- A really nice Publishers' Weekly article about the tenth anniversary of Arthur A. Levine Books
- An excellent time-wasting geography game. I can't get past Level 11 -- Geraldton, Australia? Really? But glory, it's fun playing up to it.
- A lovely, lovely picture book I edited and adore, The Light of the World: The Life of Jesus for Children, by Katherine Paterson and Francois Roca, has TWO starred reviews! (More on this book soon.)
- Late-October/November/early-December SQUID replies will be going out tomorrow.
- And I am going to be revising my submission guidelines soon to say "No SASE, no reply, sorry."
- Weird trend of this month's SQUIDs: two ms. involving the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic.
- Also something I was thinking of reading a couple recent submissions: If your manuscript is in third-person limited POV, take one chapter, cut out all of the internal monologue, and stick it in a drawer for a week. Then go back and see how much of that monologue really absolutely HAS to be in the scene for said scene to make sense. The reason I say this is because internal monologue very, very easily slides into redundancy or telling, and it can also very easily slow up a scene (especially a dialogue scene, if the narrator thinks something after every line); and not to put too fine a point on it, these things drive me crazy. Thank you.
- Sort of like what Mark Twain said about the word "very," notwithstanding my use of it above: "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
- Also coming soon: a review of the play "Doris to Darlene, a Cautionary Valentine" at Playwrights Horizons.
- Because it's that time of year: The Charlie Brown Christmas "Hey Ya."
- And casting around for a terrific, unusual Christmas present? Everyone likes a share of a llama.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Little Things
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This is awesome advice!
ReplyDelete"If your manuscript is in third-person limited POV, take one chapter, cut out all of the internal monologue, and stick it in a drawer for a week. Then go back and see how much of that monologue really absolutely HAS to be in the scene for said scene to make sense."
Because isn't editing at least half of good writing? Most of my journey as a writer has been 1) learning how to correctly prepare before I begin a book (background, outlines, character work, world-building) and 2) learning what to do with something once I've "finished" it (brutal self-editing).
Jon
P.S. I love your blog, even if I'm still mystified by the saga of the kidnapped (?) frog.
Every time I see a picture of Arthur, I'm always surprised when he's not a stocky cravat-wearing Oxford professor-sort of fellow. I think it has something to do with that one Christmas card you told me about years ago, and I simply cannot shake that image of him I built at that time.
ReplyDeleteJon, every time my immediate family and my dad's brother's family get together, we play a vicious game of "Killer Klein Croquet," and the frog is the official travelling trophy. I won it at our most recent croquet match in September, and I taunt the other members of my family with it by posting pictures and correspondence. :-)
ReplyDeleteOh. Now how am I going to explain all those frantic phone calls to Interpol and the Center for Missing Amphibians? If your next family get-together is crashed by guys in dark suits, don't blame me ...
ReplyDeleteJon
Thank you - I am now completely addicted to the geography game. By a strange twist of fate (or because of my insatiable reading habits) I've made it to level 10! Sigh...another way to keep myself from revising...
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you ever get sick of hearing this:
ReplyDeleteIn a strange sort of mood I am, and so I decided that it would be a good idea to reread Chapter 34 of Deathly Hallows. And promptly ruin my otherwise beautiful book with tears all over the pages.
Fine, fine work. All of you.
That is a wonderfully nice article about AALB... although the photo of Arthur is rather curious in a "hand colored fifties photo studio" sort of way.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Twain quote. He always seems like the cleverest person in the room. We are reading "Huckleberry Finn" right now for a bedtime story and I'd forgotten how good it was.
That's interesting about the Influenza epidemic manuscript trend. I wonder if it reflects a common fear of germs, super flu and terrorist attacks. It is one of those historical events that I didn't learn about in school yet I lost a great aunt from it at age fourteen. Howard Hughes got his germ phobia from it, as did William Randolph Hertz.
Wishing you hot tea and a happy December,
Marilyn