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10 Things I Learned When I was a Newly Published Author

I’m off to the Colorado Christian Writers Conference, so time is a bit crazy for me. I found this article I wrote two years ago and thought it would be fun to share with you. I learned a lot as a newly published author, and many of those lessons are still valuable today. What about you? Can you think of ten things (or four or seven) that you’ve learned since you became a published author?

I’ve learned a lot of surprising things as I’ve realized the dream of being a published author. For those of you in the midst of the pursuit, I offer a few snippets of advice that may help you along the journey.

Make friends. When you go to a writers’ conference, be more consumed with making relationships with other writers who are in your stage of publication. These dear folks will become some of your closest friends. As your manuscripts get published, you’ll be able to seek advice, ask for prayer, and request endorsements.
Get used to rejection. It happens on every level of the publishing process. You’ll be rejected by publishing houses, agents, magazine editors, and people who DON’T want you to speak. And as you get published, there’s more rejection heaped on. Now that I’m a “midlist” author, I experience yet another level of rejection, getting messages like, “Well, we’ll talk to you in a few months, when we see whether your numbers are up.” Ouch. Repeat to yourself: rejection is normal; rejection is normal; rejection is normal. Rejection is the air you breathe in this crazy business.
Realize that publishing is a BUSINESS. Though you may view your writing primarily as a ministry, the folks paying you advances see it in bottom-line terms. Be prepared to be a part of that. Realize that a lot of the onus for marketing will rest on your shoulders.
Kindness will preserve you. Don’t burn bridges. Don’t be petty. Shun gossip. Yep, this is a weird business populated by all sorts of people. Realize it’s a small community and word gets out.
Do your best NOT to be difficult. Meet deadlines. Answer emails promptly. Listen, really listen, to your editor. Unless it’s deeply important to you, acquiesce to their changes. That will allow you to go to bat for the things you think really shouldn’t be changed. But always, always communicate with kindness and respect.
Make friends with folks in the industry whether they help your career or not. I’ve made some lovely, lovely friends who I will probably never work with. The fun thing, though, is that this is a fickle industry. Editors and agents and publishers move hither and yon all the time. Connect with all sorts of folks, not for the sake of your gain, but because Jesus is fascinated by people and you should be too. Pay attention to the people God puts in your life. Perhaps that editor will become a lifelong friend.
Don’t become so hootie-tootie for your own britches that you are beyond editing. Make it a goal to write a better book (or article or column) each time. Be teachable. Become a lifelong learner of the craft. Go to conferences.
Give back whenever you can. Teaching enables you to learn more. Consider that helping other people become better writers is a gift you give to the future. You never know the impact Jesus will make through another writer.
Get rid of jealousy. Life’s way too short to brood on someone else’s talent or success. Rejoice with those who succeed. No sticking pins (or pens) into the hands or brains of successful writer voodoo dolls. (Say THAT 10 times fast!)
Continue to read widely. Read different genres, classics, poetry, pithy articles, writing books, comics, and, of course, Watching the Tree Limbs. (Sorry, I’m simply obeying number 3 . . . yeah, baby, the marketing onus is on my shoulders!)

Mary E. DeMuth helps people to turn their trials into triumphs. She mentors new authors through the publishing process and has written two tutorials on book proposals (one for fiction and another for nonfiction). An expert in Pioneer Parenting, Mary enables Christian parents to navigate our changing culture when their families were not good faith examples to follow. Her parenting books include Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture (Harvest House, 2007), Building the Christian Family You Never Had (WaterBrook, 2006), and Ordinary Mom, Extraordinary God (Harvest House, 2005). Mary also inspires people to face their trials through her real-to-life novels, including Watching the Tree Limbs (nominated for a Christy Award) and Wishing on Dandelions (NavPress, 2006). A pioneer parent herself, Mary and her husband, Patrick, reside in Texas with their three children. They recently returned from breaking new spiritual ground in Southern France, where they planted a church.

Your Editor Does Not Live Here

Thursday, July Post a comment

You will have to pick up after yourself.

Writers find themselves increasingly on their own. Because proper editing is time-consuming and expensive, publications and publishers have significantly diminished — or outright eliminated — editing staffs. Those who remain are overworked. As a practical matter, your self-editing might turn out to be the only significant editing you get.

All this said, it is still the case that a writer is not necessarily the best judge of their own work. You have a sense in your head of what you meant to say, but a reader may come to a completely different understanding. Adopting the approach of an editor for your own work can give you some protection.

To do that, you have to understand that there are several kinds of editors, and you will need to know how to function as each one.

You will start as your own developmental editor, thinking through possible approaches to your subject and deciding which will be most effective. You’ll work out the focus, the main thing that you want your text to say, and what components you’ll need to carry that out. You may well go through a series of drafts. Read your draft aloud; that will highlight awkwardness and infelicities.

(Here’s a tip: Unless you are desperately pressed by a deadline, you need to walk away from your text between drafts. Have a coffee. Have a smoke. Go for a walk. If you can leave it for a day or two, all the better. It will look different when you come back to it, and you will see more clearly what needs to be done.)

Once you have a draft that you think is ready, you will become your own line editor. You will ask whether that text had the focus you imagined it had; does it say one single clear thing? Can you say in one sentence what your main point is? If not, perhaps you’re unclear on what your main point is. You will look at the structure to see whether it is adequate to the purpose, and you will question whether the organization within that structure makes any sense and can be easily followed. You’ll also check to see that everything is properly sourced and attributed.

(Here’s a tip: If you didn’t work from an outline at the developmental stage, make one now. Not the I. A. 1. a. outline from high school. Make a list of the subtopics under your main topic, paragraph by paragraph if necessary. Do all the parts contribute? Are they arranged in an order that makes it easy for the reader to follow? Would it be better to rearrange the order?)

At the next stage you will be your own copy editor. You will check for factual accuracy throughout. You will establish that the spelling, punctuation, grammar, and usage throughout are reliable and in an appropriate register. Don’t be shy about making use of a dictionary, Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern English Usage, and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. If there is a house style to which you are meant to conform, conform to it.

(Here’s a tip: If there is some fact — name, date, whatever — that you think you know, look it up. If there’s a point of grammar or usage that you think you have under control, look it up. Proper editors know that they don’t know everything and are forever looking things up. They don’t trust their own memories, so neither should you.)

You’re nearly there, ready to be your own proofreader. Read over your text, word by word; doing it aloud may help you focus. Look for repeated words (the the), dropped words, garble, inconsistencies in typography, any other blemishes.

(Here’s a tip. Run the spell-check as the last thing you do before submitting the text. It will flag common misspellings, typographical errors, and inconsistencies in the spelling of names. But do not trust it too much. It will not help you with the wrong word correctly spelled, and English is crawling with homonyms. You will need to know whether you mean to say premier or premiere, because your spell-check won’t help you.)

And one final caution. There will be errors. There will be things you overlooked, embarrassing things. That you can produce an error-free text is an illusion, and someone will always be ready to point out the deficiencies in yours. This is how editors learn humility. So will you.

John Early McIntyre has been a professional editor for nearly 40 years, more than 32 of them at The Baltimore Sun, where he has headed the copy desk. John earned an undergraduate degree in English from Michigan State University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a master’s degree in English from Syracuse University, where he was a university fellow. John has taught copyediting at Loyola University Maryland since 1995. A charter member of the ACES: The Society for Editing, he served two terms as its president. John has presented workshops on writing and editing at conferences and publications in the United States and Canada.

Licensing Timelines

Thursday, July Post a comment

Say that you’re ready to license the rights to your titles. But where do licensing activities fit into your publishing timeline?

As your spring and summer titles release to consumers, licensing professionals continue to push for additional placements in your list.

But it’s also time for us to start tending to your 2021 releases.

Yes, 2021.

Although it might feel premature to be thinking about licensing opportunities for books that are publishing post-holiday rush and up to almost a year from now, your potential licensees are starting to make their inquiries, and will close their first selections within a few short months. As a reminder, generally, the spans and selection times for licensees like book clubs, audio publishers, and even foreign rights follow this pattern: Titles publishing July through December (“fall”): Pitches begin in January, and selections, first selections are complete by early March. A few licensees may select for late in the season through April or May. Titles publishing January through June (“spring”): Pitches begin in May, and first selections generally are complete by the end of July, though some will continue to select for late in the season through October. This means that the window is starting to close for spring 2021 titles (although there’s still plenty of time for serial, foreign, and other rights). From this timeline, you can see that we are beginning to enter prime time for spring 2021 selections. What does this mean for your list? Ideally, we like to have preliminary materials for spring 2021 (i.e., bibliographic information, initial sell sheets and sample chapters) in hand for our first inquiries starting in May or June, with early manuscripts and other marketing material following in June and July. This does not mean that we can’t pitch outside of these seasons, but the chances for more positive inquiries go up if we start pitches earlier. To that end, we would like your preliminary list of titles for 2021 as soon as possible! The timeline for international inquiries is a bit different. These tend to run year-round, and they are driven by buzz and good reviews and advanced materials as well as strong marketing plans. We’ll write more on international licensing in a future post.

It’s important to keep your licensing professional updated on any new reviews, big marketing opportunities, and other materials available as you have them. For example, here at Gryphon Publishing Consulting, we are updating our international partners constantly.

Mary Jo (“MJ”) Courchesne is the owner and principal consultant of Gryphon Publishing Consulting. A publishing veteran with more than 20 years of experience in trade, academic, and direct-response publishing, she has spent nearly two decades specializing in licensing, subsidiary rights, and permissions. MJ is a frequent and polished presenter on licensing and copyright. When it comes to intellectual property, she firmly believes that everyone from authors to publishers to corporations should know their rights. To that end, MJ instructed in the George Washington University’s Masters in Publishing program for 13 years, first for 11 years as adjunct professor for a course titled Editorial Content, Rights, and Permissions and subsequently as lecturer in a course on copyright. She currently serves on the Board of Experts for the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors and is a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators. MJ has also held memberships with other publishing organizations such as the American Society of Picture Professionals and Washington Publishers.

The Importance of Diversifying Sources in Journalism

Wednesday, June Post a comment

Like most of you, I have a lot of thoughts about recent events that have centered on race and equality. I’ve read many stories about how this is changing the face of media and wondered how it would affect my work.

It’s easy, and I think normal, to feel helpless about battling inequality. Many people protested. But what else can we do? After all, many of us do treat people equally and kindly. Many of us do understand that thinking you’re superior to anyone—especially based on race—is completely wrong.

So how can journalists have a positive impact on racial disparities other than by covering what’s happening in our communities and on a national scale?

One Small Step: Selecting Sources

You may not have much choice in what you cover in terms of topics or events, but you may have some choice when it comes to selecting sources. That said, you may not always have much of a say in the source you use for a story. Your editor may tell you who to interview, or the communications team of a company, organization, or institution may pick your source for you. (If you’re a freelancer, you may have a lot more freedom here.)

I cover health news a lot and have to find sources to give comments. I try to find the “best possible” person to target as a source . . . that is, if they have a specific research focus that pertains to the research I’m covering, they’re probably a great source. In those cases, the source is familiar with the intricacies of the topic and can give me an insider’s view on it. Score.

But other times, I just need a general practitioner to weigh in on something, so I don’t need this super-specific source.

Another writer recently mentioned how she was feeling helpless amidst all the turmoil lately. She said that, as a result, she was going to highlight more voices of color in her reporting. What a simple, beautiful way to have an impact, I thought. I love the idea of diversifying our sources when we have a choice in who can highlight. This doesn’t have to be based solely on race, either—maybe it’s just time to mix up our sources! Choose new experts to have on call instead of turning to the same person for a quick comment.

That highlight gives a source a reason to brag on their LinkedIn profile. It looks good for their company. He or she gets a nice “featured” clip in their media folder. A simple mention could impact that source’s career in a variety of possible ways. Let’s spread the power of positive press attention to as many people as possible.

Diversifying Sources

I’m not saying that I’m only going to select black or brown sources. But when I have a little more flexibility or a broader need, I’m going to try to diversify who I choose to approach for a comment. I will definitely look at all the sources in an article to see if it’s a broad representation of men and women of all races. It’s kind of the same thing you would do when you make sure articles with multiple sources don’t feature people from the same institution or corporation.

I don’t want this practice to negatively affect the editorial integrity of an article . . . sometimes you have to interview a specific source or sources that may fit one demographic, and that’s okay. I don’t want to solely highlight people of color because they’re trending or so I can feel better about myself.

I want my source selections to be authentic. I’ve always aimed to diversify sources when possible; now I’m just a little extra mindful that I should, and that, as journalists, we often have the flexibility to do so.

I think the national unrest gives all of us the opportunity to stand up for equality in our own ways. This is going to be mine.

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter and journalist living at the Jersey Shore. She worked as a reporter and copyeditor for Gannett before launching her full-time freelance business in 2005. Her work has been published in Parents, New Jersey Monthly, Prevention, Woman’s Day, SheKnows, and Healthline.

Truth vs. Accuracy in Fiction

Monday, June Post a comment

As a writing coach at the Agile Writer Workshop, I meet a lot of people who want to write a memoir or an autobiography. They usually have a story to tell, and it’s usually pretty personal. I always encourage them to write a memoir rather than an autobiography. Autobiographies are usually reserved for famous or infamous people. These new writers often have a harrowing story, or they’ve lived through a difficult time, and their friends tell them “you should write a book.”

At the top of their list is to tell everything, exactly as it happened. What they don’t realize is that memoirs are never about accuracy, but about truth.

Memoirs have to be entertaining and they have to focus on just one element of the subject’s life. For example, one great memoir that came out of Agile Writers was about a woman who lived with alopecia (a debilitating loss of hair). As much as she wanted to tell every experience she had, just as it happened, some events had to be deleted or changed, and some individuals were combined into a single character. And some conversations had to be interpolated.

This is done to streamline the story and make it flow better. A memoir, it turns out, is not an accurate retelling of events. Instead, it is a telling of the truth of the events.

Accuracy

There are times when one must tell the events exactly as they happened. In the case of relating the news, the writer must focus on accuracy. If you’re a journalist, for example, the accurate relating of events is a requirement of the job. A journalist who is exposed for telling a half-truth or worse, making up facts, is likely to lose their job.

You also need accuracy in reference books. If you’re writing a scientific paper and make up facts or get your data wrong, you ruin your credibility. Cookbooks, travel guides, dictionaries, and encyclopedias all require accuracy.

In these cases, accuracy trumps everything.

Truth

But how does truth differ from accuracy? It turns out that novels, movies, and memoirs have a lot in common. We can look to them for examples of how truth and accuracy differ.

When telling a news story, what is important is getting the facts straight. But often the why of the story is less important. The backstory of the individuals, their hopes, dreams, and desires are secondary to getting to the facts.

But novels and memoirs are about people and relationships. The reader of a romance novel, for example, will not likely fact-check a scientific or historical fact. Or if they do, it’s not likely to affect their enjoyment of the story.

However, if the lead character of a novel is presented as beneficent and then kicks a dog—the writer has broken with the truth of the story. Either the hero of the story is good—or they’re not. (Of course, it might be part of the story that our hero isn’t as good as we think, but that’s not the point here.) This is truth. It breaks the truth of the story for our hero to be evil.

There are other truths. How does the world the novelist creates compare to the experience of the reader? If, as the writer, you present a world where everyone is happy and gets what they need and life is ideal—your story may not ring true.

So, in the novel or memoir, accuracy doesn’t matter nearly as much as truth.

When You Need Both

But the world is not evenly and cleanly divided between truth and accuracy.

Historical Fiction

If you’re writing a historical novel, you have an obligation to get your historical facts right. In this case, both accuracy and truth are important. Readers of historical fiction look for accuracy in the events of the story and will call out bad facts.

And still the truth of the story must come out. The characters and their relationships must convey the truth of the story and relate to the reader’s own worldview. And the inner consistency of the story must be intact or the truth of the universe you’ve created will shatter.

A good case study in truth and accuracy is Gone with the Wind. In its heyday, it was loved not only for the truth of the story, but its historical accuracy. The depiction of the antebellum South was presented as an accurate portrayal of life on the plantation. Today, we know that Gone with the Wind presented a view of Southern life that was biased and so the accuracy has suffered over time.

Still, the truth of the story remains. The story of a woman who was left to run a plantation and survived against all odds. Likewise, the final scene where her love interest tells her to go to hell is a strong truth.

Science Fiction

Likewise, hard science fiction must adhere to the known facts of current science. If you have a story about life on the moon and you ignore the fact that the moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, you will be excoriated by your readers and your critics. And still, the truth of the story must come to the fore, or the reader will put the book down before the last page.

Despite its psychedelic nature, 2001, A Space Odyssey is strongly rooted in scientific accuracy. The depiction of life in space still stands up more than 50 years later. And when we watch this film, we feel the strength of the truth of the story. The fight of a man against a machine is a truth that rings true for people in the 1960s, and even today.

Conclusions

If you’re writing a work of fiction, be it memoir or novel, you’re in the business of telling the truth, not necessarily being accurate. It’s acceptable, even expected that you will sacrifice accuracy to expose the truth of the story. Don’t be confined to the actual streets in a city, the exact timeline of your personal events, or the contents of every conversation you’ve had. Reach for the truth and your readers will be set free.

Greg Smith is a writing coach, editor, and publisher. He founded the Agile Writer Workshop in 2011 with the mission of finding a method to help beginning writers complete a first draft in 6 months. The Agile Writer Method is based on the writings of experts in mythology, screenwriting, psychology, and project management. His seminars on the Agile Writer Method have informed and delighted thousands of writers, scholars, and university students. Agile Writer authors have written over 50 first draft novels and 10 published novels. Greg is a developmental editor for novelists and memoirists. He also coaches authors through the self-publishing maze. Greg runs the popular Agile Readers Book Club where new writers can get a beta read from a dozen or more readers.

Why Your Blog Post Needs More Than One Headline

Tuesday, June Post a comment

Want to write a headline that capture readers’ attention and gets them to click through to your article?

You’ll need more than one headline.

That’s because readers on different platforms are looking for different things.

The headline that attracts a reader searching for a topic in Google isn’t the same one that’ll appeal to someone scrolling on Facebook—and neither is a good fit for a loyal reader who visits your website or subscribes to your newsletter.

To make the most of every promotional platform, write a headline tailored to each.

4 Headlines Your Blog Post Needs

Write a headline that will attract readers to your post from any platform you’ll share it on, including

Your website: What will entice readers who visit your home page to click into the article?
Social media: How will you catch readers’ attention as they scroll through myriad distractions?
Search: Which keywords and information will you include in the title tag to get clicks from Google search results?
Email: What about the post is most attractive to your most loyal readers?

Tools to Publish Multiple Headlines

Your CMS lets you publish the headline that’ll show up at the top of a blog post and anywhere else the post appears on your website (like in a “latest posts” section on the home page).

Use these tools to publish the right headline to each of the other platforms where you’ll promote a post:

Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress: Write a keyword-targeted title tag that’ll appear in search results, but not on your website.
Buffer or Hootsuite: These social media schedulers let you rewrite the headline that shows up in the preview of your post when you share it on social media.
Mailchimp: Use this or another feature-rich email marketing platform to easily build emails that include custom images, headlines, and snippets for blog posts you want to promote.

Dana Sitar has been writing and editing for digital media since 2011, most recently as a copy editor for fintech and personal finance. She trains journalists, writers, and editors on writing for the web through sessions at the annual ACES editors’ conference, Utah Valley University, online courses, and private trainings. Dana has written about work and writing in digital media for publications including the New York Times, HuffPost, a column for Inc. Magazine, and dozens of writing and content marketing blogs. As a branded content editor for The Penny Hoarder, Dana managed a team of writers, editors, and social media experts to create multimedia branded content to help advertisers reach an audience of 12 million across platforms including social media, email, blog, and video.

Word Play: Lots More Figures of Speech

Tuesday, June Post a comment

What’s a figure of speech? Words taken out of their literal meaning to create a vivid or dramatic picture. Play with them in your writing!

Aphorisms

Aphorisms are short, pointed sentences expressing a wise or clever observation or a general truth. Examples:

A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep water.
If you don’t have a sense of humor, you probably don’t have any sense at all.
There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

Eponym

“Proper names that have become improper and uncommonly common.” That’s how author Willard R. Espy described eponyms, which are words coined after people’s names.

Examples:

Byronic: One who is melancholic, passionate, melodramatic, and disregards societal norms. Named after poet Lord Byron (1788–1824) who displayed these characteristics as did his poetry.

Orwellian: Of or relating to a totalitarian state in which citizens’ activities are tightly controlled. Named after George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair (1903–1950), whose novel Nineteen Eighty-Four depicted a futuristic totalitarian state.

Draconian: Unusually harsh. Named after Draco (late 7th century BCE), Athenian legislator, noted for the harshness of his code of laws.

Paraprosdokian

A figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; it causes the reader to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It’s how you add “funny” to your writing!

Examples:

“Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.”

“A friend in need is a friend I don’t need.” –Deepak Jhangiani

“Honesty is the best policy until the policy expires.” –Deepak Jhangiani

“You can lead a horse to water…but if you can teach him to roll over on his back and backstroke, you got something.” –Rudy Cluke

“If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.”

“War does not determine who is right—only who is left.”

“Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.”

Barbara McNichol is a nonfiction editor, who works with authors, speakers, and business professionals to add power to their pen through the written word. Barbara wrote Word Trippers: The Ultimate Source for Choosing the Perfect Word When It Really Matters. She offers helpful writing tips weekly and a course to take your writing and editing to the next level: “WordShops: Strengthen Everything You Write.”

Word Play: Using Fun Figures of Speech

Tuesday, June Post a comment

What’s a figure of speech? Words taken out of their literal meaning to create a vivid or dramatic picture. Play with them in your writing!

Alliteration

Matching or repetition of consonants or repeating of the same letter (or sound) at the beginning of words. Examples:

Papa’s potatoes and poultry were a big hit at the potluck.
Dewdrops danced on the Day Lilies’ tongue.

Chiasmus

A sentence that reads forward and backward like a mirror, often used in speeches in an artistic, persuasive way. Examples:

Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. (John F. Kennedy)
People in cars cause accidents and accidents in cars cause people. (Garrison Keillor)
Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid. (Walter Winchell)

Colloquialism

Colloquialisms are informal expressions (slang) that play a role in how we communicate but shouldn’t be used in formal speech or writing (unless it’s dialogue). Examples:

Gonna and wanna
There ain’t nothin’ to it.
He done good.

Heteronyms

These are words that are spelled the same but differ in pronunciation. Examples:

Close – (CLOZE) to shut; (CLOHSS) nearby
Lead – (LEED) to guide; (LED) a metallic element
Tear – (TARE) to rip; (TEER) a drop of the clear liquid emitted by the eye

Homonyms and Homophones

Homonyms are spelled the same but differ in meaning while homophones are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and sometimes spelling.

Examples of homonyms:

Bank (a place to deposit money) and bank (a river’s edge)
Fair (county fair), fair (reasonable), fair (in appearance as fair-skinned)

Examples of homophones:

Cite (to quote as an authority or example), sight (to see), site (location or place)
Sea (body of water) and see (vision)

Hyperbole

This figure of speech adds exaggeration to your writing. Hyperbole (hy-PER-buh-lee) statements are not literally true but are used for emphasis. Examples:

Her feet were as big as skis.
I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
I’ve heard that joke a thousand times.

Malapropism

Named after Richard Sheridan’s character Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals, malapropisms are a comic misuse of language. Examples:

He had to use a fire distinguisher.
Dad says the monster is just a pigment of my imagination.
My sister has extra-century perception.

Metaphor

A metaphor lets us use one image to conjure up another. Overused metaphors are considered clichés. Examples:

You are my sunshine.
All the world’s a stage.
The thick blanket of snow covered the frozen field.

These three metaphors about life were featured in one of my all-time favorite ezines, Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week.

“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.” (Truman Capote)
“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.” (Danny Kaye)
“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” (John W. Gardner)

Oxymoron

An oxymoron takes two incongruous or contradictory terms and puts them together to express two contrasting qualities in one concept. Examples:

Old news
Dull roar
Open secret
Random order

Palindrome

A word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. Examples:

Straw – warts
Do geese see God?
Never odd or even

Pangram

A pangram uses all 26 letters of the alphabet. Examples:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Watch Jeopardy! Alex Trebek’s fun TV quiz game.

Personification

A figure of speech that gives “human” characteristics (emotion, honesty, volition, etc.) to an animal, object, or idea. Examples:

The haughty peacock strutted around his mate.
Fate frowned on her success.
My car was happy to be washed.

Pleonasm

Pleonasm consists of two concepts (usually two words) that are redundant. Examples:

boiling hot
cash money
dark night
empty hole
little baby
pair of twins

Simile

Makes a comparison using “as” or “like” to show how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in another way. Examples:

Busy as a beaver.
Mad as a wet hen.
The snow was as thick as a down blanket.

Spoonerism

Words or phrases in which letters or syllables get swapped. Examples:

I’m driving in the right lane, for I’m driving in a light rain.
Tease my ears, for Ease my tears.
Wave the sails, for Save the whales.

Test Your Website Forms or You Could Be Losing Freelance Business

Tuesday, June Post a comment

I run three different websites with slightly different WordPress themes: my customer-facing portfolio, my freelancer-facing Dr. Freelance blog, and my publishing company for books about freelancing. Unfortunately, that also means three sets of plugins and versions to keep updated, and three dumpsters of spam to empty regularly. The reason for this blog post today isn’t to whine about maintenance. It’s a reminder about one other critical aspect that is easy to overlook: test your website forms. And the reason for that reminder is because I don’t want you to do what I did: loose a piece of potential freelance business!

An author whose book I’d edited last summer sent me a note to expect a referral. I waited about two weeks, because the ball was in the new refer-ee’s court, then dropped him a line to find out the status.

He responded, “Thanks, but I didn’t hear back from you, so I went with another editor.” Ugh.

Lesson Learned: Website Forms Need TLC Too

It turned out that he had attempted to send me a message through one of my website forms rather than to my email. Sure enough, I tested the form. Despite the cheerful “Thanks! Message sent successfully” auto response, the message itself had disappeared into the internet ether, never to land in my inbox.

I was bummed but wrote him a nice note saying that I hoped we could work together on a future project. Then, I set about trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my form plugin, Contact Form 7. I knew the problem had occurred after an update to my WordPress theme. Even though I updated the web form plugin, there was a setting—deep in the cobwebs of GoDaddy—that was preventing it from sending due to a conflict with Office 365. Basically, the default is to use the “local email exchanger,” and it needed to be set to “Remote Email Exchanger.” (If you’re struggling with the same issue, further details here: Contact Form 7 emails won’t send to Office 365.)

After a few hours of incredibly frustrating troubleshooting and a 5-minute call to GoDaddy tech support, my problem was solved. More important, a new item was added to my regularly scheduled maintenance: test my website forms.

Jake Poinier made the leap into freelance writing and editing in 1999 after a decade of positions in the publishing industry, giving him key insights from both sides of the desk. As the founder and owner of Boomvang Creative Group, he has worked with a diverse array of Fortune 500 and small businesses, consumer and trade magazines, and independent authors. Jake is committed to helping freelancers improve their businesses and shares his knowledge and experiences frequently as a speaker at industry conferences, through webinars, and on his blog.

Write with Intention Every Time

Tuesday, June Post a comment

Much of the spoken language slides into our writing, but at times the words we say aren’t the exact fit for what we mean. Check your intention every time!

Consider these sentences from a manuscript about education:

How many principals do what they feel will win approval?

The public feels certain people shouldn’t be teaching.

Given the context, is “feel” the correct word to express the author’s meaning? No, because the essence of the intended meaning doesn’t come from an emotional “feeling” source. Rather, it comes from a profound conviction based on experience—a place of belief.

Replace “feeling” with the word “believe,” which involves caring about something. It implies a deeper kind of thinking—a mental activity that doesn’t necessarily have a sense of conviction. Because of this distinction, the better word choices would be:

How many principals do what they believe will win approval?

The public believes certain people shouldn’t be teaching.

Your challenge: Question yourself when you select a commonly spoken word. Does it express the exact meaning based on its context? From now on, designate “feel” a red-flag word. Then replace it with “think” or “believe” or “hope” or another verb and reread your sentence. Is “feel” the most precise word to convey your intended meaning? If not, pause and find exactly the right one.

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