I’ve been busy these past couple of months taking a course in editing through Simon Fraser University. I received my final mark last week and I passed – with 95%.
I realize it seems a bit self-indulgent to share my mark publicly, but there’s a sound reason behind it. I have no practical experience in editing anything but my own work and as it turns out, I need that just to apply to get into the Certificate program at SFU. I plan to hang out my proverbial shingle in the new year, so posting my results will, I hope, inspire confidence in my abilities. I’ve just started my second course of 12, but I can’t take the twelfth one until I qualify.
I have a passion for learning, for the English language, and also for helping people fulfill their own passions. I think I’m on the right path.
I think this year will go down in the books as the one when everyone died. Then again, all the pioneers of modern rock, the movie stars, and the famous people I’ve grown up with are getting older. Was it like this for my parents when the likes of the Rat Pack began to die off? I suppose. And I’m sure all the young’uns now will have an impact on our kids’ generation when they begin to pass away. Yet somehow I think this is a bit different. It seems to me that aging bands such as the Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zepplin… they have a continued base in society unlike the greats of old. When the remainder of those bands disappear it won’t just affect we who are now in middle age. It will affect us all.
So today, Mohammad Ali. I found a meme on Facebook which included a quote:
Things we should all strive to be remembered for.
On a lighter note…
I picked up a book off the bargain shelf a long while ago, and I’ve just started reading it. I have to say, half-way through I’m totally engrossed. It’s a little romantic, but mostly it delves into the quirks and psychology of its characters in an amazingly profound way. It’s humorous, sad, and absolutely entertaining. Faking It by Elisa Lorello is something you’ll want to pick up. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=faking+it+elisa+lorello
I use Booking.com a lot. In fact, I’m sitting in a room in a B&B as I type this. It’s warm in here. I’m in Kingston, and half-way between temptation to walk around and take pictures of doors and wander around the waterfront (and find a patio to sit and eat lunch) and take advantage of the quiet time away to work on one of my books. I’m this close to getting my novelette published (just have to go through proofreads and get a blurb written), I’m that close to my final edit of my epic novel, The Great Dagmaru, and I’m dying to work on finishing the first draft of the sequel. Maybe I’ll work on one of those until I get really hungry… or my bum goes numb.
Whether you’re a writer or a reader, this is fascinating stuff. Do you agree with the results?
Comments here are disabled. Please weigh in at the original post.
Recently, we here at LitWorldInterviews.com conducted a survey, “Why do you put a book down?” and through the assistance of the writing community we had a very nice response. Now it’s time to share what we found.
First, I want to say why the survey was conducted. We wanted to help writers by giving them the information they most need. If a reader takes the time to check out your book and don’t like it, they are unlikely to give you a second chance with your next work. First impressions mean a lot.
86.30% of those responding were Female, thus leaving the remaining 13.70% Male. Considering the majority of those reading novels are Female, although not quite this extreme, I’m comfortable with sharing what we found.
There were 34 sub-categories as a result of the survey. Those results were then placed into 5 main categories: Writing, Editing, Proofreading, Taste, and…
It’s been a while since I said thank you to all of you who visit my blogs, and all who participate in my prompts. When I started out, I said thank you in the comments of every participating post. Then I figured eventually everyone must be getting sick of saying, “You’re welcome,” so I stopped. One thing I haven’t meant to stop doing is visiting every post that’s linked on the day it’s posted, but I have. And I regret it, but I haven’t been able to keep up.
Truth is, I’ve been pretty tapped lately. Between the kids and all their issues, my mother who is losing it a bit more every day, problems with my house, the puppy, trying to edit my books, trying to actually get off the couch to stop the spreading of my ass, housework, appointments, shopping, endless paperwork for my kids’ services that never seems to get done… oh, and blogging. But the thing is, THIS is important to me. It feels as though it should be at the bottom of the list, but the truth is this place is one of the main things anchoring me to sanity. It’s the only writing I do, and I need to write.
And what’s wonderful about my blog that isn’t true of writing novels, is that I get to talk to all of you. You who inspire me. You who keep me going. You all who never ever let me down, who I can count on to make me smile.
So again, thank you for being here. Thank you for making my prompts a success. Thank you for your support.
It started with an appointment. My son’s behavioral specialist was to go his school to talk to the teacher to observe him on Tuesday, and then come to see me today. On Tuesday afternoon I received a note from the teacher to say the specialist had canceled due to the flu. I, therefore, assumed she wouldn’t be coming here either. Sure enough, I received a phone call this morning from the behavioral specialist’s office. What happened during that phone call is what’s has me… worried? I wouldn’t go that far: thoughtful, perhaps, ever since.
The nice lady who called me only wanted to let me know my appointment was canceled and would be rescheduled. In order to seem, I don’t know, friendly, or sociable, I felt the need to explain that I already knew the behavioral specialist was sick, since she’d canceled Tuesday’s appointment. But even while I was explaining this, my inner editor was screaming at me, “This is not important to the plot! She doesn’t need to know! She’s probably got a dozen more phone calls to make – let her go!” It’s this conciseness with which I feel the need to write, that makes me wonder what it’s doing to me socially.
And isn’t that true for all of us, to some degree? Whether we’re trying to take shortcuts in speech (how many times have you heard someone utter “lol” out loud? Do you do it?) or cutting ourselves short, as I feel I should have done this morning, it has to be affecting the way we socialize. Writing has become the norm, and speech secondary. We spent far fewer hours with pen and keyboard even twenty years ago, unless it was part of our job, versus talking on the phone or in person. Now our lives are largely lived with the written word.
Writing has always been, in a practical way, different from speech. Drafting a formal letter, whether the recipient is a business associate or a lover, is done with care. Choosing the right words is essential to get the point across. With this in mind, are we bloggers actually better at speaking? Has the practice of finding the correct way to say things, and the editing that goes into many of our posts, improved our skills of communication across the board? And have Facebook and Twitter minimalized our speech to the bare necessities?
I have to wonder how we are evolving. And really, that’s what it is. An evolution of mankind who, at one time walked miles to convey a message, now looks no further than his pocket. We’re not quite to the point that our hands get more use than our tongues, but will we, one day, end up with wrists that bend in odd ways, and mouths that are used only to consume food? But I’m getting ahead of myself (and everyone else).
How we socialize with one another–how we communicate–cannot not be affected by what we spend three quarters of our time doing in order to communicate. Small talk is how we connect with one another. It’s how we discover our shared sentiments. It’s what we do on Facebook and Twitter, but without the human interaction–or at the very least it’s human interaction with a machine as a buffer. Will there come a day when we save our small talk only for such situations as taking pictures of our food on social media, and keep our direct interaction as a form of necessity? I think you really have only to look around a restaurant, or peer into people’s kitchens at dinner time these days for the answer.
Good news are on their way!
I’ve found my calling: fortune cookie editor! My motto will be, “Making your Chinese food grammatically tastier, one line at a time.”
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our new, very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
I’ve been writing. Actually, I’ve decided that it’s about time I turned this writing career of mine into an official profession, and to do that I need to be paid for what I do. To this end I’ve begun to look for writing jobs that are paid. On Friday I submitted a story for an anthology based on fairy tales, or specifically the continuation of fairy tales after the point at which the story ended as originally told. I decided to tackle Alice in Wonderland. We’ll see where that goes.
My current project is to write ten 100-word stories under the category of speculative literature. I thought that with my recent foray into writing 50-word stories, twice that length would be a breeze. I’ve written one so far, nine more to go by the end of the month. Whatever doesn’t fit into the genre (or whatever I can’t get to stretch all the way to 100 words) will likely be posted on my fiction blog.
On the novel front, I’ve decided to have it professionally edited, so the first third of it is off having that done to it. (It’s like a week at the spa!) In the meantime I’m hoping the lovely person who I’ve asked to design the cover (one who might be reading this) is well on his/her way through the reading of my novel. On my end I’m working on the eighth edit of said novel; part 3 of 3 left to go, and then I’ll work on finishing the first draft of the sequel.
With all this writing and editing, by the time A-Z April rolls around I think I’ll need to spend a week getting edited. (If this makes no sense, you weren’t reading closely enough. Go back.)
And that’s my recent news. What are you working on?
That would be Missing In Action, and the reason is also what is behind my exciting news. A friend, who is also an avid reader and a respected author and reviewer of fiction has accepted my request to read my manuscript. I’ve asked her to give me a no-holds-barred opinion on whether or not my novel needs a professional editor. Yes, I know how many authors and editors insist that every novel MUST HAVE an editor, but seriously… My novel is 750 pages long. I’m looking at paying more money than I can probably ever hope to get back. So this is my last-ditch attempt to really see what’s up with my grammar.
So why have I not been around? I’m concentrating on getting this baby as good as it’s going to get before I give it up. And then, it’s either going to an editor or not because come hell or high water, it’s getting published this year. Why is it going to be published this year? Because I told my muse in a letter that it would. And that’s what it all comes down to.
That’s right.
Not that I’m delusional enough to believe that even on the off-chance he read my letter he would remember it ten minutes later, let alone remember I’m writing a character with his sense of fashion, his stage presence and his face, he’s damned well going to (potentially if it gets to him) receive a copy of my novel in the mail, complete with his name in the acknowledgements! So there! (Disclaimer: The preceding run-on sentence is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an example of the grammar in my novel.)
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be doing for the next week or so. But I haven’t forgotten about you! I realize I’m terribly behind in my reading and replying to comments. I’ll be going back a couple of weeks to get to them, so if you get a reply to a comment you’ve forgotten you left, don’t be surprised. In the meantime I’m going to try to post every day on my fiction blog, plus blog about my trip to Japan here, and, (of course) keep up the weekly prompts. In other words, I won’t be as busy as I was last month. 🙄
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
lindaghill.com 