The Final Touch

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The Minneapolis-St. Paul (Minn.) Star­Tri­bune news­pa­per, in its blog enti­tled “On Weather,” stated today that Moor­head, Minn. — only 30 miles south of Hen­drum, where I live — was the “hottest, most humid  spot on earth Tues­day evening”:

“The coolwx​.com site shows global extremes from hour to hour. Tues­day evening, around the din­ner hour, the dew point at Moor­head reached 87.8 F, mak­ing this the most humid report­ing sta­tion on the planet. The heat index peaked at an almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble 134 F. at Moorhead.”

Hearty — or fool­ish! — peo­ple that we are, my fam­ily and I were OUTSIDE at my youngest’s tee­ball game, and there was NO shade at the ball field! For­tu­nately, it only lasted an hour. I wouldn’t have even taken him if it hadn’t been the last game of the sea­son. He would have been awfully sad to have had to miss out.

(By the way, the pic­ture below is not of our ball dia­mond — WAY too much shel­ter from the sun to be ours!!)

I hope the rest of you are sur­viv­ing sum­mer quite nicely — spoiled, per­haps, as we are by our air-conditioning and fans, and for­tu­nate to not be home­less on days like these. Sum­mer bless­ings to you all!

photo © 2008 Paul Swansen | more info (via: Wylio)
A line from a news arti­cle I read today at the New York Times blog for Kin­dle (and, yes, I know I said I wouldn’t reveal sources when I turn writ­ing errors into teach­ing moments, but some­how I think the Times is big enough to take it from li’l ol’ me; I won’t name the author, though):

“Mr. Blago­je­vich, a Demo­c­rat whose for­mer aides say once saw him­self as a pres­i­den­tial con­tender some day, was found guilty…”

To be fair to the writer, this is a really tricky con­struc­tion. I had to reread it a few times to even sort out whether it was incor­rect or not. But, alas, Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2005 JP Esper­ança | more info (via: Wylio)

This morn­ing, I took the time to fol­low a few Face­book links posted by peo­ple I know. Each took me to a piece of fine writ­ing recently posted in cyber­space. The arti­cles are quite dif­fer­ent from one another, but what they all have in com­mon is the high cal­iber with which they are writ­ten. I’ll pro­vide links to the arti­cles — as well as to two other exam­ples of fine writ­ing I came across recently — at the end of this post.

Some peo­ple are not con­vinced that the qual­ity of their writ­ing — cor­rect­ness of punc­tu­a­tion, accu­racy of spelling, smooth­ness of sen­tence flow, and so on — really mat­ters. “Peo­ple know what I mean!” groused one writer for whom I used to proof­read. “And if they don’t get it, they’re not the kind of read­ers I want read­ing my stuff any­way.” Well! Read the rest of this entry »

Is any­one out there work­ing on writ­ing a novel? I’d love to hear about it!

I haven’t writ­ten a novel myself, but I love read­ing them. Some of my favorite authors are Jodi Picoult,

James Pat­ter­son,

John Grisham,

and Lynn Austin.

When you get fully engaged in a book, you’re not stop­ping every few min­utes to pon­der what makes the book so good. But you would notice if it weren’t so engaging.

That’s why the arti­cle, “How to Edit Your Dia­logue,” by a mem­ber of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity of blog­gers caught my eye. I thought I’d pass it along for the sake of any of you who might also be interested.

Even if you’re not a fic­tion writer, you might find it inter­est­ing to see just why you like to read the fic­tion you do, and what the author’s use of dia­logue has to do with that.

By the way, would you please share your favorite authors/books in a com­ment below? I’m always game for some new read­ing mate­r­ial!

photo © 2010 Allan Chatto | more info (via: Wylio)
Writ­ing to wish every­one a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of the turn from 2010 to 2011!

The occa­sion does present the oppor­tu­nity for a brief spelling/punctuation les­son, how­ever! This fes­tive night is not spelled “New Years Eve,” nor do we cel­e­brate “the New Years.” GAH!! I’ve heard and seen both of those too many times already! Here are our options:

• New Year’s Eve (the eve of the new year, thus the need for an apostrophe);
• Happy New Year! (we only cel­e­brate one at a time, so there is no “s” on the end);
• New Year’s, as in “We’re cel­e­brat­ing New Year’s at…” (I’ll give you this one, reluc­tantly, but only with the apos­tro­phe included to show that “Eve” is implied).

Just a tip to take with you into Jan­u­ary! For oth­ers like it, along with a wide range of pon­der­ings, I invite you to stop by this blog through­out 2011. I look for­ward to shar­ing new ven­tures with you!

–Heidi

photo © 2009 Cory Doc­torow | more info (via: Wylio)
Found this post through Writer’s Digest at a Guide to Lit­er­ary Agents blog. Go there for the full arti­cle by Guest Writer, Lit­er­ary Agent Mol­lie Glick:

7 THINGS AGENTS WANT TO SEE IN A QUERY

1. An enter­tain­ing but polite and pro­fes­sional tone
2. Mul­ti­ple forms of con­tact infor­ma­tion
3. Proof that you have researched and hand-picked an agent. (If you’ve got a con­nec­tion, were referred by a client or met the agent at a con­fer­ence, make sure to point that out early in your let­ter.)
4. Espe­cially for non­fic­tion: An author bio that demon­strates your plat­form and why you’re the right author for this project
5. A quick, catchy hook or “ele­va­tor pitch”
6. Mak­ing a case for the book’s built-in audi­ence
7. Espe­cially for non­fic­tion: Show­ing why your exper­tise and media con­tacts make you the best author for your project

9 THINGS AGENTS DON’T WANT TO SEE IN A QUERY

1. Ask­ing what the agent can do for you, rather than demon­strat­ing what you can do for him/her
2. Ask­ing for a phone call or in per­son meet­ing before the agent has requested one
3. Query­ing for mul­ti­ple projects at the same time
4. List­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion unre­lated to your book
5. Giv­ing ref­er­ences from peo­ple out­side the pub­lish­ing indus­try (such as say­ing your writ­ers group, your con­gre­gants, or your mother’s next door neighbor’s cock­erspaniel loved your book)
6. Com­par­ing your book to a commonly-quoted best­seller
7. Mak­ing broad claims that you can’t back up
8. A pitch for an incom­plete nov­els. (It’s OK to query with an unfin­ished non­fic­tion project, as long as you’ve writ­ten a pro­posal, but nov­els should be fin­ished before you start con­tact­ing agents.)
9. Overly famil­iar, aggres­sive, or incor­rect salutations