Note: This post was originally scheduled for October 2014. It didn’t post to MailChimp, so I’m posting it again now. I’ve revised the original post A LOT so it’s up to date. Hi Folks, In my years of dealing with other writers, I’ve heard a few clichéd thoughts. In every case, the clichés are caused by the same old myths we’ve all been taught and bought into to one degree or another. One of the more … Read more
Hi Folks, Note: This post was originally scheduled for 4/27/2014. It didn’t post to MailChimp, so I’m posting it again now. I revised it (especially sub items in number 4) to express my current opinions, but the main list remains intact. It is timeless. First, I’m not talking about proofreading someone else’s stuff, although you can apply these tips to that process. But mostly here I’m talking about proofreading your own stuff. Note: I am a … Read more
Hi Folks, Distractions happen. They do. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about them. But if you’re a mechanic and you get a phone call (distraction) and your spouse or significant other shows up unannounced for lunch (distraction) or a chunk of spy satellite falls out of the sky and flattens the dry cleaner across the street (distraction), you look, you take care of it, and you go back to work on the engine or the … Read more
Hey Folks, I was going to write a whole post on this topic, but really, that isn’t necessary. It’s a personal pet-peeve kind of thing. And far be it from me to foist my “beliefs” on anyone else. What pet peeve? Well, people who write things and then postulate—not even apologetically but more apoplectically and with a wag of the hand—that “The reader will know what I mean.” Those folks get on my nerves. Deep and … Read more
Hi Folks, Sometimes, probably more often than not, my own biggest problem is Me. Today I knocked out something over 2000 words before I went walking. Didn’t walk all that long. I didn’t even need a shower, really, although I took one because that’s what you do. After that, I was fired up to leap back into writing another scene in The Marshal of Agua Perlado. And I did. Then I got stuck. I wasn’t stuck … Read more
Hi Folks, A writer and friend once asked in a comment over on my Daily Journal whether I would “address the issue of setting the bar of productivity so high that [some] of us … can’t possibly keep up with you? As much as I want to, I can’t keep up. I’m guessing that eliminates me from the ‘professional writer’ category.” I did respond in a comment (on the Journal), but I know a lot of … Read more
Hey Folks, I encourage you to read this post even if you think you’ve heard it before. Especially if you don’t get it. I’m coming at it from a new direction. When I was a GED/college instructor, and later when I taught writing seminars, I soon found that not all students “got it” when I approached a topic from a certain perspective. So I soon learned to gauge student reactions, most notably their eyes or the … Read more
Hi Folks, The following is a guest post by my friend, professional fiction writer and ghost writer Dan Baldwin. Billy Ray Watkins stood in the doorway of the old shack where the unfortunate sharecropper was kept prisoner. Watkins, 300 pounds of angry bigotry and hate, pounded his fist, sneered and wiped the chewing tobacco spittle from his lips. He grinned and said, “You lacking-in-a-proper education, fatherless son of the African veldt, I’m going to smack the … Read more
Hi Folks, This post first was published in a slightly different version on October 10, 2016 over on the Daily Journal. I’m reposting it here because I felt it needed a broader audience and might help some of you. Got a great email from a respected writer friend recently (Thanks, JGV!) regarding my current WIP (back in October, 2015). He wrote What about doing away with the specific dimensions and leaving the images of the structures, … Read more
Hi Folks, This is gonna sound WAY oversimplified, especially given the nineteen PAGES of comma rules in the HarBrace College Handbook. But it’s true. If you use these five rules, you can’t go wrong: 1. Never put a comma between a subject and its verb or between a verb and its object. Also you must realize that a subject may be compound, as in “John and Ray went to the store and bought a television and … Read more