Midge Raymond's Blog, page 60

Reality Check

Until today, Seattle did not, to my knowledge, have a medical center called Bayview Hospital (though I believe there is a similarly named veterinary clinic). However, it does now. I've just created it.

I'm not a billionaire philanthropist (unfortunately) — I am simply a fiction writer who, in the middle of a scene, realized I needed to put one of my characters in a trauma center. And while there are myriad real hospitals to choose from in Seattle, I decided it would be more fun (and a whole lot e

Sex and the e-reader

During the mid to late 1990s, virtually all of my reading was done on the New York City subway as I commuted daily from Queens into Manhattan. As anyone who's ridden the subway during rush hour knows, there is no such thing as personal space on a train. My fellow straphangers, bold as they were, would not only read over my shoulder but actually lean into me to better see what I was reading, and even sigh impatiently while waiting for me to turn a page. Eventually I got used to it, and even grew

How Writers Protect Their Work

In nearly every class or seminar I've ever taught, and with many of my clients as well, the question of copyright comes up, mostly in the context of How can I be sure no one steals my work? Despite one obscure author's recent claims that Stephenie Meyer plagiarized her novel, this does not happen very often — and when plagiarism does happen, it usually involves the lifting of entire passages. Mere ideas are generally not copyrightable — nor are titles, by the way — and, in this case, claiming th

Are you a Lurker, a Bad Grammarian, or a Crank?

CNN has posted a list of the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers, and it's hilarious … not to mention frighteningly spot-on. And, by the way, I'd like to thank Ryan Asmussen, from whom I found this list on Facebook (though Ryan does not fit any of these profiles).

I have to admit that I read through this list with a bit of anxiety, worried that I'd recognize my own Facebook habits in this list of people whose updates "make you cringe when you see them coming." There are times I'm very much The

Proofreader Humor

This awesome cartoon by Eve Corbel brought back memories of the days when I worked in publishing and probably edited and/or proofread a thousand pages a week. I had these thoughts quite often; if only I'd known that there were official proofreaders' marks for them…

An interesting twist on Writer-in-Residence

This New York Times article made me wish I were heading through Heathrow this week, not just to visit London but to check out the airport's writer-in-residence: author Alain de Botton, (How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Art of Travel).

As the Times reports, the gig was orchestrated by Heathrow's public relations firm (which includes the author's expenses as well as an advance — he's writing a book about the experience to be published this fall), but de Botton was given free rein to write ab

Writerly tips for last days of summer

August is the month in which Nothing Happens, generally speaking, in the publishing world, which is why I've been fairly silent on this blog lately. The other reason is that I'm taking advantage of the quiet and am writing, writing, writing. A few wintry days last week helped … and now that the sun is back, this means means Notebook in the Park instead of Sitting at Computer.

A tip for making the most of these last days of summer: Self-imposed deadlines. Give your self a few of them. Whether you

Presenting the Best 100 Writers Ever…

…according to This Recording (compiled by Will Hubbard and Alex Carnevale).

While these lists always include at least a few authors we can all agree on, what I often find more interesting than the lists are the questions and comments that follow, among them here: who should have been on the list and wasn't, why Emily Brontë and Charlotte Brontë share the #58 spot rather than each having a spot of their own (of the best 100 writers, this compilation includes only about a dozen women), and the cont

Links for a Friday afternoon

For a good compare-and-contrast of Amazon v. Barnes and Noble in the e-book department, read David Pogue's excellent NYT piece, which lays out each company's offerings in the clearest way I've seen yet. It's like reading all the fine print without having to squint.

And on another topic altogether, this blog post by Lauren Baratz-Logsted (a guest post on Nathan Bransford's blog) is for writers who need book blurbs, which we all do eventually. It includes a lot of important dos and don'ts, from bas

The Monday Morning Writing Challenge

So, I did it. Did you?

I got a notebook and went to the park and watched people and wrote stuff about them, mostly about their dogs.

Then, I meandered into some solipsistic, pseudo-introspective writing that was even more random than freewriting in the park.

And then I started working on a new story.

As a goal-oriented person, I suppose I couldn't help it. But it was a good exercise, and it was also fun. It reminded me of The Artist's Way's morning pages, which I also neglect to do most of the time.