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STAY IN THE LOOP
Wordstead
Writer's Newsletter
ARTICLES:
► Tips on Writing Natural Dialogue—Writing is simply not like talking. It doesn't matter how much you try to mimic ordinary speech to make your text sound informal—or realistic, in the case of dialogue.
► "Are Memoirs Beating the Fiction Market?"—Memoirs are not only holding their own in the book market, they're filling an important gap left by the fiction market.
► "Why Anybody Can Write a Memoir"
► "How to Get the Best Out of Your Ghostwriter"
► "Why You Should Think Before You Write"
► "Tips on How to Soften Your Writer's Block"
BOOK REVIEWS:
► Stephen King's latest novel, Under the Dome
► "The Old Cold War Magic We All Miss by That Much"—A recently discovered CIA manual of old secret tricks.
► Short book reviews
► More book reviews & must-reads
BLOG ARTICLES:
► The Secret to Writing With an Authentic Voice—Fiction writers consider dialogue one of the best ways to breathe realism into a story.
► Tim Fitzgerald's ground-breaking memoir of his days as a youth activist in the 1960s.
► "Do You Have to Be Famous to Write Your Memoir?"—That's the myth, and here are the facts...
Want to be notified about new blog postings? Send me a brief e-mail message by clicking on:
Afshaker@aol.com
PUBLISHING NEWS:
► "An e-Book Melee Worthy of a Soap" and more...
COOL FACTS:
► Did You Know...?
► Famous Ghostwriters
WRITING TIPS
► Writing With Style
► Writing Tidbits: Sentences
► Writing Tidbits: Paragraphs
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► TIPS ON WRITING-
1. Active vs. passive
Many books on writing insist on the use of active rather than passive sentences (“Mary wrote that book,” not “That book was written by Mary”). Follow their counsel to the letter and you’ll end up with loosely strung sentences. It’s far more important to allow your sentences to flow one from the other. Leave some sentences passive to maintain consistency.
2. Consistency
A good way to check for consistency inside a paragraph is to underline the beginning of each sentence. Read those beginnings to make sure each ties in with the words and references toward the end of the previous sentence.
3. Information flow
Two great thumb rules to follow: (1) Put the newest or most important information toward the end of your sentence, which information you intend to expand on in the next sentence. (2) Put at the beginning those ideas you’ve already mentioned or implied in the previous sentence.
Usage & Abusage
Use “neither” to refer to only two things (persons, actions, groups, companies, etc.). For three or more, use none or not any. “Shirley, Clive and Rupert went to town; none wore blue.”
Use “loath” to mean disinclined toward something (“I’m loath to believe it”); and loathe to say you dislike something (“I loathe the smell of failure!”).
Use “incredulous” to mean skeptical, incredible to mean unbelievable. I often hear outbursts like: “It was so incredulous!” That's wrong. On the other hand, it’s idiomatically acceptable to say: “You're incredible, you know that?”
Don’t abuse “a lot of” by employing it too often in the plural. Everybody does it, of course, but "a lot" is singular, and will stay that way to the end of time. Instead of "a lot of farmers have singing talent," say: "Lots of farmers have singing talent." Better still, "Many farmers do." And I can vouch for that!
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Testimonials
Anthony has been key to developing my writing career. He has been, and continues to be, a mentor, a trusted intellectual mind that holds thoughts and words with care and insight. Yet he sees, not merely the written text, but the soul and spirit that is behind every passage that emerges from an author's deepest parts...
- Nenosi Mae
The Colour of Barashash (novel)
barashasha@yahoo.co.uk
My mother said she would like to meet you one day…I have to agree that you did an incredible job getting in sync with my memories and emotions. I am so glad that I decided to work with you! I hope we will continue to work together on future projects.
- Margot Hyland, American from
South Africa and mother
of young US marine serving in Afghanistan
Across the Color Line (memoir)
mihland@yahoo.com
I have just completed the process of publishing my first manuscript, and I must say that you have helped me find the most eloquent and highest expression for my thoughts. I want to acknowledge your tremendous contribution to my personal success and that of my book project. I look forward to using you as my resource to support all of my writing needs. You are a true master at what you do.
- Harold Davis, MscD, PhD
Inspirational speaker and success coach
Moving the Stars With Your Words: How to be the creative factor and achieve
what you really want out of Life
drhdavis@movingthestars.com
www.movingthestars.com
Dr. Shaker, I have read the manuscript and I am so darn impressed with what you have done I can't find words to express it. You are definitely a master at what you do. I hope you will allow me to include you in my acknowledgments, because I want those who read the book to know about you...You certainly deserve that if you would allow me.
- Robert Sullivan,
Georgia businessman
The Formula: Building Competitive
Advantage for the Motor Carrier
robert.l.sullivan@att.net
Read more...
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________ Wordstead Writers' News ________
The latest in writing & publishing, expert writing tips
and reliable book reviews | |
Anthony F. Shaker, PhD
writer/editor
AFS Wordstead
afshaker@aol.com
(819) 597-4072 (EST)
www.wordstead.com
WRITING MARKET TRENDS
Why You Should Think Before You Write
By Anthony F. Shaker
Send comments below
Publishing just isn’t what it used to be. There are of course bright spots here and there, but the nature of publishing has dramatically changed.
Today print publishers can no longer afford to print with the same abandon as in the past, or spend tens of thousands of dollars on hotel bookings and air fares for every major book campaign. This has been a business model long in decline. Replacing it are online publishers of every variety. And they're churning out content on an even grander scale, with less than a fraction of the cost.
It seems everything is getting “published” these days. The good, the bad, the vain—makes no difference as long as it sells, or leads to a sale. The Internet has opened up unprecedented possibilities for self-expression. All you need is some optimization savvy, good ranking on the search engines…and, presto, you’re a publisher.
Given the possibilities, only an addlebrained blogger or independent web publisher would complain about “Athens on the Net,” as New York Times op-ed writer Anand Giridharadas dubbed the democratizing impact of the Internet. Technology has simply transformed the way we think, communicate, read, write and publish. But there's more to it than that.
In the 1970s, rising costs began to force print publishers and writers alike to give more than just lip service to planning and forethought. A great development—considering how many trees were being cut down to print all those books. That is, until the Internet came into being and marketing became everyone's sole obsession.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Internet—the Web. What troubles me is how the marketing of content is supplanting content itself and pretty much determining what gets read. I’m not exactly sure what this augurs for either our intellectual level or the democracy we are supposed to thrive in.
All I know is that it’s gotten much harder to find good content, and I don’t just mean of the literary kind. Copywriting is in the boondocks too. Businesses consider attracting and nurturing copywriting talent passé. Writers and editors used to be the stuff of the book industry, but many publishers feel the same about them nowadays.
As a professional ghostwriter and freelance editor, I don't feel that any of this has necessarily worked to my disadvantage. I try to maintain a healthy balance between quality and affordability with my offerings to clients. What I find regrettable is how fast the old process, which went from idea to copy to market, has shrunk to a shadow of its former self. Online publishers prefer to plunge straight from idea into market, assuming there's an idea to begin with.
In circumstances like these writing risks becoming a lost art.
Still, there's a silver lining to this never-ending story. Mediocre e-books at least don't eat up whole the forests, as mediocre paperbacks once did. If only Dan Brown could switch to virtual publishing! In principle, poor content should leave no carbon fingerprint. But hold on! Nothing is for free.
What if we could calculate the fossil-fuel input of “e-content”? Computers permanently on, a download here, a click there...it adds up, you know? Have you ever considered the carbon footprint of your finger-tapping?
Maybe the answer is simply to make a better effort at thinking more deeply about what we write before sending its million-fold impressions into cyberspace.
Take heart! Democracy is still “the worst system, except for all the others.” Someday, when we look back, this period of history may seem only like our first waddle into the digital age.
The future is pregnant with possibility. We just have to grow wiser as we move along.
© 2009 Anthony F. Shaker and AFS Wordstead
►WHAT’S NEWS
Ê The end of the beginning: Yahoo has announced it will close down GeoCities on October 26. GeoCities, in its heyday the third most popular destination on the web, was born back in 1995 as Beverly Hills Internet, a small web-hosting firm. Yahoo purchased it in 1999 for $3.57bn. Millions of “homesteaders”—as its users are still called—were initiated into the web. They built and owned their first pages in a virtual city. To keep their pages from being lost forever, Yahoo added in its announcement, that they will be archived in a giant digital library—the nonprofit Internet Archive project.
Ê Remember Joe the Plumber? John McCain mentioned him in the last presidential debate in 2008. Nobody knew who he was then, so everyone figured Joe was just a JOHN DOE. He turned out to be the guy on national TV who confronted Barack Obama, also running for president, about his great fear of a tax hike...should Obama get elected. Well, Joe—his real name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher—now has a ghostwriter named Thomas Tabback. In fact, a St. Louis Tea Party “Action Alert” has announced that Tabback is to speak at Pillar In The Valley (Chesterfield Valley) on what he has learned from Joe about Middle America. [Source: Chad Garrison, “Ghostwriter of Joe the Plumber Book to Speak Tonight in [Where Else?] Chesterfield,” Daily RFT, St. Louis News Blog, Riverfront Times (Wednesday, Oct. 28 2009)]
Ê Speaking of JOHN DOE, apparently there is such a man! No, it’s not a ghostly visitation by Gary Cooper. No alias or sales gimmick, either. This John Doe immigrated from Korea more than thirty years ago at age 11. His Korean name, Jang Do, sounded too foreign to him when he and his family had gained entry to the US. Jang pleaded with his parents to Americanize it. “Jang” sounded like John; and they added an “e” to their last name to avoid the “doo” in Dr. Doolittle. One can only imagine Mr. John Doe’s travails as an air traveler, with all that airport security. He’s now a 40-year-old software programmer. But there were other John Does, like the loan officer who died in Alpharetta, Ga, and the man in New York who married Frances P. Worth in 1885. The name “John Doe” first figured in the centuries-old English legal tradition as the stand-in for a witness who wanted to protect his real identity. [Source: Alison Leigh Cowan, “Meet John Doe. No, Really!” The New York Times (July 29, 2009)]
Ê The English-language Wikipedia, one of the ten most popular web sites with 60 million visits every month in its English version alone, plans to limit the changes that readers can make to its articles on people. Its so-called “flagged revisions,” a new feature, will require the opinion of an experienced volunteer editor before any change goes live. The new procedure has already been implemented in the German-language version of Wikipedia. The embrace-the-chaos culture long been associated with this upstart web network seems to be evolving a two-tiered format: experienced editors who enjoy a high level of trust and everyone else. It’s self-contradictory, in view of Wikipedia’s whole raison d’être, but perhaps also inevitable.
Ê An unexpected rise in the number of literary fiction readers has caught everyone by surprise—especially writers, publishers and literary agents. In a report, the National Endowment for the Arts says that reading has increased for the first time since 1982 for every age, ethnic and other demographic category. Even more surprising, given the gloom and doom hovering around the question of literacy in general, is that 18-to-24-year-olds show the most dramatic rise. The survey showed that more young people admitted reading at least one novel, short story, poem or play. That's quite impressive given that age category's long period of decline in literacy. Has the dumbing down of culture finally stopped, or is this just a blip? Maybe the decline was just an early effect of burgeoning new technologies, especially the Internet? There is even speculation that the Internet itself is inducing people to read more. [Source: Motoko Rich, “Fiction Reading Increases for Adults,” The New York Times (January 12, 2009)]
Ê Journalism and mass communication schools are granting more diplomas than ever, according to a survey by Lee Becker of the University of George. In the academic year 2007-08, there were 55,000 graduates. The downside is that their rate of success in finding employment within six to eight months was the lowest in 23 years. [Source: Andrew Vanacore (AP), “Journalism still finding recruits if not profits,” Centre Daily Times (Monday, Sep. 21, 2009)]
► ONLINE PUBLISHING
Ê Companies who sell electronic reading devices couldn’t be happier. Amazon claims that customers who use Kindles buy 3.1 times more books than they did before they began to use the device. Its e-book customers reportedly download far more books from the online library of Reading, a make of devices, than the average American. It's not clear, however, if the pattern indicates better times for the publishing industry as a whole, as people who own e-book devices tend to be the most passionate about books. [Source: Brad Stone “E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight,” The New York Times (October 21, 2009)]
Ê Two years after its US launching in the US, Kindle—an electronic reader the bit-size of a paperback—is still unavailable in many parts of the world. But it just reached Ireland—with great fanfare. A Kindle can store as many as 1,500 books and offer an electronic-ink display feature that has the appearance of paper. Of course, real paper does that too, but Amazon and the book industry are hoping for a reading frenzy. I say, if the Irish can produce James Joyce, let them try to read him online. Writer Steven Johnson argues in the Wall Street Journal that e-books will “change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways.” It’s hard to say what this augurs for future reading enjoyment, since e-books cannot be lent, sold or passed on to the next generation after you’ve disposed of your device. [Source: Fiona McCann, “Opening up to the magic of the e-book,” The Irish Times (Sat, October 10, 2009)]
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► DID YOU KNOW?
Ê Did you know that “I”, “we”, “two” and “three” are among the oldest words in the English language? We’re talking thousands of years! Researchers at Reading University, UK, have identified 200 other ancient words, using supercomputer analysis to select vocalizations. These word-roots are spread out among the broad Indo-European family of languages, and are considered independent of either culture or technology. It’s all based on probabilities, of course. The study used a model that calculates the likelihood that certain words have retained their ancestral roots and the speed of evolution of other words. Without surviving records, however, there is no way to prove any of this. [Source: "‘Oldest English words’ identified,” BBC News (published: 2009/02/26 09:23:42 GMT)]
Ê Did you know that Norman Mailer was advised by a lawyer named Charles Rembar to write “fug” in his career-launching war novel, The Naked and the Dead, instead of the dreaded four-letter word? He went along because he didn't want to run afoul of an obscenity law that originated in 1873. In that year, Anthony Comstock (founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice) had convinced the US Congress to pass legislation that outlawed obscenity. Mailer's gambit worked, as we now know. But perhaps we wordsmiths could draw inspiration from his example and try to find a creative alternative to the unbridled use of profanities. [Source: Fred Kaplan, "The Day Obscenity Became Art," The New York Times (July 21, 2009)]
Ê Did you know that somewhere in the world “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells had once been banned?
► MUST-READS
1) STORMY WEATHER: The Life of Lena Horne by James Gavin. Illustrated. Atria Books, 2009. 598 pp. $27.
Born in 1917 to middle-class parents, Lena Horne grew up in Brooklyn and began her singing career in dingy clubs, where she gained popularity. She went on to play in minor Hollywood roles. In 1942, MGM dispatched her to entertain black soldiers. Arriving exhausted later at an Alabama diner at 3 a.m., she was refused a cup of coffee, then later treated badly at a mostly white Army camp. That was when the activist in her was born. She continued to sing throughout her life. Though jazz wasn’t her specialty, she appeared with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Her concerts and recordings, which arrived late in her life, drew rave reviews, to which she reacted desolately, “Too little, too late.”
2) LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER by John Irving. Random House, 2009. 554 pages. $28.
Like so many of Irving’s other novels, this one has to do with powerlessness, fathers and sons, grief after loss, the rues of time, and the whirls of the imagination. In this novel, Dominic Baciagalupo’s relationship with his 12-year-old son, Danny, hinges on their struggle to escape a relentless cop called Constable Carl with tragicomic consequences. Irving is heavily influenced by Charles Dickens. This, combined with Irving's knack for random spectacles of characters and events, defines the world of Danny, who tries to make sense of it all.
3) HOW TO BE A MOVIE STAR: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood. By William J. Mann. Illustrated. 484 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $28.
Richard Burton described her as the most voracious lover he had ever known. Nor does Mann skimp on details, either. Elizabeth Taylor has had a long passionate life, and he takes pleasure describing both her character and her experiences. Stardom came to her as a result of "useful marriages," but also of her mother’s careful earlier grooming into Southern California’s entertainment industry. It may said of Liz that she literally married into her roles. But she is perhaps the greatest actress of all time.
► FAMOUS GHOST WRITERS
Carolyn Keene is the common penname used by a host of ghost writers who wrote for the Nancy Drew series using the same basic formula.
Peter de Jonge “co-authored” with James Patterson. But that’s just another way of saying that he ghosted for Patterson, who has admitted at being more adept at imagining plots than writing full-fledged novels. I believe him, too. Having read a few of their novels, I don’t think his ghostwriter was any better at fleshing out the plots, just the splatter.
Theodore Sorenson, President Kennedy’s speechwriter, has just published his autobiography, Counselor. His connection to John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, has been denied for years. In his book, though, Sorenson reveals that he’d written large sections of Kennedy’s book.
Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s campaign is alleged to have ghostwritten a negative web site about his Republican opponent in the run for Senate. If the allegation, made this month, is true, then TruthAboutRubio.com would constitute a violation of the campaign finance law. Crist himself has fallen victim to smear, having been compared to Adolf Hitler in a video, which Crist alleges Rubio was behind.
Anthony F. Shaker, PhD
writer/editor
(819) 597-4072
Afshaker@aol.com
www.wordstead.com
Please send your comments to Afshaker@aol.com, or simply reply to this message. Make sure you indicate your name, e-mail address and, if you like, your URL. Your comments will be published shortly on my web, along with the contents of this newsletter.
Anthony F. Shaker, PhD
(819) 597-4072 (Eastern Standard Time)
(819) 597-4547
Afshaker@aol.com
Visit the web site: http://www.wordstead.com/
© Copyright 2009, AFS Wordstead
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