the book was so brutal that I have yet to share it with my former co-worker. That’s how bad I felt about it. One of things that she didn’t like right of the back, which is another piece of advice you can offer to those of the newish writers: make sure the jacket blurb actually has something to do with the story. She told me that when she read the jacket blurb, it got her all pumped up for the book, only to discover that the blurb had almost no connect with the story.
GB–Jacket copy is a whole other kettle of worms 🙂 And you’re right. Nothing turns you off to an author than a misleading blurb. I recently read a book that turned out to be a standard romance, but the blurb suggested a lot of mystery and adventure that never materialized. I might have enjoyed the book if I hadn’t had false expectations.
Great post, worth pinning to every newbie’s computer. This week in my First Monday blog, I talked about lopping off the first pages or even chapters twhen you find out where the story really starts, easily the most common issue I see when judging writing contests. https://valerieparv.wordpress.com/ Off to share your link now, thanks.
Valerie–Helpful post! You’re right that we’re always learning. Or we should be. 🙂 Even historical fiction needs to be written with a contemporary reader in mind. I often end up lopping off the first pages I wrote on a novel. They can be warm-ups.
Hi, Anne,
You never stop learning. There is always some new skill that you unlock. The writer who stops learning, stops being a good writer. There’s an urban fantasy writer I adored. In the days before ebooks, I’d go every week to the bookstore to see if the next book was out. They were just so good and each one was better than the last.
On Book 5, she landed on the best seller list and decided she had learned all she needed to. The books started to decline. She’s been publishing for many years, and I periodically revisit her–but that writer I enjoyed is gone forever. It looks like her sales have finally suffered. She’s tried to return to what she did in the old stories–and she doesn’t know how to anymore.
Linda–I hear you about the series authors who start phoning it in. Each book becomes a copy of the one before. I never thought about it that way, but that is probably the result of the author thinking they have nothing more to learn.
Oy gevalt! The “English Major Showing Off” category may be the most egregious of all. Thanks for another fine post.
CS–Having been a show-offy English (well, Art History) major, I know I have sinned in this department.
Excellent, concrete tips for aspiring novelists, Anne, and delivered in your usual highly entertaining style! I’m off to Facebook to share your words of wisdom!
Jodie–Thanks! That’s great to hear from a professional editor. BTW, if you want to visit us again this year, send ma an email. We’d love to have you back.
12 ticks in the 12 boxes from this too-early Gary Stu hackhead, Anne. Love your quote, “Reading is the best way to learn to write well. I think when we’re starting out, we feel guilty when we’re reading and not writing. But the reading is essential to the writing.” Couldn’t agree more. Also, “Anything goes in dialogue.” Words to write and live by. Enjoy what’s left of this big game day 🙂
Garry–I think we’ve all gone through a Mary Sue/Gary Stu stage. 🙂 I used to feel so guilty about reading fiction instead of writing. I didn’t realize that was the best way to improve my writing.
You’ve got it covered well Anne. Writerly prose is my pet peeve. Stories with too much description for everything send me skimming. 🙂
Debby–I used to feel guilty when I skimmed all that poetic prose, but now I don’t. Life’s too short. I love poetry, but not when I’m hungry to find out what’s happening in a story.
I hear you loud and clear. 🙂
I’m just revisiting my ‘practice novel’ after maybe four years in my files. And I thought I’d absorbed a lot of authorly training when I was writing it (reputable short story course, web feedback community, LOADS of blog articles… plotting, grammar , usage…).
I realised that short story submissions were an easier – and cheaper – way of getting feedback and I’ve spent the last 4 years line-editing and formatting publications for our local writing group. They are all too kind when feeding back on each other’s work (always a problem) but the experience of comparing different styles has been invaluable.
Cathy–It sounds as if you’ve been doing exactly the right thing: letting that novel rest while you build your career by publishing short fiction.
Your point about critique groups is a good one. Just hearing each others’ work is valuable. But sometimes critique groups turn into “mutual admiration societies”.
I can see my younger writing self in your post. For me, plotting remains the most difficult part of writing a novel. Now I plot to the nth degree before starting any new manuscript.
Gail–I think every author has a “problem area”. I tend to plot too heavily so there are too many subplots for readers to follow. But the key is to know your weaknesses and work on them. Plotting carefully before starting is probably just what you need.
Points #5 and #6 bother me the most when I’m reading. Of course our personal experiences and worldviews will influence our writing, but it can feel like a real non sequitur when an author jams real life stuff straight into a story world.
I remember reading a Sci-Fi novel where two characters started having a conversation about the U.S. military budget. Even though I kind of agreed with the point the author was making, I could not figure out what this had to do with anything else that was going on in the story.
James–I hear you. Even if we agree with every word, something preachy will take us out of the story.
To combat #2, I remember a PR client who, years ago, said of every news release I wrote: “OK, now go cut 30% from this beauty.” Relevant advice to fiction today. Mostly.
Melanie–That’s probably good advice for most writers. I think Stephen King said to always cut 10%. Although some people, like Alex Cavanaugh, say they have the opposite problem–“unwordiness.” 🙂
I was probably guilty of all of the above, Anne. Thankfully, I had several kind agents who slogged through four manuscripts and offered detailed notes. All four rejected, btw, but each note helped to improve my craft. When I started studying craft books and novel deconstructions, the proverbial light bulb flickered a little brighter. Larry Brooks’ coaching gave me the final push toward publication. And as luck would have it, I landed at a house with patient, knowledgeable editors.
Funny you wrote about this subject now. On Twitter “someone” claimed a child of 15 years had all the tools to write several novels. When I called BS, she backed up her argument with, “It depends on how you view children (implying, what? I hate kids?). Both my kiddos could write a novel and they’re not yet 10.” Not only is the remark insulting, it’s flat-out wrong.
Sue–One of the problems with self-publishing is writers miss out on the education (and rhino-hide) you get from submitting to agents. It’s not their job, but they can do a whole lot to help us learn the ropes.
But OMG what a deluded woman you ran into on Twitter. If she’s forcing her 5 and 8-year-olds to sit down and write whole novels instead of running around and playing, she’s guilty of child abuse. And as to the quality of such a novel…the less said the better. Besides, saying “Mozart wrote his first symphony at the age of 10 so all children should be able to write symphonies at the age of 10” is an absurd argument. Unfortunately social media is full of unwell people.
Love your posts. This one landed in my FB page while I am working on 3rd to 4th draft of my latest. I did 9 drafts of my first book learning so many of these lessons that now I can hear them while shaking my head in chagrin. My present novel is going well, thanks to posts like yours and some gentle critiques from great people. I owe so much to those who taught me kindness in critique is far more effective than cleverness.
Love, Mark
Mark–It’s true that “gentle” critiques from knowledgeable people are probably the best way to learn to write well. Good critiques and nine drafts sounds about right. 🙂
This is really solid advice we wish more read. We are going to share this on our twitter feed. Maybe those that submit to us will take it to heart.
After Dinner–I’m sure editors of literary journals see this stuff more than anybody. I hope I reached a few of your wannabe contributors.
On point 10, “Imprecise Word Usage”:
Those who work (or play) in the physical sciences distinguish between precision and accuracy. If you want a measurement that shows five decimal places and you see one that shows only two, it lacks precision. If you see one that shows five but the final three are garbage, it lacks accuracy. One would do well to extend this distinction to non-scientific writing. When I saw “Imprecise Word Usage” I anticipated something like “Vague Word Usage”. In the future, when writing about point 10 (which obvioiusly contains good advice!), I’d recommend a header like “Inaccurate Word Usage”.
Bill–Thanks! Great tip for writers submitting papers to scientific journals.
My apologies for not making myself clear. Submitters of papers to scientific journals already know this. I was trying to talk about why “inaccurate” would be preferable to “imprecise” in certain situations in ordinary writing, such as the title of point 10 in this article.
In the process of picking this nit, I don’t wish to obscure my enthusiastic “thank you” for your article overall.
I love this post, Anne. Thank you for writing it. (Is it obvious I agree or should I say it? Oops, just did.)
I actually laughed out loud at this. That probably wasn’t your intention, or at least your main one, I did. It’s brilliant. Each time I thought I’d point out number and talk it up, I read the next one and wanted to point that one out. So, all that to say, you’ve nailed it. Every single number in this post is spot-on.
*but I did.
*a number
(*sigh* I detest typos in my comments. Typed too quickly and hit “post comment” too soon. Also, left my P.S. out. So… P.S. I hope you’re feeling better.)
I also detest typos in what I write. It distracts me from my knowledge that I’m perfect in absolutely every whey. In software engineering, we’re expert at handling typos. We have narrowed down the problem to somewhere between the keyboard and the chair.
Sarah–I’m glad I made you laugh. Yes, it’s intentional. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, we can get stuck in some dark places. Typos are funny too. 🙂 Often I think Freudian slips are involved.
Liked your article. I wrote 7 novels and only with this 8th one am I trying to publish.
Clarence–You sound very disciplined. We learn by doing, and you’ve been doing novels, so I’m sure you’ve learned a lot. Once #8 is published, you may find you have the skills to make #1-#7 publishable. 🙂