Tools and Craft

Today’s rant is courtesy of the husband. He casually mentioned that he was reading Copyblogger — a great post about ending your articles — and he noted something irritating in the comments section: a writing coach insisting that there was only one good way to brainstorm: hers. As he discussed writing with the ending in mind, Copyblogger noted that some people might benefit from a quick outline. Then came the comment, one we cannot resist quoting: NO! Outlines are death for writers.

Though we are (typically) late to the game, we are going to play along with ProBlogger’s “Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers” game. This, of course, suggests that we are a highly effective blogger. As it turns out, the habits that make for good blogging also make for good writing. Who knew? So, what does make a blogger highly effective? Heck if we know, but this is what works around here:

Far be it for us to name names (Jill), but there are people out there who don’t take the serial comma seriously (Jill). They see it, at best, as something redundant (Jill). They see its omission as a way to raise the blood pressure of perfectly nice people (BS). Some people see its absence as no big deal (Jill). Like we say, we’re too classy to name names. Leaving that third or fourth comma out is failed experiment in reworking the punctuation rules — sort of like new math, whatever that was. Brenda Coulter takes her serial commas seriously. So

Far too many writers have longed for the opportunity to suffer from Second Novel Syndrome, only to discover the disease is at least as debilitating as puberty. And like adulthood, SNS may be something you live with until a kind-hearted friend takes you aside and says, “Dude, seriously, people are getting creeped out by you sleeping with such a young book.” The conventional view on SNS [Second Novel Syndrome] is that it is a seizure caused by a loss of innocence. Don DeLillo said a first novel comes to the writer as a gift and he doesn’t necessarily know how

In an article in the New York Press, Sam Sacks takes exception with writing workshops. Where one once found creativity and free-flowing ideas, the experience now lends itself to to an inevitable sense of sameness. He cites Best New American Voices 2006 as Exhibit A of workshopping gone wrong. The question Sacks dances around is that of objectivity versus subjectivity. Writing is absolutely a creative endeavor. If you need to prove this, engage in the age-old exercise of listing three objects and having each member of a small group write a paragraph including those objects. Or just one object. Or

In our long career, the only writing partner we’ve had is the husband. As far as collaborative processes go, it worked surprisingly well. Unlike traditional fiction partnerships, we wrote in a shared editing environment. This, of course, meant the poor man had to wait until we were satisfied with his commas and apostrophes before we started the next section. MediaBistro takes a look at the process of writing with a partner. Though we know you’re going to pop right over and read the whole thing, we feel compelled to summarize: communication. Oh sure, you’re always right and have never made

We like radical notions (especially those that start with, “Maybe we should go out for Chinese food tonight”), but prefer solid plans (“Let’s go out for Chinese food tonight”). A plan to deal with the morass that is book returns certainly would catch our attention, but as we read one publisher’s call to arms, we were struck by the missing details. Angela Hoy, who runs the Writers Weekly newsletter and owns Booklocker, a print-on-demand publisher, is suggesting that all all books be non-returnable. Her logic is that print-on-demand technology and smarter ordering would reduce the accounting nightmare that is returns.

Today’s first post comes courtesy of the husband. While in some households, his accompanying statement would be taken as a joke, we never jump to conclusions: “How come nobody told me about the rule where you’re supposed to put an apostrophe after words that end in vowels? That could come in handy.” Bob’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (Poster-sized version helpfully available at The Official Bob the Angry Flower Web Site)