Writing Craft

Fun Fridays – September 24, 2021

By Steve Laubeon September 24, 2021

Today is National Punctuation Day!

Established by Jeff Rubin in 2004, it is a “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever mysterious ellipsis.”

Please visit the official site: www.nationalpunctuationday.com.

Recently, I walked into a church classroom to find a list of the 10 Commandments on the board. The first line read “No other God’s.”
Sigh.

So while you take a moment to appreciate the need for precise punctuation, enjoy this delightful five-minute repartee between Dean Martin and Victor Borge singing with Phonetic Punctuation. The video is a bit blurry as it must have been clipped from an old video tape or similar. But hilarious nonetheless!

(If you cannot see the embedded video in your newsletter email, please click the headline and go directly to our site to view it. Or go to it’s native address: https://youtu.be/ecOGlZ-XAs4.)

When Editorial Errors Matter

By Steve Laubeon September 20, 2021

by Steve Laube

Writers make mistakes. It happens. Often an editor’s job is to be the safety net and catch those tidbits that find their way into an early draft of a manuscript for any number of reasons.

The simplicity of “cut & paste” has created more opportunity for error than ever before. I've seen half sentences left in their original place because the writer failed to cut and …

Category: Book Business, Craft, E-Books, Editing, Grammar, Steve, Writing CraftTag: Editing, Errors, Writing Craft

A Simple Writing Trick When Spinning Your Wheels

By Bob Hostetleron September 9, 2021

So you’re cruising along in your work-in-progress (WIP). The muse is singing. Ideas are popping. Words are flowing. Until … Suddenly you hit a bump. Or maybe a roadblock. Or a cement abutment. You try to persevere; but the muse has gone silent, inspiration has ceased, and you just don’t know where to go next. The technical term for this experience is SYW (“spinning your wheels”). It happens to all …

Category: Craft, The Writing Life, Writing Craft

Singing the Slushpile Blues

By Steve Laubeon August 30, 2021

by Steve Laube

The unsolicited pile of proposals in my office (aka "the slushpile) taunts me every day.

"Come over here!" it says, tantalizing me with immanent possibilities. I say to myself, "Maybe it will be the next one I look at. That will be 'The One.'"

I've been told that many of you enjoy hearing some of the offbeat letters or intriguing proposals I see. Here is a sampling from …

Category: Book Proposals, Creativity, HumorTag: Humor, slushpile

Books Are Signposts Along the Way

By Steve Laubeon August 16, 2021

By Steve Laube

The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a series of stories linked together in the small town of Macondo in South America. It is surrounded by a swamp and thus is known for its isolation.

One day the town was infected by a plague which causes insomnia. The people of the town were not unhappy at first …

Category: Art, Craft, Creativity, Writing CraftTag: Craft, Creativity, Signs

It’s New to Them

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon August 4, 2021

The other day, I was surprised to see an ad for a book published fairly recently regarding Kitty Genovese, a woman murdered as bystanders watched in Queens, New York, in 1964. This case was so notorious for its study of human behavior (Why would witnesses fail to act?) that people have analyzed the event for decades. Most adults know the name and reference without blinking. But what about younger …

Category: Creativity, Inspiration, Pitching

Defining a Few Terms

By Bob Hostetleron July 29, 2021

Since Steve dealt with some terms in Monday’s post, we thought it appropriate to discuss some other basic ones today. When a person undertakes to write for publication—and especially when that individual starts taking webinars, attending writers conferences, and hanging out with other writer types—he or she will encounter some words and phrases that can be confusing, at least at first. So, …

Category: Book Proposals, The Writing Life, Writing Craft

Preface, Foreword, Introduction. Oh My!

By Steve Laubeon July 26, 2021

A reader asked, “What is the difference between a preface, a foreword, and an introduction? And do I need them all?” There so much publishing lingo used every day that we forget there was a time when we didn’t know what the words meant. It’s one reason I have a “Publishing Lingo” section in the back of the annual Christian Writers Market Guide. These three pieces of writing (preface, foreword, and …

Category: Book Proposals, Common Questoins, Craft, Publishing A-Z

The Dreaded Blank Page

By Steve Laubeon July 19, 2021

by Steve Laube

A clean slate. An empty canvas. A fresh start. A new beginning.
Or a potential nightmare of guilt, failure, and shame.

Thus begins the process of each writing project. This blog post began with a blank page. I wondered why I ever agreed to write a blog. I procrastinated with enough excuses to be described as legion. I told myself that no one cares what I think on any …

Category: Craft, Creativity, Steve, Writing CraftTag: blank page, Writing Craft

To Comma or Not to Comma?

By Steve Laubeon June 28, 2021

I came across this entry in Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. The book is a classic on punctuation. (Although based on British English usage, it is still a great book.) On his deathbed in April 1991, Graham Green corrected and signed a typed document which restricts access to his papers at Georgetown University. Or does it? The document, before correction, stated: “I, Graham Greene, …

Category: Book Business, Contracts, Grammar, Language, SteveTag: commas, Grammar, Language, punctuation