Eliot - A Writers' Blog

What do writers do with their published work? Do they carefully bind it into portfolios and stack it reverently on their bookshelves? Do they file it away in cabinets or plastic file boxes until it takes over half their houses? Or do they simply pitch it into the recycling bin and go on to the next assignment? I think the answer has a lot to do with how much they are identified with their work, Personally, I am pretty much defined by mine.

It should come as no surprise that I have kept every article and book I’ve ever written, in all of the above places: portfolios, bookshelves, and plastic file boxes. Over the years, I’ve done my best to consolidate, organize, and even purge: but I still have a lot of printed material.

When I leave this planet, what are my children going to do with a collection of 40 or 50 or 60 years of accumulated words? I have no idea, really. They can throw it out if they like. I wouldn’t mind at all. After all, I am not a famous writer, and what I’ve written has not changed the world in any way I know of. So, why keep it?

Perhaps I keep it because it is tangible proof of what I have done with my life … that I haven’t just been sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Or maybe it is all an extension of me in some way I don’t completely understand. And there is another reason. Behind every story, I’ve written there is another story, a shadow story, so to speak. It is a story of what happened while I was researching or writing, of the real people behind the carefully phrased quotes, and of what I learned or experienced that never made it into print.

It’s funny; sometimes, I can’t remember what I did yesterday. Yet, I can clearly recall every one of those shadow stories behind the ones that made it into magazines and books. Perhaps it’s time to bring them into the light.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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About the Author: Bobbi Linkemer is a ghostwriter, book coach, editor, and the author of 14 books. Her articles on all aspects of writing appear on more than 25 article sites on the Web, including top-ranked EzineArticles.com. Bobbi has been a professional writer for 40 years, a magazine editor and journalist, and a book-writing teacher. Her clients range from Fortune 100 companies to entrepreneurs and individuals who want to write nonfiction books in order to build their businesses or share their stories.
Bobbi Linkemer's Website

On The Edge: Boomer Lit
May 06, 2008
by Jordan E. Rosenfeld
Books written by baby boomers are reaching a critical mass.
It’s difficult to imagine that those 1960s doe-eyed children who brought the world’s attention to Vietnam War protests and love-ins are old enough to qualify as senior citizens. But they’ve finally matured—and so has the fiction being written by and for them.

Seventy-eight million baby boomers are alive today and comprise an enormous chunk of the reading public. As a result, there’s both a growing demand for fiction that deals with age-appropriate issues and a tendency for boomer-age writers to tackle parallel subjects in their fiction. More and more baby-boomer protagonists, both in the genre and literary arenas, are dealing with serious life issues such as unexpected illness, failed marriages and lost dreams.

New imprints are even being created with boomers in mind, including HarperCollins’ HarperLuxe, which features large-print books, and Hachette Book Group’s Springboard Press, a line of nonfiction aimed specifically at boomers.

Several writers and publishing professionals share their thoughts on this growing book-buying demographic.

STARTING OVER
Lesley Dormen’s first novel-in-stories, The Best Place to Be, not only features a 50-something character, it was written after she turned 50. After two decades of making her living writing for magazines, Dormen came back to fiction writing through The Writers Studio in Manhattan, where she now teaches an advanced fiction-writing class. At the notion that turning to a long-held dream later in life is a common boomer trait, she laughs. “I’m practically the head of the class of the boomer generation,” she says.

Dormen admits that books written about 20-, 30- and even 40-somethings rarely interest her as a reader anymore. She found she was drawn to subject matter that was age appropriate for her stage in life.

As Dormen developed The Best Place to Be’s main character, she found the confidence to tell the protagonist’s story at different ages throughout the book. But Dormen’s writing style and sensibility were definitively shaped by her early experiences. “The obvious markers of my generation are sexual freedom, women’s liberation, music and war,” she says. “Everybody is shocked to discover their own mortality, but I think the boomers are still not convinced.”

Dormen’s editor at Simon & Schuster, Marysue Rucci, saw Dormen’s book as the mature woman’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (by Melissa Bank). “I absolutely identified with Lesley’s book,” Rucci says. “That Grace, her protagonist, was middle-aged wasn’t a deterrent.”

Rucci, who is also executive editor and vice president of Simon & Schuster, concedes that the next step beyond chick lit and mommy lit may very well be boomer lit. “Certain writers focus on biographical issues, so their second or third books might showcase a middle-aged protagonist facing middle-aged issues—think Tom Perrotta or Jennifer Weiner—whereas their debut might have been a coming-of-age novel,” Rucci says. “But I wouldn’t draw such a direct corollary.”

Trend or not, boomer fiction keeps making appearances, and some books are even written by younger authors. Alice Sebold’s novel, The Almost Moon, features Helen, an over-50 woman who kicks off the book by putting her dementia-addled mother out of her misery in a compelling but horrifying act of murder.

THE MID-LIFE CRISIS
Kim Green is the author of Paging Aphrodite and Live a Little, which features a classic boomer life crisis. While not a boomer herself, Green is the child of boomers, which, she says, influenced the creation of her protagonist, Raquel, in Live a Little.

“It’s kind of natural for the children of boomers to write about them,” she says. “After you’ve purged the urge to write about characters who have gone through what you have, it’s natural to imagine a stage of life you’ll go through next.”

Green’s character Raquel is a boomer grappling with boomer issues. First she’s erroneously diagnosed with breast cancer and then becomes a celebrity promoting the cause on local TV. Success causes her to question her stale marriage, and to wish her teenage children were more independent. She then returns to the art she abandoned years before to renewed acclaim, and takes up with a younger man. When her cancer diagnosis turns out false, Raquel is too attached to her new life to let it go.

“What I felt I was tapping into with Raquel is something I see in boomer women—this dissatisfaction and unhappiness because they didn’t have a lot of choices about where their lives were going to lead,” Green says. “My primary focus was to deal with the frustration of a woman of Raquel’s generation, a woman who felt she had lost her dream in part because she had a family. This is the classic case with boomers—they wanted it all but couldn’t get it and have ended up feeling as if they didn’t do anything very well.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

Robert Herrick wrote these words centuries ago, in his poem “To the Virgins, to make much of Time.” One place you can find the entire poem is at http://www.bartleby.com/101/248.html

Yes, Herrick essentially argued in his poem that chastity was a huge waste of time. And not all of us would agree with that essential argument, but I do agree with Herrick that we do need to gather our rosebuds, our babies, our loved ones, and even our dandelions, while we may.

I spent the weekend with my family in Kentucky again this weekend, including my mother, who is fading nearly as fast as any fair pink rosebud.

And I couldn’t help but wonder how many more visits, how many more springs, I will have with her. Or even with my brother, his wife, and their son. As my brother said to me, “We are the next generation to die, after mom.” Cheerfulness runs in our family.

But this is not a call to go hide under the bed, hoping that the Grim Reaper won’t be able to find us when our time comes.

This is a call to all of you — to all of us — to go out there in the gorgeous springtime and pick those rosebuds, or dandelions, while we can still walk, and smile, and breathe. Before it’s too late.

And then write about how the sunshine felt on our faces, how the thorns on the rosebushes remind us of our mortality, how we remember planting that rosebush with our mother.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Writers are always touting the need for proofreaders and editors—by everyone but themselves. “Why should I hire someone to proofread or edit for me? I’m a writer. I know grammar and punctuation rules,” they say in their defense.

While we’d all like to believe that’s true, the fact is many writers use a comma when they should use a semicolon (and vice-versa) or choose “effect” when they should choose “affect.” And even those who usually do a good job of adhering to the rules they learned back in high school English class—and I’m including myself here–will sometimes make mistakes that a second pair of eyes would most likely have caught. That’s because when we read over our own work we see what we intended to write, not necessarily what we wrote. We usually read the document quickly, focusing more on content than on individual words.

Proofreading and editing are two different things. Proofreaders look for mistakes in grammar, punctuation and spelling. Editors focus on content, making sure ideas flow naturally and logically, that sentences aren’t too long and that the intended message is conveyed clearly. A good editor combines proofreading and editing skills to ensure excellent copy.

As a professional proofreader and editor, I usually read over a client’s document several times. First, I read the entire document without marking mistakes. Then I read it again, noting obvious errors in punctuation, spelling and grammar: i.e., “its” vs. “it’s” or “mischievious” vs. “mischievous” or “except” vs. “accept.” The third time, I look at the content: did the writer successfully convey his or her message? Then I read it through again looking at the “flow”: are the paragraphs in the right order? Do the ideas flow logically? Does the writer overuse any specific words or phrases?

Sometimes writers will have a writing buddy with whom they exchange proofreading and editing duties. This can be a good solution, especially for shorter projects. But you wouldn’t expect a fellow writer to read your 400-page novel, alerting you to mistakes and rewriting entire passages for clarity, all for free. That’s when you need to bite the bullet and pay a professional to do the job.

Don’t be like the writer I overheard at a self-publishing conference, who said, “I don’t want to pay someone to proofread for me. I know my grammar and punctuation aren’t perfect, but I’m hoping my story is good enough that readers will overlook any mistakes.”

They won’t.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I wonder what folks think of the revamped St. Louis Today (Post-Dispatch) site: www.stltoday.com. Would old Joseph Pulitzer be spinning in his grave? I think not. He was roundly criticized in his day for popularizing the news. SLToday is certainly doing that. Celebs! Gossip! Blogs! 200-word “articles.” Lots of ads. Right now I can hardly stand it, but I bet within a week I’ll be used to it. At least it’s easy to read.

Ex-P-D staffers have created their own site. (Who needs a staff when almost everything comes over the wire?) www.stlbeacon.org. So far it seems a little more connected to the city, a little less seduced by **Celebs**! Why do we think someone else’s life is more important than our own?? A mystery to me. Someone who’s lived 23 years rarely has the wisdom I seek. But of course I’ve passed out of the target demographics, so what do I know.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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About the Author: Betty Burnett is a reader, writer, historian, editor, mother, and grandmother. She finds all very satisfying occupations.
Betty Burnett

This will be very short and not at all controversial… for now. This morning a friend forwarded to me information concerning an “end of copyright” bill that’s before the US Congress. To check it out for yourself, click this link http://www.changethethought.com/the-orphan-works-bill/ then read the text just beneath the YouTube video screen. (Thanks again, Lynn.)

Harvey

Popularity: 12% [?]

A few nights ago I watched a movie, a comedy starring Luke Wilson, called Idiocracy. It was even more over-the-top and humorous than the title would lead you to believe, but it was also terribly sad from a writer’s perspective, demoralizing and a bit frightening. In the film, Wilson played a soldier who had been put into a deep sleep by the Army as an experiment. He was to be awakened in a year. Something went awry, and he slept for 500 years instead. When he awoke, it was to a world in which Corporate America controlled everything—for example, one lawyer in the film received his law degree at CostCo—and the citizenry had slipped to the bottom of the slippery slope of illiteracy and linguistic laziness. None could even form a sentence, and the populace—including professors, lawyers, doctors, politicians and judges—viewed anyone who spoke in complete sentences as a “fag.”

As another example, in the year 2505, the film that won eight Oscars, including “Best Screenplay,” ran for ninety minutes and featured only the naked posterior of a human male who occasionally passed gas, to the seemingly endless delight of the audience. One of the most popular television shows of the time was entitled Ow! My Balls! It featured what you might expect, a young gentleman being injured in various ways to a particular part of his anatomy.

So the protagonist, who back in 2005 was tagged “the most average man in the US Army,” was suddenly the smartest man in America. To avoid going to prison for being too intelligent by contemporary standards, he taught the citizens, for example, that to grow crops and reverse the nationwide dust-bowl situation, they would have to start using water for more than simply flushing their toilets. Prior to his arrival, they’d used a sports drink not only in water fountains, but  on their lawns and fields. The salt content, naturally, had killed everything. In the end, of course, the protagonist prevailed and set the United States on the road to recovery. Yay us.

That was the end of the film, and this blog post might never have been written, but I decided to watch the local news immediately afterward. Bad, bad Harvey. The news anchor began a heart-warming story about a group of one year old sextuplets. The headline at the bottom of the screen, mimicked aloud by the anchor, was “Sextuplets Earn University Scholarship.” I thought, Huh? What do you suppose they did to “earn” a scholarship? Perhaps they were awarded a scholarship or had been granted a scholarship or had even been “gifted” (ugh) with a scholarship, but earned? And of course, that thought led to others. About 4 ½ years ago, news anchors both in the field in Iraq and behind their comfy desks in American cities routinely reported almost every night that US troops had uncovered another weapons’ cachet. That’s right. Not cache, but cachet (pronounced cash-ay). While searching for weapons of mass destruction, our soldiers and Marines had apparently stopped to smell the roses… well, according to the news guys. And these are folks who make their living, as do many of us, with words. Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle et al must be spinning in their graves.

In the meantime, the media also have decided that likely and probably are synonymous, although likely is an adjective (despite the “ly” ending) that is synonymous with probable, not probably. Likewise with imply and infer. Impact has suddenly become a verb, as has the previously mentioned gift.

All of this, I believe, began somewhere in the recesses of Corporate America, where some fifty year old who still lives with his mother and hates his English teacher for giving him a B+ one time is doing his level best to bring our language to its knees. He’s the same guy who decided it’s perfectly all right to “grow” a business instead of developing or expanding it. He’s the same guy who does things “moving forward” instead of doing them “from now on.” He’s the same guy who decided several years ago that talking with people in your profession isn’t nearly as good as “networking” with them, and he’s the same word economist who decided “writing in a journal” wasn’t nearly as cool as “journaling.” But it gets worse. I’ve heard many television news personalities speak of the benefit of giving children “a orange” or “a apple” as part of their lunch. I mentioned to one of them that was “an fruity idea.” He didn’t get it.

The dumbing down of America is real. In your own writing, at least, please pay close attention to what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. If each of us does his or her part to safeguard the language, perhaps we can at least slow the descent.

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Harvey Stanbrough is a writer, poet, and freelance editor who works from his home outside Huachuca City, Arizona. He offers a free sample edit. See http://StoneThread.com/edits.html

Popularity: 20% [?]

With the Cardinals doing so well this year, I feel like we have to enjoy it, especially given the dismal season of last.  So I wanted to share this that I wrote for the Post-Dispatch Opinions page July 6, 2004.  As our beloved Redbirds head into a weekend series with the “Evil Cubbies”, I hope this helps enhance your evening listening. 

What is it about listening to a night baseball game on the radio that is so magical?  Maybe it’s how you can almost see yourself at the game, sitting on the third base side about half way up.  You can picture the panorama of grass bright green, baselines starched white, all spread before you as uniformed men move in choreographed precision to turn a double play.  Or is it the way the sounds play upon your imagination, the steady hum and buzz of the crowd, the occasional call of a vender, the crack of the bat.  Oh, the crack of the bat! A sweeter sound in sport there may never be, especially if it’s your guy connecting wood to leather. Whatever the answer might be, a night game on the radio is a time-stopper, a step into an alternative universe.

I recall as a kid lying in bed on a steamy night, listening to Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola and the inimitable Harry Carray, as my beloved Cardinals struggled through the darkness in search of another victory.  No matter how far behind the home team might be, the hope was still there, springing eternal.  The warm breeze brought in by the attic fan washed over me as I fought to stay awake through the ninth. 

“We could use a few base runners here,” Harry might say.  “A walk, a base hit, a wild pitch, and we’re back in business.  Now here’s the first pitch.  Ball ONE! He wouldn’t walk the lead off man, now would he?” the legendary announcer would ask.  And just like that, I was wide awake, and we were back in the ball game.

Of course, I was blessed to have grown up in St. Louis, listening to some of the best baseball broadcasters of all time.  Carry, Buck and Garagiola had the gift of putting the action so inside your head you could close your eyes and see it.  And now, the venerable Mike Shannon, the old Moon Man, carries on the tradition, with his optimism, boundless enthusiasm, and sheer love for the game. What Shannon may lack in glibness, he more than makes up for in heart.  When you hear him do a game, it‘s like he’s sitting next to you, enjoying a “frosty cold one” on the patio.

So maybe that’s it, the skill of the broadcasters. Could that be why radio baseball touches me so?  Or is it because the Cardinals are, well, THE St. Louis Cardinals?   I don’t know for sure, but there must be more to it.  It might be the remembrance of my old German immigrant grandpa sitting at his South St. Louis kitchen table, hand cupped around his bad ear as he listened to the game on the table radio.  Or could it be just how cool it was to drive around in one of the fleet of used cars my dad used to bring home like stray dogs, windows down, volume up, letting baseball bring the rest of my world to a standstill.

“Through it all, there’s been baseball, says Terrence Mann, a character in one of the best baseball movies ever, “Field of Dreams.”  Mann was referring to the power of the game, the power and the promise, such that no depression or world war could take it away from us.  The power to take us out of the daily grind, away from the horrors of yet another war, where the only thing that mattered was getting that runner home from third with less than two out.  And night baseball, with its sounds and mystery, always fulfilled that promise.

Well, tonight’s game is over, and the Cards have won, beating the evil Cubbies.  As the broadcast ends and I click off the radio, my joy is tinged with regret, that it is over for another night.

“Hope you enjoyed this one as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you,” says the announcer.

Hey, thanks, Mike.

Thanks for the magic.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Last month I strolled through booths at an antique mall and saw an assortment of IBM Selectric and other typewriters, both electric and manuals. There was even a Wang Word Processor catching dust in the corner. It got me waxing rhapsodic about how it must have been to pound out a 120,000 word manuscript on one of those old machines and how difficult it must have been to do editing and rewrites.

In the age of computers with word processing software we have all sorts of features designed to make our writing life easier and bring out the best prose possible. Are you using your word processing features to your advantage, or is your word processor just a fancy typewriter? I’ve compiled a couple of my favorite tricks and time-savers to share with you.

First off, I’m using Microsoft Word 2003. So if your menus don’t match up, consult your help feature.

A different twist on Find and Replace.
We all have our “go to” words that we fall back on time and again. They clutter our manuscripts without our knowledge, along with passive or weak verbs (was, were, is, etc.) They hide among the other words when our eyes scan the document and blend into the background. Want to make them stand out? Try this (make sure you have the FORMATTING toolbar up):

From the menu, choose; EDIT/FIND. In the dialog box, type the word you want to find and click the small box, HIGHLIGHT ALL ITEMS FOUND IN…

Click the FIND ALL BUTTON. In a few moments, the search will be complete and the number of hits will be reported in the dialog box. Don’t touch anything yet! Finish the search off by clicking the HIGHLIGHT button on the toolbar. You’ll easily see how often you repeat a particular word or name. You may come up with something like this (you’ll have to use your imagination here as the bolded words below will be highlighted in color):

Although he was considerably overweight, he was far from being a slob—at least as far as his work was concerned. Meticulously organized, Eric Wassel was one of FBI’s best forensic scientists.

Now you’ve brought these repeated or weak little words out of hiding, you can go about replacing them. I find it very difficult to proof my own work and if you’re like me, this tool can be a big help. Oh, and if you want the highlights to go away, click the undo button.

Now for a time saver.
Tired of typing the same name or word over and over again? MS Word has a great feature called AUTOCORRECT. It changes common misspellings on the fly. But with a few tweaks, it can save you time by having it do work for you. Here’s how.

Do you have a character with a long name? What if your protagonist has a long name like the Seinfeld character, Franklin Delano Romanowski? In my novel, I used my protagonist’s name 471 times. If I had to type Franklin Delano Romanowski 471 times it would cost me 12, 246 keystrokes and tons of aggravation. Instead, put your word processor to work.

From the menu, choose: TOOLS/AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS. In the REPLACE box type FDR. In the WITH box type Franklin Delano Romanowski. Click OK. Now anytime you type FDR, it will be replaced on the fly with Franklin Delano Romanowski.

Do you have a word you just can’t type correctly? Use this method to autocorrect it.

These are just a couple ways you can use your word processor to improve your writing.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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About the Author:

Wilfred Bereswill was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. His first novel, A Reason For Dying is set to be published in the Summer of 2008 by Hilliard & Harris.

Agent Laura Daniels’ career soared when the FBI assigned her to the anthrax letter case after 9/11. But failing to crack the case landed her in the Seattle Field Office, where she feared her life would be relegated to the routine.

While investigating the theft of low-level radiation devices, Daniels is led to the site of Interex Corporation’s controversial oil and gas exploration well just outside Yellowstone National Park, where crucial fossil records lie buried. Arriving at the site, what she encounters is unthinkable — not only have large radiation sources gone missing, but an unidentified virus is killing members of the drilling crew, and shows no signs of stopping.

Now Daniels’ career rides on getting the answers she needs. But as the virus continues its deadly rampage, she discovers the stakes are far higher than she anticipated. And the answer she gets is the last thing on Earth she’d expect.

“A Reason For Dying is an intelligent, heart-thumping thriller that will keep you reading and guessing and reading some more. Bereswill is an author who knows how to engage and hold the reader. His many talents are evident in this strong mix of suspense and action.” — John Lutz, NY Times & USA Today Best Selling Author of Suspense.

Walking down campus everyday I am in my own world. This is my time.

I daydream as I please while walking from one side of campus to the other; all the while with one goal on my mind, and that is to make it to class on time. Or at least as close to on time as I can.

Walking back from class today with my friends, we stepped onto the “dangerous” crossing of Grand and West Pine. Rumor has it if you get hit by a car, St. Louis University owes you big time. They are supposed to give you free tuition. The rumor has yet to be confirmed—thank god.

There were cars passing as we waited at the halfway mark; the boys were being boys as usual…full of mischief. They dared me to jump into the middle of Grand and dodge my way around the cars. And hey…if I got hit, I could confirm the rumor. And bonus! I would become a legend.

An ambulance came by, “perfect!” they said. “If you get hit by the ambulance it can just pick you up and take you the hospital.” Yes, how perfect. I just ignored them and kept walking, drifting back into my time, my world.

Popularity: 13% [?]