The Gift of Reading

At the beginning of the month, I found out there’s going to be a Little One joining us in December (yay!).  When I get a break from all those famous pregnancy symptoms, I’ve been obsessing over what s/he needs.  There’s diapers and onesies and plenty of blankets for our six-month long winters…and books.

I’ll always believe that one of the great blessings of my childhood was having books at my disposal.  All kinds of books.  My parents always read for pleasure and encouraged me to do so.  My grandmother also had a huge collection of books — the accumulated titles of her childhood and those of my mother and her siblings — that I always had access to.  One of my first memories is of looking through a picture book Bible and making up my own stories to accompany the pictures, since I hadn’t learned to read yet.

My love for the written word never left me.  Books have always been my solace and my favorite pastime — from The Poky Little Puppy to Harry Potter, Shakespeare, Shannara, A Song of Ice and Fire, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen…

When I was young, I was never discouraged from reading anything.  Sure, my mother wasn’t always happy with my choices (like that um, juicy romance I picked up at 13), but I was never censored.  Reading is enrichment and it’s a love that lasts a lifetime.  I got that gift and I want to pay it forward to my little Peanut.

While I was looking through the children’s section online at B&N, I came across many of my old favorites.  Where better to start Peanut than with Mom and Dad’s favorites?  Eventually, s/he will decide to love mystery over fantasy, or documentaries or historical fiction or maybe even New Age poetry.  But for now, some good old pictures books will do.

 

The Tawny Scrawny Lion (This always made me want carrot soup!)

Horton Hears A Who! (One of hubby’s favorites)

Corduroy

 

Hemingway's "Iceberg Theory" of Writing

Reblogged from 101 Books:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

Read more… 233 more words

Venturing Into the Gray Areas with Purple Prose

Keep your writing clear and coherent, and avoid pretentious or overly formal language.  Write to communicate, not to impress. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Don’t dumb down, but don’t let your writing get in the way of your message. There’s a fine line between elegance and pomposity.

Mark Nichols, “7 Tips for Editing to Improve Usage” @ DailyWritingTips

Excellent advice.  The only problem is, where’s that “fine line between elegance and pomposity”?  The short answer is, no one really knows because it’s different for everyone.  One person’s purple prose is another’s beautiful description.  One type of writing might warrant lots of elegance, style, and 25-cent words, while another might require you to be short and sweet.  Or, you might need to use one style or the other for effect.

It takes practice to determine what’s best for yourself and your writing, and your preferences/needs may change over time.  Nichols, however, has some good guidelines that we should follow:

1.  Always be clear about your meaning.  Pretty writing is fine but don’t let it cloud the point you’re trying to make in writing.  Your readers should always know what you’re trying to say.

2.  Get rid of ulterior motives.  As a teacher/tutor I see this problem a lot.  Many new students, particularly college freshmen, write in exceptionally elevated and complex ways because they think that’s what they should be doing.  Instead of sounding formal and sophisticated, however, often it just comes out as contrived and stiff.  Don’t try to impress people with your vocabulary or prowess in using 4-line sentences that aren’t run-ons.  Just write.

3.  Know that the line is there.  If you understand that there is such a thing as being too grand, or being too basic, you’re less likely to fall into either trap.  You’ll be more aware of your writing and of how it comes across to readers.  If you find that you’re not, well, that’s what beta readers are for.

Practice!!!

Descriptive Writing From Photographs  @ ProjectGrad

Descriptive Writing Practice — $2.00 download in my TpT Store

Writing Concisely @ The UNC Writing Center Online

SEO and LSI 101: What They Are & How To Use Them

SEO, or search engine optimization, has been around for quite awhile.  Anyone who uses the web for business of any kind should have at least a basic understanding of SEO and its brother, LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing).  Ironically, there are few reliable sources out there to give you a basic understanding of how SEO & LSI work.  Unlike academic writing or all the citation styles I bitched about recently, there isn’t one set, established way to do things.  SEO & LSI are creatures of necessity, evolving from the complexities of search engine algorithms and continuing to do so every time those folks at Google decide it’s time for an update.

Being a veteran SEO user, part-time online writer, and your friendly neighborhood blogger, I decided that maybe I should try laying down some basic guidelines for using SEO & LSI, at least as far as writing/text content goes.  First, you have to understand what exactly SEO & LSI are.  Based on my experience and within the context of writing, these are the definitions we’ll work with:

Search Engine Optimization: the strategic use of keywords and phrases in web content to improve the organic visibility of a website in search engine rankings

Latent Semantic Indexing: using words and phrases that directly correlate with your SEO keywords to improve search engine visibility without overloading the actual keywords

Clear as mud, right?

Ok, first we’ll start with SEO.  Based on that definition, we’ll say that SEO is…

1 – Strategic.  SEO content is written with search engine visibility and ranking in mind.

2 – Based of the use of keywords and phrases.  For example, an SEO content article titled “The AKC Top Ten Dog Breeds of 2012” would use keywords/phrases such as AKC, dog, dogs, and dog breeds.  This means that they are targeting users who go to search engines and enter these words or phrases with them.

3 – Organic.  SEO content is different from other forms of advertising such as targeted advertising.  It strives to find the balance between using keywords naturally and using them in the right percentages that search engines find them.  There’s a lot of inorganic “SEO content” out there on the web (I’ve linked to some examples), but the best content will be good writing and informative reading first, keyword-linking second.  As a side note, most pieces of SEO content are no longer than 500-600 words.

Ok, now that we’ve got that clarified, let’s move on to LSI.

Technically speaking, LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing is a mathematical formula that computers and the people who think like computers use to categorize and classify documents.  Unlike SEO, it’s a bit more structured.  LSI in various forms has been around since the 1960s and is used by search engines, the intelligence community, technical support engines, and document databases like EBSCO and ProQuest.

For the online writer’s purposes, LSI boils down to synonyms and synonymous phrases.  It’s meant to reduce keyword-stuffing and find content that is written naturally and reads naturally.

For example, say I wrote an article titled “15 Ways To Lower Your Gas Bills This Winter.”  My key phrase for SEO purpose would be “lower gas bill(s)”or “how to lower gas bills.”  Those are the specific phrases that I’m hoping readers will type into a search engine and find my content.  To encourage LSI, I would also include phrases and keywords such as “reduce gas bill,” “reduce heating costs,” “spend less on utilities,” “lower electric bills,” “reduce electric bills,”  etc., etc.

If writers and search engines relied only on keyword use in online content, there would be a lot more trite, uninformative, badly-written pieces on the web than there already are.  So, using LSI concepts, search engines will also look for content that uses similar phrasing, since that’s more natural writing/speaking.  It also widens the net, so to speak, since users might search for keywords that just aren’t used in any content they’ve found so far.

Here’s an example:

I searched for “types of dogs” and was given some websites that use that phrasing.  However, I was also presented with websites where the key phrase is “dog breeds” instead of “types of dogs.”  This is latent semantic indexing in action.

Another common example would be to search for the keyword cheap and be presented with content that uses the keywords inexpensive, frugal, and low-budget.

Writing for the virtual world takes practice, and there are plenty of other aspects of SEO and LSI, but those are the basics.  Once you’ve got a grasp on them, you’re ready to make your foray into the world of online writing.

An Example of SEO Writing Done Wrong

 

Related Reading:

10 Old SEO Methods You Need To Stop

Good SEO, Bad SEO: Do You Know The Difference?

Why So Many?!

Did you know that, if you get specific, there are about 8 different citation styles for academic writing?  This doesn’t include those little quirks your professors sometimes insist on (“If you staple your paper it’s an automatic F!!!!!”).

There are, all together:

1. MLA
2. APA
3. Chicago
4. AP
5. Turabian
6. ASA
7. ACA/IEEE

Some people will group them — like, Chicago/Turabian/AP.  But, believe me, there’s a difference.  And it always drives me up the wall.

Each citation style comes from a different association or group.  MLA from the Modern Language Association, which sets rules for literary writing and so on.  If you’re an English major, you’ll be using this a lot.  APA, ASA, and ACA/IEEE is for the sciences — psychology, biology, etc.  I hate APA with a passion, but the real kicker is Chicago, AP, and Turabian.  They’re all basically the same, have similar or same roots, but they have minor, minor, minor differences from each other and from MLA.  Like, Chicago prefers footnotes to in-text citations, while MLA wants in-text citations but likes footnotes for additional information or clarifications.

Ugh.

Once writers leave school, most don’t have to deal with this sort of thing.  But it’s the same concept as trying to submit the same manuscript to one publisher who prefers Arial 11 and to another who wants it in Times New Roman 12.  Or stapled versus not stapled.  Or with the author’s name in the header AND title page versus just on the title page.

Why so many?  Are the literary gods still arguing about what’s best, leaving us poor writers to duke out between us?  It drives me nuts still, nearly two years after leaving college.  Today being Superbowl Sunday, I am one of the few Essay Writing Tutors available, meaning I’ve got multiple sessions going and am trying to tell one student how to use APA and another why Turabian papers need the full citation in the first footnote but abbreviated ones after.  And I almost told an MLA student he was missing his running head.

*facepalm*

For the record, I personally prefer MLA.  With in-text citations and footnotes only if you have extra/supplemental information.  And I never staple papers unless I’m told to.

 

A Novel Idea: The Only iOS App A Writer Needs

So, I got super-lucky this year and scored an iPhone for Christmas. I’m pretty infatuated with it so far, and I’m proud to say that Goodreads gets a top spot in my app list alongside Angry Birds and Bejeweled.

There’s something like 1 million apps available for iPhone users, free and paid, for pretty much every purpose on the planet. By some strange fortune or by divine guidance, I managed to find a total gem among all the games, podcasts, and pizza delivery assistants. My friends, I introduce you to A Novel Idea.

No matter what platform or device you use, there’s no shortage of apps and software programs designed for the fiction writer out there. I’ve tried many of them and was never fully satisfied. A Novel Idea is the first such program that looks like it was actually designed for writers, by a writer, and by one who understands the need for a certain balance between structure and chaos and is realistic in his estimation of just how much time most writers actually spend writing on their phones/tablets.

Open up the free version of this app and you get all the basics — Novels, Characters, Scenes, Locations, Ideas. You can add and edit an unlimited number of entries to each section, then leave them floating free or attach them. I went in and made a page for each character in one of my novels, then linked each character to the Novel page. I added scenes and ideas and linked them to certain characters and novels, I could even link characters by their relationships — So and So is Such and Such’s daughter/mother/sister/wife/boss. And the best thing is that all of this linking and customization is completely optional, and there are no annoying reminders or notifications that pop up if you choose not to include them.

This is just one aspect of the beauty of A Novel Idea. For each novel, you can include a title, plot details, themes, premise, point of view, and more details. And even better, most of the sections are free-writes, so you can add as much or as little detail as you like. The same goes for Characters, where you can key in gender, age, physical attributes, roles, species, internal and external motivation, conflicts, skills & talents, education, and much more. When you’ve got all that information together, you can create custom groups to put your characters or your novels or whatever into. I grouped mine by genre — fantasy and contemporary fiction — and then by trilogy, since some characters belonged to multiple books, etc., etc.

It’s a lot of information. But the layout is so user-friendly that it’s as if some excellent friend went and organized all my notes and files in a way that’s actually organized but doesn’t feel awkward to me. (I had a friend like that once. In college. After graduation we moved to separate states. Sigh.)

I am, as you could probably tell, in total head-over-heels love with this app. My only complaint is that the Pro version — which allows you to sync between your devices, your computer, and Dropbox; export to iTunes, turn off the ads, and write scenes with word counts — is on the pricey side for an app at $2.99. But, the app is so great for note-taking and world-building on-the-go (or when I get an idea in bed and don’t want to dig out my notebooks or drag out my laptop) that I plan to most willingly pay the price next payday. Bottom line — if you are a fiction writer and you own any iOS device, you should be ashamed not to have A Novel Idea.

Out with the old, in with the new

Usually around this time, you start seeing all sorts of “[Year] In Review” – type posts, which, call me a Grinch, tend to get pretty old after a while. Not always, but after the 11th blog recapping the author’s last twelve months, it seems ho-hum. If you feel the same, welcome aboard. I’ll spare you by just saying my 2012 was pretty good. I had my ups (getting married) and my downs (Mom’s health problems) but everything has worked out well so far and there’s only 3 days left for everything to go to absolute Hell. I’d say the odds are in my favor.

This week you also tend to start seeing the “Looking Forward to [Next Year]!” posts. Those I usually enjoy. I consider myself an optimist by necessity — look forward and you’ve got nothing but hope, look back for too long and you’ll drown in even the smallest setbacks.

So what have I got to look forward to in 2013?

1. A new job! I finally got pulled from the waitlist at Tutor.com and am in the final stages (i.e., background check) of getting certified. I’ll hopefully be able to start tutoring in the next week or two.

2. New books! I scored a B&N gift card for Christmas and I’ve already spent most of it. Plus, some of my favorite authors will be releasing new titles in the coming months, so I’m doubly excited to spend some more time with my old buddies.

3. Our own home! After so much planning and hoping, Devin and I will finally be able to get our own place. Just as soon as we can find pet-friendly rentals…

4. Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest! Each year I’ve gone to enter, I chickened out at the last minute. This year, I WILL do it. And if the deadline gets close and I haven’t, both Devin and my mother have instructions to lock me in the bathroom and submit it for me anyway.

5. A new blog! The first week in January I’ll be launching my DIY blog. I love cooking/crocheting/gardening/etc almost as much as I do writing. Keep an eye out for the link!

“Adults Should Read Adult Books” — Why?

A few days ago, New York Times columnist Joel Stein declared, “The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.”  Basically, Mr. Stein is embarrassed by the ranks of adults who read such literary phenomenons as Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter simply because they’re labeled children’s or young adult’s literature.  After reading the column, rolling my eyes, and tossing around some sarcasm, I came here to point out why I feel Mr. Stein is more likely to embarrass himself with these narrow-mindedness than by showing up on a plane with a copy of Breaking Dawn.

First, I want to point out, Mr. Stein, the major logical fallacy your column commits:

You have not read these books.

Any adult who can make a rational argument should be able to understand that you cannot judge, justify, defend, or really even engage with any sort of material until you at least know the bare facts.  Considering that, in your eyes, The Hunger Games has been ridiculously oversimplified to “games you play when you’re hungry,” I’d say you haven’t got even those.  Assuming value based on an arbitrary genre or age group only used by publishers and booksellers to organize thousands of titles is not only logically flawed, but really, it’s just stupid.

More importantly, however, such blatant and unfounded disregard for something flippantly termed “for kids” demonstrates a lack of understanding about not only the nature of literature, but also of its history and evolution as well as the nature of humanity’s intellectual and emotional development.  Were literary critics to constantly toss out what they might deem too juvenile, mainstream, or simply incompatible with their age or gender, we wouldn’t have the vast majority of our greatest classics.

My shining example of this is William Shakespeare.  Shakespeare wrote for the masses.  He wrote plays that would appeal mostly to the groundlings in the Globe Theater and would give his noble patrons a break and a laugh.  He was called “an upstart crow,” rarely paid for his work and rarely credited properly.  Today, he is the bread and butter of every English teacher from 9th grade to graduate school, and for good reason (I think).  In his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, John Dryden (whom I hope you hold in high regard, Mr. Stein), called him “the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul” and stated that “his magic could not copied be.”

Beyond Shakespeare, we have other writers who were disregarded by literary critics in their time for being too simple for “real” literature.  Geoffrey Chaucer.  Jane Austen.  Edgar Allen Poe.  Henry David Thoreau.  Mary Shelley.  Franz Kafka.  Emily Dickinson.  Charlotte Bronte.  Not to mention a host of artists, thinkers, and revolutionaries throughout the ages.

This might seem like overkill on the subject, since the only clear objection to “kid’s literature” is that it’s for kids, but I think this objection speaks volumes for ignorance and literary snobbery.  And sadly, Mr. Stein, you’re missing out on some really great books.

Why reject something that may be beautifully written just because it’s for kids?  You state that “books are one of our few chances to learn,” and you can learn from the kid’s literature you look down on so ridiculously.  The other day, my kid brother taught me a neat little trick for adding fractions that he learned in school.  He’s eleven, yes, and has an intense fascination with a mystical wizarding computer game and is very much a little kid still.  But that didn’t mean his ideas, his knowledge, and his input didn’t have value for me as an intelligent and educated adult.  His fractions trick isn’t the Pythagorean Theorem, but it helped me.

If “kids” literature has the potential to be as wonderfully written, intellectually stimulating, and universally wise as adult literature, why shouldn’t I read it?  It’s a dumb rule, to be blunt, Mr. Stein.  It doesn’t make sense.  I’ve read my chunk of the world’s “adult literature” and will certainly continue to read, but I can say right now that I learned a lot more about life, the world, and about writing from one go-around with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows than I ever did with half a dozen discussions of “My Last Duchess” orMadame Bovary.

Related Reading:

“Adults Should Read Adult Books”

“Authors Taking Risks Isn’t Kids Stuff”

Joel Stein and Literary Snobbery (fueledbyscotch.wordpress.com)

12 for 2012: Progress So Far!

So, the new year is in full swing and I’ve got goals to accomplish.  I’m happy to report that I’ve made some progress thus far!

Get my novel Someone’s Watching on the market.

My first attempt is going to be for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.  I’ve been gradually working on editing, but I need to take another look at the entry guidelines and such.

Get up at a decent hour and write every weekday for Textbroker.

I haven’t been very faithful about the “decent hour” thing, but I have been writing every day.  Baby steps.

Finish writing that business plan by the end of February.

I’ve been doing some market research and I have a basic outline.  I’m still wading through statistics and trying to figure them out.

Read at least two completely new books each month.

This is going exceptionally well.  I finished Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants last weekend and am almost finished with the first book in Terry Brooks’s Genesis of Shannara series.  Next month I plan to finish the trilogy and then move on to some classics I’ve had sitting on my shelf a while.

Write reviews of each of the 24 books I read.

Look for a review of the book and movie adaptation Water for Elephants in the next few days!

Keep a writer’s notebook.

Lots of lovely scribbles already

 

These aren’t all of my goals, but 50% isn’t bad for only the third week of January.  How are your 12 for 2012 going?

12 for 2012: A Year of Writing

First, my apologies for the unexpected delay.  I rang in the New Year with a pulled muscle and a stomach bug, but I’m back and ready to hit the ground running!

My last post was about making your New Year’s resolutions.  I agreed to make 12 Writing Goals for 2012, and to share them on here.  Well, here are my 12 for 2012:

1.  Get my novel Someone’s Watching on the market one of two ways:

a.  submit to Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest, and if nothing comes of that

b.  send queries/samples to at least six agents.

2.  Get up at a decent hour and write every weekday for Textbroker.  It’s my main source of income and I need to be more consistent with it.

3.  Finish writing that business plan by the end of February.  Market statistics, prepare to be discovered and conquered!

4.  Be more consistent updating my blog.  Aiming for at least one post per week!

5.  Scrap the original draft of SW’s sequel and begin a new one while waiting on contest results/agent responses.

6.  Read at least two completely new books each month.

7.  Finally start that cooking blog I’ve been dreaming about for weeks.  Keep a lookout for the link!

8.  Write reviews of each of the 24 books I read.

9.  Try writing something besides novel-length fiction.  I’ve done short stories, poetry, and CNF many times but only under the eyes of a professor.  It’s time to break out on my own with a different genre I enjoy.

10. Pitch a few articles to a print publication.  I love the freedom and simplicity of ghostwriting, but I do miss seeing my own byline

11. Participate in NaNoWriMo again.  I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment!

12. Keep a writer’s notebook.  I had one in high school, jotting down any random idea, phrase, or image that popped into my head.  The last few years, I’ve slacked and probably lost a lot of good ideas.

It’s a lot of writing and will take a lot of dedication.  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, the only way to move forward in life is to set your eyes on a target and push towards it as hard as you can.  The act of writing itself is heading towards a goal.  As we finish each sentence, we’re one step closer to the resolution of the story.  So, I raise my metaphorical glass to you and welcome the New Year!