Category Archives: advice

November 17, 2010   DG&B   advice, fun, Miriam, writing  
16

Meticulosity*

by Miriam

It is a truth universally acknowledged (here at DGLM) that I am the resident grammar narc. Although, by and large, I’m a fairly “live and let live” type, I can be downright dictatorial when it comes to clean, polished prose. Of course, in my line of work, I have had to learn some forbearance. If I got worked up over every typo, I’d be living in a padded cell and re-reading William Safire columns ad infinitum. That said, I still find it baffling how much material is submitted to us that is sloppy, poorly proofread, and full of grammatical and syntactical mistakes.

This blog is rife with palaver about how to get published, how to get an agent, how to craft the perfect query letter, etc., but we seldom discuss the fact that bad grammar and syntax can end your publishing career before it ever gets started—even if your ideas are fresh and good and your writing actually decent or even great. Although agents and editors are trained to see beyond simple errors that can easily be fixed in copyediting, most of us have to wade through so many submissions that we sometimes can’t get past our irritation with an author who uses random capitals everywhere or who chooses to spell phonetically rather than correctly. These days, it seems that writers are in such a rush to send off their queries the minute the manuscript is finished that they omit the part where they check to make sure that their work is ready for prime time.

Some of the things you may want to be on the lookout for before you hit the “send” key:

Don’t begin sentences with numerals. Ever.

Put the hyphens in the right place when referring to a character’s age: it’s “a four-year-old boy” but “the boy was four years old.”

Don’t use a semi-colon in place of a comma or period…or just because you think it looks sophisticated.

Keep your possessives and your contractions straight. “Its” and “it’s” mean very different things, so do “your” and “you’re.”

Read up on prepositions and their objects. There are songs that make my teeth itch when the singer wails about the love “between you and I.”

However you feel about the serial comma, use it. Doing so will help you avoid a great deal of unnecessary confusion. (I direct you to my friend Jim Donahue’s blog post on this subject—he’s a big grammar geek too.)

I don’t care how much country music you listen to, it’s not “anyways.”

There is a difference between a hyphen and an em-dash—one separates two words that are linked to make one concept, the other is used for parenthetical asides. Hint: in that sentence the hyphen is in the word “em-dash” and the em-dash is right after it.

Ellipses, when overused, are the equivalent of heavy breathing and invariably communicate an inherent laziness on the part of the writer who is overusing them.

Check out The Chicago Manual of Style on numbers usage. It’s very distracting to see a lot of numerals (especially single digit numerals) in non-scientific text.

And, finally, please refrain from repeating the same word or phrase in close proximity unless it’s for a very specific effect.

You know I could go on and on here, but I’m pretty sure you all get the gist. Investing in a couple of good reference books on style and grammar will pay huge dividends. Having someone who’s just a little nitpicky proofread your work will as well. Of course, once sparkling clean prose becomes second nature, you can go ahead and subvert all of the rules—because sometimes the correct way of saying something just doesn’t sound as good. Remember Winston Churchill’s clever comeback for a pedant? “Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”

*Dr. Seuss said the key to good writing is “meticulosity.” Clearly, I agree.

November 08, 2010   DG&B   advice, blog chat, fun, Jim, opinion, our blog  
5

Blog chat live!

by Jim

Next week, you’ll all have the opportunity to join the agency’s first live chat. Yours truly will be available for an hour from 3:00-4:00 Eastern on Thursday the 18th to answer any questions you might have about pretty much anything—how to write a query letter, the state of the marketplace, what we’re looking for, what makes us run away screaming, and pretty much anything you can come up with. The one thing it won’t be is a place to pitch your book—that’s what email’s for.

This is going to be a test run for the chat system. We’re not really sure how many of you will be able to make it, so we’re going to keep it general and see how it goes. If it’s a hit, we’ll be looking to do it regularly and maybe add more specifically themed chats in the future. (If you have requests for particular themed chats, please let us know below!) So be sure to stop by and make me feel popular!

The chat will be live right here, and if you want to sign up now for a reminder, you can do so in the box below!

November 05, 2010   DG&B   advice, fun, Lauren, technical help  
12

The sharpest tool in the shed

by Lauren

I’ve had technology on the brain this week.  Recently, our server failed us in catastrophic fashion (apparently Outlook doesn’t like it when you save all your emails forever and ever just in case you need information later–who knew?), and as the company’s liaison to our IT company, it’s been my good fortune to orchestrate its replacement and the lengthy process of moving from one to the other.  On top of the system upgrade, I’ve been working on a couple new things for the blog (stay tuned for fun changes coming up!), so I’ve been thinking a lot about how dependent we are on technology and how tough it can be to figure out what’s new and worth investigating.

Finding a new tool can change everything.  My mind was blown a couple years back when I found out that you could change existing text from ALL CAPS to various other options in MS Word with the press of two buttons: Shift+F3.  And I can’t imagine how I managed to regularly read any newspapers or magazines or blogs before I found Instapaper and Feedly.

So I’m wondering, as writers or editors or readers, what technological tools do you find that you couldn’t live without?  Have you found, say, a trick in a common program that changed your life?  Or an app that makes you more productive?  What websites make your social networking efforts easier to manage?  Any techniques to make editing easier?  Let us all know below–who knows how many hours you might save of us!

November 03, 2010   DG&B   advice, marketing/publicity, opinion, social networking, Stacey  
6

Social networking means business

by Stacey

Everyone talks about how important social networking is for marketing and promoting your book, both before you’re published (especially for nonfiction, where without a sizable platform you’re dead in the water before you even begin) and after. That it’s important is not new news, but I found this piece in Publisher’s Weekly about a recent webcast about digital marketing interesting because it goes into detail on just how social networking influences consumer buying habits. This offers a small way to quantify its impact on selling books. And the numbers are pretty powerful — “consumers are 67% more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter, 51% more likely to buy from a brand they fan on Facebook, and 79% more likely to recommend brands and products they follow on social media.” I also like the suggestion “Don’t spray and pray. Listen, reply and engage.”

To me this piece serves as yet another reminder that whatever your goals as a writer might be, it’s important to find those important connections to others both inside and outside the community. It all starts with talent, and sending out a message or a piece of writing that your audience can connect with in a meaningful way. The broader your reach, the easier time you will have finding agents and publishers to pay attention to you and the work you’re doing. The numbers prove it!

November 02, 2010   DG&B   advice, rejection, Stephanie  
5

Glass gives guidance

by Stephanie

Today, I wanted to pass along this brief interview from Morning Media Menu with Julia Glass, the National Book Award winning novelist. In the nine-minute-long interview, Glass reinforces the qualities that every aspiring writer must possess—first and foremost, determination. Before winning the National Book Award for her debut novel, Three Junes, Glass encountered the same repeated rejection—including the dreaded form letter—for quite some time. She admits surprise at not giving up after at least seven years of sending out her writing, only to have it rejected. Seven! She emphasizes the important lessons that a rejection can teach you, and the persistence and patience one must have in order to not be worn down by the system.

I feel like this is one of those things that can’t be stressed enough. Sometimes, it really does take countless rejections to find that one pair of eyes who is looking for and falls in love with what you’ve written. It may sound far-fetched but it does happen, and Julia Glass’s case is no exception.

November 02, 2010   DG&B   advice, biography, John, nonfiction, opinion  
0

The biographer as fan

by John

Back when I was an editor at Putnam Young Readers, I had the pleasure of helping National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick adapt his adult bestseller In the Heart of the Sea for young readers. It’s often tricky to translate adult work for a younger audience, but In the Heart of the Sea had a clear hook: One of the two main characters from In the Heart of the Sea was 13-year-old Cabin Boy Thomas Nickerson, to whom any young reader could relate.

However, after reading Nat’s review of Geoffrey Wolff’s The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review,  I realized there’s another key reason why his book translated so well for young readers: Nat’s a big fan of his material, and his personal feelings permeate the entire work. I love Nat’s idea that you can take a nonfiction topic and show what you think of the story, actively involving yourself rather than approaching it as a non-judgmental author/reporter. I also love his suggestions that a) you can work within the existing record, rather than having to dig up little new minutiae that don’t really add much to the basic plot, and b) that well-known stories are still worth telling, especially if you give them a personal slant.

This fan-boy narrative style is one that Russell Freedman and Elizabeth Partridge have used successfully in their nonfiction work for kids, and I wish I saw more of it out there. So to all you nonfiction writers, here’s a simple plea: Get off the sidelines and get into your books!

October 29, 2010   DG&B   advice, editing, fun, Rachel S., writing  
12

It’s really just that I so very much like using rather superfluous words.

by Rachel S.

For my very-first-ever real blog entry, I thought I’d have to look hard to find something both relevant and personally interesting to write about. Surprisingly (to me), it took under 5 minutes before this Huffington Post article, written by Linda Silversten, came to my attention. I jumped on it immediately in a guilty rush to see what she had to say about writers who use too many unnecessary words in their prose. Noting that in recent years published writing has become more and more conversational, Silversten took it upon herself to pick two recent bestsellers and count the number of taboo “filler” words peppering the pages for comparison. While Elizabeth Gilbert and Seth Godin didn’t err too far to overuse, Silversten still found an overwhelming amount of ‘thats’ and ‘sos’ in the portions of text she chose to tally.

I’ve known ever since in-class essays became a normal testing method in grade school that I have a strong tendency to write far too much and use more words than are necessary to convey a point or image. While this was a point of pride in school (I was always a little bit smug, though I tried to hide it, when I asked the teacher for more paper during every exam), I’ve eventually come to understand that MORE writing doesn’t necessarily make for BETTER writing. I’m still working on the short sentences thing, though. I don’t think that these little filler words that this article brings up are as much of a problem in my own writing as are an overabundance of adverbs and split-infinitives (the phrase still sends me running to the dictionary every time someone tells me I have too many). Are Linda Silverton’s taboo words just as much a problem for you as they seem to be for most writers, or do you have words or tendencies of your own that you work to suppress?

October 12, 2010   DG&B   advice, children's books, fun, genre, John  
7

Funny business

by John

Saw this piece by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, on the Wall Street Journal website (). I have to confess, Dilbert has never really done much for me, but the story Adams tells here is pretty amusing, and the tips that follow are extremely useful. I hope writers heed his advice, because while humor is central to young people’s literature—think Dr. Seuss, Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, Olivia, Lemony Snickett, DIARY Diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc., etc.—I’ve always been surprised at how few kids’ book submissions even attempt to be funny, much less actually succeed at it.

So here’s a thought for all you writers struggling with your dark, paranormal romance—maybe it’s time to leave the vampires in the ground, take a tip or two from Dilbert, and give your funny bone a workout?

October 05, 2010   DG&B   advice, Stephanie, writing  
2

For the Long Term

by Stephanie

Leap-frogging off of John’s post from earlier today about developing the art of writing, I wanted to share this post from Rants & Ramblings, a really great blog belonging to literary agent Rachelle Gardner. In it, Rachelle examines the ways in which a writer, once in possession of representation, can improve their chances of remaining with an agent “for the long haul.” To that end, she advises both on a larger scale—by being the kind of writer agents and editors will want to work with, as well as on a level more individual to the writer—by developing a uniquely compelling voice, and of course, keeping a positive attitude throughout.

I think something like this is important for writers to keep in mind, particularly when reading in conjunction with John’s post. When viewing these two topics in conversation with one another, they further exemplify how the writing process, when interwoven with the publishing process, is a complex, sometimes confusing, and constantly evolving process. And it’s one that requires multiple pieces of the puzzle in order to be successful. That said, when it all falls into place? That’s what it’s all about.

October 05, 2010   DG&B   advice, audience, John, writing  
4

Who’s your audience?

by John

There was a fantastic op-ed piece by Michael Cunningham in this past Sunday’s New York Times, a must-read for anyone who wants to write. While ostensibly a piece about translation, Cunningham brilliantly articulates how writing is not an act of solo invention, and how it’s crucial not only for writers to recognize that they’re writing for an audience, but to identify specifically who that audience is as well. It’s a secret that successful genre writers know instinctively, but I’ve never seen it so neatly laid out for the general reader.

And I was particularly struck by how Cunningham improved his art through learning to write for an audience of one, namely Helen the hostess at a restaurant bar where he used to work. On first glance, it seems to go against common sense—I always assumed that even if you’re writing for a specific audience, like mystery fans or teen readers, you want to create something with broad enough appeal for all members of that audience. But then again, as Cunningham suggests, targeting a specific reader like Helen might actually create a more intimate conversation between author and reader and, hence, result in a better piece of work.

Obviously, there’s no right or wrong answer here, but again, kudos to Cunningham for framing the issue in such an elegant and accessible piece. No wonder this guy won a Pulitzer!

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