The Final Touch

…I know some of you are because you’ve talked with me about it. Per­haps oth­ers are, too. The online arti­cle “How to Get an Agent’s Atten­tion,” by Chuck Sam­buchino of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity, caught my atten­tion for just that rea­son. I hope you will find it a help­ful resource.

A cou­ple of points that I really appre­ci­ate from Chuck’s post and from the agents interviewed:

• A query let­ter is essen­tially a cover let­ter to apply for a job; the resume is your man­u­script. Be as pro­fes­sional as you would in writ­ing up a job appli­ca­tion.
  
• A use­ful for­mula for a query let­ter is “The Hook, the Book, and the Cook.” To find out pre­cisely what this means, read the arti­cle!
• If an agent rejects your man­u­script, it doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean it’s “bad”; it just means it’s “not his/her type” — just like when you’re dat­ing. Don’t take it per­son­ally if some­one isn’t totally, absolutely in love with your book; just move on and “date” some­one else until you find that per­fect “long-term rela­tion­ship.” After all, you don’t actu­ally want some­one rep­re­sent­ing your work who isn’t com­pletely head-over-heels in love with it, do you? Didn’t think so.

Many more insights where these came from! Check it out!

I have just learned about Wub​bit​.com. It’s new, and I can’t vouch for it per­son­ally yet… but word of it comes via a trusted source: Jane Fried­man, one of the edi­tors of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity (see the third bul­let down in Jane’s post for a link to a brief — and FREE — webi­nar to learn more about it).  If you search YouTube for “wub­bit,” you’ll find sev­eral dif­fer­ent videos — includ­ing the one below — to tell you what Wub­bit is all about and why authors, inde­pen­dent book­stores, and cus­tomers love it (or, as they say in the video, “why they wub­bit!”). Since many of you are authors — and per­haps have been won­der­ing how best to mar­ket your work with­out sac­ri­fic­ing most of the prof­its to mid­dle­men, I’ve cho­sen this video for you. (Do also check out the webi­nar; it’s not as ani­mated as the video, but it’s very infor­ma­tive.)

(Or view directly on YouTube.)

I’ve been using LinkedIn for sev­eral months now, and I have to say, it is eas­ily my favorite social net­work for pro­fes­sional pur­poses — largely because that is pri­mar­ily what it’s designed for. While Face­book and Twit­ter can also be use­ful for mak­ing busi­ness con­tacts, pass­ing on help­ful resources, and even offer­ing your ser­vices to oth­ers, they are also — as you likely know — widely used for keep­ing in touch on a per­sonal level and, in the case of Face­book, for fun and games. Noth­ing wrong with fun and games, but when I want to learn about someone’s pro­fes­sional cre­den­tials, dis­cuss a busi­ness topic with an online group, and offer glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tions about peo­ple I know oth­ers will love as much as I do… LinkedIn is just the thing!

It’s no coin­ci­dence then that on LinkedIn, in the Writ­ing and Edit­ing Pro­fes­sion­als group, I dis­cov­ered a link to a great arti­cle about Social Media, which in turn led me to a great piece about har­ness­ing LinkedIn for pro­fes­sional use.

Here are a cou­ple of my favorite tips from the article:

• Be unique: Don’t just list your job title beneath your name; instead, describe in brief how peo­ple will ben­e­fit by con­nect­ing with you and your busi­ness. For instance, the line below my name reads: “Glad to help you put the FINAL TOUCH on your writ­ing to make it the best it can be!”
• Link your LinkedIn pro­file to your blog. If you look down my pro­file, for exam­ple, you’ll see the head­ing for this very blog post! Read­ers can find my LinkedIn pro­file through my blog, and they can also find my blog through my LinkedIn profile.

Check out the arti­cle for more LinkedIn ideas!

One of the news-magazines for which I do copy­edit­ing fea­tured “yours truly” last week in their inter­view col­umn called “Behind the Scenes.” Since my answers will help you to know me and my busi­ness bet­ter, I thought I’d share it with you. Click on the link below, and at the web­page where you land, click the blue “Down­load Now” icon: The FM Extra’s “Behind the Scenes with Heidi Mann, Final Touch Proof­read­ing & Edit­ing,” April 9, 2010.

Heidi Mann, Final Touch Proof­read­ing & Editing

It’s been quite a while since I shared from this fun resource, so I thought I’d do so again. These par­tic­u­lar tips are by some of my favorites. Who didn’t grow up lov­ing Charlotte’s Web? And I remem­ber dis­tinctly my expe­ri­ences of read­ing Orwell and Brad­bury and Fitzger­ald in high school; Samuel John­son? — alas, not so much, but that’s OK — he still has a valu­able tip to share.

(To see Tips 1–4, click here. To see tips 11–101, sub­scribe to this blog using the icon to the right and watch for them every so often.)

5. EB White. Just write. The author of Charlotte’s Web, one of the most beloved of children’s books, said that “I admire any­body who has the guts to write any­thing at all.”

6. Samuel John­son. Keep your writ­ing inter­est­ing. “The two most engag­ing pow­ers of an author are to make new things famil­iar and famil­iar things new.”

7. Ray Brad­bury. Learn to take crit­i­cism well and dis­count empty praise, or as Brad­bury put it, “to accept rejec­tion and reject acceptance.”

8. Toni Mor­ri­son. Remem­ber that writ­ing is always about com­mu­ni­ca­tion. “Every­thing I’ve ever done, in the writ­ing world, has been to expand artic­u­la­tion, rather than to close it.”

9. George Orwell. Orwell offered twelve solid tips on cre­at­ing strong writ­ing, includ­ing an active voice rather than a pas­sive one and elim­i­nat­ing longer words when shorter ones will work just as well.

10. F. Scott Fitzger­ald. “Cut out all those excla­ma­tion marks. An excla­ma­tion mark is like laugh­ing at your own joke.”

…Or like what my hus­band and I call “doing a Jay Leno” — that is, repeat­ing the punch line of your own joke even though the audi­ence clearly already gets it because you think it’s so funny!!!!!!!!!

TIME TO CELEBRATE! It’s NATIONAL GRAMMAR DAY! What do you plan to do to make it special?!

If you see this blog in time, you may want to spend part of the day, begin­ning at 9:10 a.m. PST, lis­ten­ing to Mignon  Fog­a­rty, a.k.a Gram­mar Girl, on the Christo­pher Gabriel Pro­gram on 970 WDAY-AM radio (or by stream­ing audio online). I assume it will also be avail­able as an archive after the fact; check back here in a few hours — I’ll let you know and pro­vide a link if it is.) I don’t know much more about it — I just had the good for­tune to catch Mignon’s post in my News Feed on Face­book — but you can be sure I’ll be there (lis­ten­ing from my home office) with bells on!

I’ve writ­ten about the Gram­mar Girl web­site before on this blog. I highly rec­om­mend it!

Cel­e­brate National Gram­mar Day! And don’t for­get to hug your res­i­dent gram­mar­ian today!