The Final Touch

I just sub­scribed to Writer’s Digest’s YouTube chan­nel and hap­pened to dis­cover this very use­ful video. From a lit­er­ary agent’s expe­ri­enced point of view, it gives sev­eral great nuggets of infor­ma­tion about story-telling, plot, struc­ture, what works, and what doesn’t — all in just under 5 min­utes. Check it out:

photo © 2008 Codice Inter­net | more info (via: Wylio)

A few days ago, I was try­ing to do some­thing with an Excel spread­sheet. Now, mind you, I know only the most basic basics about Microsoft Excel, but I do keep my Con­tacts List fairly well orga­nized in that pro­gram. Well, in the process, I “hid” a cou­ple of columns (inten­tion­ally), but then I could not for the life of me “unhide” them! I clicked on “Hide/Unhide” and on “Columns” and… in the words of one of the ani­mated char­ac­ters from Veg­gi­eTales videos, “noth­ing, zilch, nada!”

I wasted prob­a­bly a good half hour and tons of energy on it before it dawned on me that I could 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 © 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

The fol­low­ing video pretty much speaks for itself. There are vary­ing view­points about whether an edi­tor should post his/her rates on a blog/website, but some of you have a gen­uine need to know, and your ques­tions gave me a great oppor­tu­nity to try out using video as a way to answer ques­tions. It was fun to do, though the learn­ing curve (at least for me) was a bit steep! Par­don the imper­fec­tions! (I do like, and I hope you will as well, the “inten­tional imper­fec­tions” of the Ani­moto* back­ground I opted to use — I think they make the whole thing artsy and fun!)

Oh, by the way, for those of you who don’t know me very well yet, the fact that my eyes dart back and forth is NOT because I’m speed-reading cue cards! It’s because I have a con­gen­i­tal con­di­tion called nys­tag­mus that affects the mus­cles of my eyes. Sorry it doesn’t look like I’m mak­ing eye con­tact with you!

Please let me know if you have any fur­ther ques­tions about how I might assist you with your writ­ing. And remem­ber: not just books; I’ll be glad to help with ad copy, school papers, resumes, let­ters, and more.

I invite you to view this and other videos on my YouTube chan­nel, “Final­TouchEdit.” If you find some­thing you like there, please click “Like.” I’d also love to hear from you, so please leave a com­ment here and/or on YouTube. And if you know some­one else who might be inter­ested in learn­ing about my ser­vices (or in see­ing the dar­ling cat video on my chan­nel!), please pass the links/URLs along to them. Thanks!

* http://​cmp​.ly/5

Recently I learned about a tool called Robo­Form* — and when I find some­thing really use­ful, I want to share the news!

At first, I assumed it was too good to be true or, worse, that it might actu­ally com­pro­mise my secu­rity online. But then I heard about it again, from a source I trust greatly and who has years of online expe­ri­ence (shout-out to Sab­rina Gib­son!), so I decided to look into it fur­ther. I gave the free ver­sion a try and fell in love! Seri­ously! I am SO DELIGHTED to have this new tool in place that when I reached the free-version limit (10 pass­words, I think), I imme­di­ately upgraded to the Pro ver­sion (under $25) for my 40+ pass­words!

Robo­Form stores all your inter­net user­names and pass­words so you don’t have to fig­ure out a sys­tem for remem­ber­ing them all. Fur­ther­more, nowa­days there is such a threat of iden­tity theft and hack­ers get­ting into our inter­net accounts (two friends of mine have recently been phished on Face­book), that I was glad to know Robo­Form helps pre­vent that, too, with its optional random-password gen­er­a­tion, which gen­er­ates a unique, strong pass­word for each site that calls for one. Robo­Form stores them all for you so you only need to remem­ber one, to enter the Robo­Form pro­gram and access all your oth­ers. You can view, copy, or change your pass­words at any time under the “Edit” option on the menu, but as far as any­one else is con­cerned — any­one who doesn’t have your Robo­Form pass­word — the pass­words are secured with military-level encryption.

One other thing: Robo­Form can also auto-fill forms for you, if you find your­self at a lot of dif­fer­ent web­sites that require the com­ple­tion of long forms with per­sonal data. You sup­ply the infor­ma­tion in an ini­tial set-up, and then click an icon when­ever you need a form filled. (I do make sure to read over the form just to make sure it all got filled out cor­rectly, and because some­times I might want to change the email address I’m sup­ply­ing or such, but it’s a help­ful resource nonetheless.)

In short, I think Robo­Form is one of the most use­ful resources I’ve ever encoun­tered for online work (and play!). At the very least, why not click here to learn more?

* http://​cmp​.ly/5