Jean Reynolds's Blog, page 57

Help Them Find You!

A few years ago, I met a remarkable woman with an amazing life story. I was delighted to learn that she was writing a book, and so were several of my friends who knew her.

Last week I had some great news: she’d published her book! But when I went online to buy a copy, I came up empty. It isn’t listed on Amazon, and she doesn’t have a blog.

LinkedIn was another dead end. I know she’s a member, but I couldn’t find anything about her book – not even the title. In fact it looked as if she hadn’t been active on LinkedIn for a long time.

My guess is that she had her book privately printed and hopes to sell it at book signing events…which means that she’ll probably make very little money for all her hard work.

This ambitious but unwise friend is one of many writers I’ve known who failed to heed the most basic (and most important) principle in book marketing: Make sure readers can find you.

How do you accomplish that? Every writer should follow these steps:

Have a headshot done by a professional photographer, and ask someone (it doesn’t have to be a celebrity) to write a brief endorsement of your book
Create a free sales page on Amazon that includes a description of your book, the endorsement and headshot, and a bio
Join LinkedIn.com, and use the resources there to showcase yourself and make yourself look busy

Of course these are only the first steps in marketing your book! You can find many more suggestions by clicking here.

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                   Make Sure They Can Find You!

 

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

When the meal was finished, Martha suggested a walk along the beach. 

 

 

For and Against Discipline

It’s taken me more than three weeks to get back to normal after my trip to New York for my 50th college reunion. It never takes me that long to bounce back after a trip, and I started to think that maybe I should make an appointment with my doctor.

And then I realized what was really going on: I was grieving for my college years. I can only hope that you, reading this, have had – at some point in your life – as much fun as I did in college.

Which brings me to the subject of discipline. I was not disciplined in college. (Talk about understatement!) I spent big chunks of time mooning over Richard Burton, listening to the Beatles, watching ballet, reading Hamlet criticism, and hanging out with my friends. (I’m listening to “Let It Be” as I type this right now.)

Decades later my doctoral program finally convinced me that it was time to set some priorities and stick to them. Peter Pan grew up! Those habits have stuck.

Yesterday morning – more precisely, at six yesterday morning – I suddenly felt like myself again. First thought: Priorities! What was I going to do with the surging energy that hauled me out of bed before sunrise?

My writing philosophy is to tackle the hard jobs first and then reward myself with the fun stuff. So there I was, in my pajamas, with our cat in my lap, trying to rev myself up to tackle the book on Shaw that I’m writing.

What I really wanted to play with, though, was a neat idea I’d come across for article about police reports. (I know, I know. Doesn’t sound like fun! But it was.) I was sure I could get it finished in a couple of hours. But that would set my little writing train on the wrong track. What to do?

Of course I wrote the article – in fact I’d finished a complete draft by the time Charlie was ready for our morning walk. Sometimes discipline is not the way to go! I would have lost that momentum and the ideas that were lined up in my head.

And I’ll tell you what else I did yesterday that took me off course: I vacuumed. (Most of the time I use housework as a reward for slogging away at a difficult writing project.)

Charlie talked me into buying an electric broom when our vacuum cleaner gave up the ghost a few months ago. I could weep when I think of all the hours I used to spend hauling that heavy machine around. The electric broom is so light and versatile that I can vacuum our whole condo in less than 15 minutes. (It helps that we don’t have carpets.)

Sometimes it’s nice to reward yourself before you tackle a gosh-awful task.

Advice to writers: Get rid of your carpets and buy an electric broom.

Better advice to writers: Be a friend to yourself, your energy, and your momentum.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

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Passive voice sentences (like the sentence in today’s quiz) sometimes work well in a particular writing task. But it’s usually a good idea to ask yourself whether active voice would be a better choice. I end up revising about 90% of my passive voice sentences to make them active voice.

Here’s today’s sentence:

When the meal was finished, Martha suggested a walk along the beach.  PASSIVE VOICE

Notice that this sentence doesn’t show you the people who ate the meal. (“When the meal was finished” is passive voice.) I would revise it this way:

When we had finished the meal, Martha suggested a walk along the beach.   BETTER

Jean Reynolds’ book What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You can be purchased from Amazon.com and other online booksellers. Jean Reynolds’ book What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You can be purchased from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

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Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

Carole bought a first class ticket for her flight to London.

Grammar or Usage?

Whenever there’s a conversation about the sad state of writing today, you can count on one thing: someone is going to suggest a return to old-fashioned grammar.

I disagree, on several counts. First, I insist that grammar is different from usage – they’re not synonyms. What’s more, I believe that our tradition of grammar worship is a big mistake that – ironically – takes us down the road to more mistakes and weaker writing.

Let me explain.

Grammar deals with the underlying structure of language. It’s an abstract subject that covers only a few errors, such as subject-verb agreement, misplaced modifiers, and pronoun case. When you study grammar, you spend most of your time learning terms like noun, appositive, adverbial conjunction, antecedent, and infinitive.

But don’t you need to understand those concepts in order to create intelligent sentences? No. The grammatical system in English is based on word order. Jane loves Bob is very different from Bob loves Jane. In other languages (Latin, for example), word order doesn’t matter.

If your first language is English, you learned most of your grammar as a child, just by listening to other people talking. Even tiny children quickly learn how to manage word order in English. (You never hear a child say, “Mother me gave a cake of piece.”)

Here’s the surprise: Most of the mistakes that drive teachers and editors crazy have nothing to do with grammar. Those mistakes arise from problems with arbitrary writing practices, such as quotation marks, homophones, apostrophes, word-choice errors, and double negatives. That’s the realm of usage.

So you can spend hours and hours diagramming sentences, memorize dozens of grammatical terms, and spout every rule of grammar from memory – and never discover that – for example – ain’t is a poor word choice.

Another issue that lies outside the realm of grammar is confusion about American vs. British usage. Writers who live in the USA often lapse into British word choices (amongst, whilst, centre) and British-style quotation marks. Again, those are usage errors.

My problem with grammar is that it doesn’t address most writing problems. Students with severe writing issues obediently spend weeks or months learning about intransitive verbs and interrogative pronouns – and continue to make the same errors nevertheless. 

So what’s the answer? Focusing on the areas where the problems lie. Here’s an example of how to do that. When I was teaching first-year-college students, I used to give them a list of problem words to memorize. The first test of the semester involved taking out a sheet of paper and writing the list from memory. Here it is:

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Of course students also had to be able to identify the problems associated with these words. For example, many people (not just students) mistakenly insert apostrophes into hers, ours, and similar words. So few people know how to spell lose that I believe it’s going to disappear from the language before long – and the same is true of woman – it’s a word that many writers never use. Everyone is a women. And so on.

On days when papers were due, I used to visit each group while students were peer-editing their work. A paper with an error from this list was returned to the author with a reminder about the list. (Did you notice that many of those errors have nothing to do with grammar?)

Of course I didn’t point out the offense – no point in doing students’ work for them! Result? Fewer errors. (If you’re an instructor who wishes your students were more accountable for the quality of their writing, click here.)

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Today’s sentence requires a hyphen. Carole didn’t buy a first ticket or a class ticket: it was a first-class ticket.

Carole bought a first-class ticket for her flight to London. CORRECT

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What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

I only had two dollars in my pocket.

 

 

You Don’t Have to Start from the Beginning

A few weeks ago my husband showed me a problematic sentence in the gardening column he was writing, and we put our heads together to fix it. Here’s his original sentence:

Plants in the Euphorbia family produce a white sap that’s so foul and irritating, creatures that try biting off a piece don’t come back for a second taste.

We spent a couple of minutes talking about possible revisions – and then Charlie suddenly started scribbling. Here’s the improved version he came up with:

Creatures that take exploratory nibbles soon learn to avoid plants from the Euphorbia family. The white sap is so foul and irritating that they don’t come back for a second taste.

Why is this version better? First, it’s two sentences instead of one (a favorite strategy I’ll take credit for teaching Charlie to use.) More important: instead of stating a fact, the new version shows us critters on the move – taking an exploratory bite and then deciding not to come back for more.

What’s interesting is what Charlie didn’t do: start from the beginning, with the disgusting white sap, and then go on to show mice, bugs, and other garden critters stopping by for a taste.

Here’s a rule-of-thumb for you: You don’t have to start from the beginning!

It’s human nature to write the way we think. That means we often write in first-this-happens-and-then-that-happens fashion – leading to a lot of dull writing.

If you take a look at the examples below, you’ll notice that each revision reverses the usual start-from-the-beginning strategy.

Marge spent long hours studying math. For that reason, she earned an A in calculus.  FLAT

Marge earned an A in calculus. Those long hours of study paid off for her.  BETTER

I found a cake recipe on a tattered piece of paper in my grandmother’s kitchen. When I tried the recipe, the cake was a big hit.  FLAT

Everyone devoured the cake. I’d found the recipe on a tattered piece of paper in my grandmother’s kitchen.  BETTER

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Be careful how you position only. Put it next to the word it’s modifying.

I had only two dollars in my pocket.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

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Instant Quiz

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

The library closes early on Saturdays; that’s why we go to Jane’s apartment to study. 

Advice from Steven King

One of my favorite pieces of writing advice comes from Steven King’s On Writing: Don’t do your readers’ thinking for them. It’s an elegant principle that – frankly – I would never have come up with myself.

Here’s an example of what King is talking about. A typical writer (like me!) would probably write a sentence like this one:

Jane wept because she knew Lionel would never come back to her.

Here’s how King might do it:

Jane wept. She knew Lionel would never come back to her.

But is it really ok to write this way? If you’ve ever taken an English course (and who hasn’t?), you can probably picture a teacher scribbling furiously in the margin: choppy.

We’ve all been told that long sentences are better than short ones, and we’ve all been encouraged to use lots of transitional words: because, although, therefore, when, and so on.

I’m an English teacher myself, and I agree with that advice – up to a point. When I was teaching, one of my favorite assignments was to ask students to combine sentences in various ways:

When I won the contest, we all went to an expensive restaurant.

Because I won the contest, we all went to an expensive restaurant.

I won the contest; therefore, we all went to an expensive restaurant.

Sentence-combining activities are a great teaching tool for students who don’t feel confident with semicolons and commas. Students often told me how grateful they were for that practice.

But today I want to talk about why I like Steven King’s advice, even though it often leads to shorter and simpler sentences.

There’s a basic truth that we English teachers sometimes find hard to swallow: plain writing is better than complexity. Picture readers gliding easily through something you’ve written. Here’s what we imagine is going through their heads: “What a stupid writer.” “This is too easy.” “This guy probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

But here’s what our imaginary readers are really thinking: “This writer is wonderful! I want to read more.”

Many people – alas – mistakenly believe that pompous writing impresses readers. I’ve known many writers who are afraid to write plain, straightforward sentences. “My readers will think I’m stupid!” is the common cry.

Not at all.

The best way – indeed, the only way – to impress readers is by what you have to say. Readers are always looking for powerful ideas, useful information, and interesting stories. Nobody has ever said, “I can’t wait to read a book that’s full of complicated sentences and big words.” Readers want good books.

Can you write one for them?

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Today’s error is an obscure problem called an indefinite pronoun reference. If you’re a strict grammarian, it means that a pronoun must refer to something specific. Click here to learn more. (Many writers no longer worry about this error, but it’s a good principle to bear in mind when you’re writing formally.)

Here’s today’s sentence:

The library closes early on Saturdays; that’s why we go to Jane’s apartment to study. INDEFINITE PRONOUN REFERENCE

Here’s how a grammarian might fix it. Notice the awkwardness:

The library closes early on Saturdays; that inconvenience is the reason we go to Jane’s apartment to study.  CORRECT (but awkward!)

When I realize that a sentence includes an indefinite pronoun reference, I usually just rewrite the whole sentence to get rid of it:

On Saturdays we go to Jane’s apartment to study because the library closes early.  CORRECT

You could also simplify the sentence (as I discussed in today’s post!):

On Saturdays the library closes early. We go to Jane’s apartment to study.  

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

When I asked Luke about his new apartment, he said that “he was glad he’d decided to make the move.”