Comma or no?

There are some amusing articles about the premature announcement of the death of the serial comma--you know, the one that precedes "and" in a list. The AP Stylebook (for journalists) says discard it. Oxford, Harvard, MLA, APA, Strunk & White, and the Chicago Manual of Style support it. Such a controversy.

Jacket Copy wants to insert a new comma style: the Shatner comma. As in, "I'm, still, the, captain, of, this, ship, mister!"

Wizzley says there is no controversy; every authority but one supports the serial comma, and even AP says to use it when clarity is needed..

To prove their point, supporters cite this Merle Haggard photo caption, which is even mentioned in Wikipedia: "The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall."

This pictures was on the Making Light blog, and on other blogs. Making light labeled this "via Bruce Baugh."

As Wizzley mentions, you can even buy tees and hats proclaiming your support for the serial comma--under the name of the Chicago comma (for Chicago Manual of Style, of course). Go to Zazzle and poke around. There are all styles of shirts, not just the first four you see.

Seth Myers on Huffington Post

Well, not just on HuffPo. I couldn't find a clip of just that, so here are the first ten minutes of Seth Myers at the White House Correspondents Dinner.  He was hilarious, but my favorite joke comes in the section about "After Parties," about half way through.

"Like everyone else, I'll probably just go to the Huffington Post party. The Huffington Post party is asking people to go to other parties first, and just steal food and drinks and bring it from there."

You Gotta Pay Me!

Yeah! The title of this post is a quote from Harlan Ellison, btw, not simply my own frustrated outburst.

Visual Art Source, one of HuffPo's contributors has decided (belatedly) that they will no longer provide free content to that mega-website that now has AOL bankrolling it. They originally did because HuffPo gets 26 million visitors a month, but they're calling it quits now.

Visual Art Source, in the person of Bill Lasarow, lays down two conditions for contributing to Huffington Post again:

First, a pay schedule must be proposed and steps initiated to implement it for all contributing writers and bloggers.

Second, paid promotional material must no longer be posted alongside editorial content; a press release or exhibition catalogue essay is fundamentally different from editorial content and must be either segregated and indicated as such, or not published at all.

Lasarow follows up with this gem:

I am also calling upon all others now contributing free content, particularly original content to the Huffington Post to also join us in this strike.

My heart is warmed.

I really, really like Ariana Huffington. I enjoy her books--which I have paid for--and her appearances on TV.

She's very smart. Somehow, she's figured out a way to run a rather liberal blog without paying any of the writers who contribute material. Except herself, of course.

Even smarter, she's managed to make all us hard-working folks not notice or complain about it.

How does she do that? Smoke and mirrors?

I can imagine what she'd say if someone tried stiffing her!

So here is my favorite video once again: Harlan Ellison ranting, "They always want the writer to work for nothing!"

Desks of Brilliant Minds

A while back I did some posts on the writing sites of certain authors like Mary Roberts Rinehart. It was fun, till I discovered that my idea wasn't too unique and the best I could do was refer to other articles. How droll.

So here's another article on the topic. Desks of the rich and creative, from Flavorwire.

May I draw your attention to the work areas of Albert Einstein, Tina Fey, and Al Gore, for starters? Obviously, a clean desktop is the sign of a less-than-exemplary mind! Or maybe, as author Emily Temple states, sometimes a cluttered desk is just a cluttered desk.

Book Covers

As a follow-up to a point in the previous post--that self-published or not, ebook or print, covers are very important and no writer should scrimp on them--here is a blog entry from The Book Designer with resources. It contains 8 tips for selecting a great cover.

I even found a Book Cover Archive. Wow.

And to the right is a re-imagining of the Harry Potter books, with covers designed by M. S. Corely to make them look like Penquin Classics. I love it. These show how attached we can get to one cover design (which anyone who fell in love with a particular edition of a classic will understand.) But how elegant and simple these are!

The Future of Publishing

That was the name of the panel discussion on the Westside of Los Angeles that I attended: The Future of Publishing.

On the panel were a couple of literary agents, one conversant with technology and one who didn't speak, a book consultant specializing in self-published ebooks and print books, two entrepreneurs--one with a company combining ebooks and video, and the other running a small press and a book PR firm, and a successful author covering the film industry.

One of the entrepreneurs met most questions with an answer along the lines of, "I don't know what's going to happen, but it should be exciting." I'm not mocking him. I think all in all, he probably expressed the most truthiness.

While one woman proclaimed that "the time for self-publishing is here, definitely and without doubt," not all agreed. Rather than repeat their (very polite) arguements, here's what I learned:

• In the last six months, the publishing industry has convulsed and changed more than any other industry.
• Before 1976 (before Star WArs, iow) two of five published books made money. But that was OK; in publishing up till then, novels had years to make back their investments with slow, steady sales. Now, however, publishers are conglomerates who produce only the cream of the crop, as proffered by agents. The business is Hits-drven and celebrity-oriented.
• OTOH, there are more opportunities than ever for those willing to venture into self-publishing and ebooks. Remember, though, you still must produce a superior product. Spare no expense on a great cover and editing.
• The gatekeeper and many middlemen are being eliminated. Everyone can be published, and hopefully the best books will rise to the top. This all means more $$ for authors who get bigger shares of sales for their ebooks, and who don't have to wait months and years for publishers to send them checks for books sold.

All agreed on this: Authors must become marketers. One entrepreneur advised learning as much as possible about the way Itunes works and sells. Reviews and word of mouth will still be important.

Journalism Lingo 101: Source Equals Quote

Credit: Free images from acobox.com

Here it is January 25 and I have not posted to this blog in 2011. Shame! Shame! I've been busy, and for a week, sick with a cold--not a nasty, painful cold but the kind that makes you want to curl up on the sofa with a thermos of hot chocolate and doze all day while a cable station loops the Lord of the Rings movies nonstop.

Meanwhile, the bills must be paid so I'm writing a lot for Patch.com. I'm getting used to throwing stories together quickly and not trying to make them perfect.

I've also learned that when journalists refer to sources, they mean quotes. I didn't know that; it cost me at least one story.

You see, when the word "source" is used to anyone who studied history or any discipline other than journalism, it conjures up images of bibliographic entries. It may refer to an interview, but many sources are articles from newspapers and magazines, or books that contain facts. You source facts to vet them.

So when an editor told me I needed more sources in my story on the Tea Party, I went to Fox News and the conservative pundits who are credited with starting the Tea Party. I used their data, giving credit ("as so-and-so reported in her weekly column for the Washington Post").

There! Now the information in my article was sourced. I wasn't happy because I thought it made the piece way too dry. But I figured the editor would be happy.

She wasn't. She killed the story (OK, the murder was mutual. I was unwilling to invest further effort in a story that had already taken more of my time than it was worth).

Weeks later, I meet with another Patch editor who talks about having 2 or 3 sources for every story. The same buzzword...this time I asked her exactly what she meant by source.

Quotes, I learned.

Not expert quotes, necessarily. A source could be a kid at a carnival, as long as they say something worth printing, like "I threw up on the Tilt-a-Whirl!"

That's all it is. I could talk to a crazy person and he could be a source. In fact, maybe I have.

End result is that articles are much easier to write. I quote my source; I don't have to vet their information as long as I've got the quote.

Presumably there's another level of reportage, better paid, where fact-checking plays a bigger role in evaluating what quotes to use to tell the story.

When I write for magazines, I double-check all information. I go to experts. I look up stuff. I like that better. But magazines aren't responding to my queries right this second, and I have bills to pay and promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, hee hee, ho ho.

"A Lead is a Promise"

What is more welcome than a new piece by John McPhee, and on writing, of all things!

This article ("Writing a Strong Lead is Half the Battle"--the quote in my blog title comes near the end) is from the Wall Street Journal. It's short and to the point and everyone who writes should read it.

I don't consider myself a journalist; my degree is in history. But I love to write and want to write well. Like many, many freelancers these days, I find myself working for Patch a lot, so I'm learning to write a lead.

Or, as some purists would have it, lede. Thank you, Mr. McPhee, for spelling it "lead." That makes me feel less like an outsider. "Lede" seems to be the secret handshake that proves one went to journalism school.

McPhee is one of my heroes. I know little about hiim except that he writes great articles and books about the things he finds interesting. His writing is always exactly right--the pacing, the unrolling of facts, the subtle story behind the facts. If I set out to emulate him in everything I write--except the fiction--I would do quite well, I believe.

I'm not the only one who thinks he's a joy to read, of course. Everyone loves him--his book Giving Good Weight was passed around by engineers at the aerospace company I once worked for, and believe me, those guys don't normally read anything but schematics. McPhee won a Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World.

Successful Writers Defined

In this most excellent interview, blogger and author Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen defines a successful writer as "someone who can make a living by writing." 

Fairly simple. Know anyone? Actually, I've met a few and their energy amazes me.

Pawlik-Kienlen does not query magazines, but makes her living from several successful, monetized blogs and by selling her ebooks. One of said ebooks is titled 75 Ways to Make Money Blogging--certainly something I'm adding to my Christmas list (it's only ten bucks!)

She gives a couple of tips in her interview--it's well worth reading, so go to. I could add more but I'm going to go check out her blog, Quips and Tips for Successful Writers.

Musings on New World Food

Here is something that makes me glad I didn't get a book published at 22, cuz this is exactly the sort of error I would have made: Inserting food like potatoes or tomatoes into a story set way before these products made it out of the Americas. Or inserting coffee or spices a few centuries before they were known.

Seriously. It is hard to write a scene of someone waking up during...I dunno, the 12th Century mini-Rennaisance, and not pouring themselves a steaming cup of Joe to get moving. How did people get up before coffee? More to the point, what did folks drink on a 12th century morning?

I keep thinking about that internet anecdote I read years ago, about a New Agey author who wrote a book on ancient Irish Druids. She based her text not on research, but on intuitive or channeled knowledge, and stated that the potato was quite sacred to them. When it was pointed out to her that potatoes were not introduced into Ireland until the 17th century, she wondered why everyone was being so mean to her.

So I look up every vegetable and condiment before I put it in a story. I hope everyone does. When I read a book, say Ancient Evenings by Mailer, I enjoy it that much more knowing that he invested years in the reseach. I don't want any anachronistic faux-pas to jolt readers out of the magic.

Mucho apologies for neglecting the blog once again, btw. Who knew I could get so busy?

Ancient Herbs 'n France..s

A bow to Respighi in the the title.

When you get sick, you seek out the person who can make you better. Today, that may be the clerk at RiteAid, but before the 20th century it was very often someone who knew plants and made medicines from them. In Death Speaker, my novel of ancient Gaul, the heroine is raised by a woman who heals with plants, so I had to do a bit of research on them.

The pretties on the right are Aconitum, aka Wolfbane. If you know your Harry Potter you know it's poisonous. Information on it and how it works on the human body is all over the internet. A decent place to start is here at Thinkquest.org, but there are plenty of other spots as well.

Not surprising that poisonous plants are well-covered on the net, is it? Death is sexy. We love that stuff. There's even a TV show on SPIKE called 1000 Ways to Die. The commercials turn my stomach so I won't include a link.

But even finding information on non-lethal plants--like this comfrey--gets easier every day, as herbalists, nurseries, and agencies in every state and country put their plants online. When I check several sights and they all agree on a how a plant grows and how it affects people, I'm pretty comfortable using that information.

Oddly, I didn't rely on books on herbs, mainly because there's so much dis-information around. Isn't that weird--I used to trust the printed word implicitly. But I've seen many books on "New-Agey" topics, like herbs and healing, which went into rituals and folklore...yet when I tried to learn more, I found nothing at all that could support the book's claims. No other books, websites, experts--nothing.
So if a book claims that a plant was once used to cure headaches, for example, but no other book or expert or website backs up that claim...well, maybe the author vetted their information, maybe they didn't. Maybe they just repeated something they heard anecdotally, and maybe they got it wrong.

If I've got a headache, I want something I KNOW will knock it out. And if my character has a headache, I figure she wants the same thing. So I try to find it for her. It's the least I can do.

Geography, 2000 Years Ago

Some musings about writing a historical novel:

One of the most difficult things to figure out in an ancient setting is the geography. The further back you go, the more things change. Seas rise and fall, rivers change course, beaches erode, hills get carved up by miners...stuff happens.

Of course, the good part about that is the further back you go, the less likely it is that someone may call you out on a mistake. ("You idiot! That lake is manmade--no one would have stopped there before 1972!")

My novel is set in France, 2000 years ago. France is unique in that it--more than most countries--has tamed its rivers. Who knows how the Loire ambled along in the BC era?  Well, there may be a few scholars of the esoteric who know, but not many. How about the beaches near Carnac? What were they like? And the fields, what sort of flowers would have grown wild there?

I did as much research as I could. Maybe I over-researched, but I think that's better than not doing enough. I even found a little book in a university library that was written for American soldiers in WWI, explaining in general terms the lay of the land in France. What a jewel that was! 

One thing I did learn was that the seas have risen over the past two milennia. Archaeologists know it. The many islands off France and other countries in Northern Europe have higher shorelines than they used to. Some disappear entirely, and yet there are carvings and structures that indicated they were used once, maybe 3000 years ago when the seas were lower.

An annotation on Caesar's Conquest of Gaul clued me into the fact that the Netherlands and Belgium and other coastal areas were more marshy than they are today.

The bottom line is that you do your best, which is the bottom line for almost everything in writing, isn't it?

Janelle Brown on HuffPost: Dearth of Paying Creative Jobs

In a great article that starts out with anecdotal evidence of creative talent fleeing Los Angeles (my city), Brown nails something that has been bothering many, many people lately. She talks about the writing opportunities on the Internet: "In a flooded marketplace of ideas, the price for creativity has been driven down by a glut of free supply."

Brown points out that over 30,000 writers/journalist have lost their jobs in the past two years, and fight over the pathetically small pay that sites like Demand Media offer. (I could add a few others, but Demand is who Brown singled out.) She gives some great examples, then moves on to other creative types: musicians, filmmakers, etc. She does get around to plugging her own book, This is Where We Live, only to mention that she's found bootlegged copies of it downloaded 9,500 times!

Enough of stealing her thunder: read the article. She ends with a scenario that reminds me of Atlas Shrugged.

Susan Isaacs Gets the Last Word (Deservedly So!)

A Wall Street Journal article about book signings in New York City makes clear what branding and positioning hath wrought. The big book stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble offer venues seating up to 1100 people. Each outlet has its own cachet--do you want liberals, the savvy and trendy, or warmish families with their kids in tow?

In a way, this sounds so much like an amped-up version of cheerleader tryouts in high school. I'm sure it's inevitable--bookselling is a business--but reading the story almost makes me glad I'm an unknown drudge. Almost.

(OK, truthfully, I wish I had that problem. I wish my publicist was going nuts arranging a slot for me.)

The piece finishes with a bit of spectacular wisdom from Susan Isaacs: "Say you sell 75 books. It's all to the good, but I don't know how much it matters in the scheme of things....You should be using that energy to write books."

New Free Pictures

This may be of interest to other bloggers: PicApp now has Reuters photos available.

If I didn't have a chihuahua in my lap that would have been much easier to type.

Anyway, here's an example of a Reuters News Photo... Steve Nash right after breaking his nose in the May 23 game against the Lakers. Like I couldn't have copied that from a million other places, right? But I suppose that knowing I'm not stealing it from some starving photographer means something.

Anyone want to take bets on what facial feature of Nash's will get dinged up tonight?

Clearly, my mind is not on my work! But a post is a post is a post.

For the record, I have sent out over 170 queries in the last two years for my wonderful historical novel. Discounting the last dozen who haven't had time to reply yet, that means 158 agents will be beating themselves up soon over missing the opportunity to handle this bestseller. Man!

Not Applying for This Job!

Craigslist ad:

Research/Writing Partner (city omitted)
Freelance writer seeks research partner for article on "Planned Kidnapping" a new fad that's moved from New York to Los Angeles. The article is for a relationships/love tips-type online magazine, and I'm looking for a partner that will help me research and field-test this new fad. It will be a fun, unique and interesting case-study!!!!


When the article is published, we'll split the money evenly.


Please send pictures and resume if interested.

•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
•Compensation: no pay

I suppose this could have been written by an incredibly naive person who thinks he/she has a great idea, although if that's true, he/she just gave it away. I don't read into this that the writer is on assignment, do you?

But the less benevolent side of me suspects there is no magazine and no story, only someone seeking an incredibly naive partner or two who can be urged into playing kidnap games, with all that that entails.

"Please send pictures and resume if interested." As Mr. T says, "I pity the fool."

A Productive Week or Two

Yes, indeedy

I polished off an article that should earn up to $500, and did my first restaurant review (for $75). Both have been accepted, so let's hope the checks are in the mail--or at least on the way to Paypal.

I also submitted a last-minute piece for $40--but the editor has not yet acknoweledged receipt. Grr! Bad editor, bad!

I put the last coat of paint on 1/3 of my bathroom (no one's gonna pay me for that, but I sure feel good about having it done.)

I heard a wonderful, inspiring speaker at a monthly meeting of the Independent Writers of Southern California. I've gotten both hopeful news and a rejection from two different agents. I've kept ahead of the bills, attended two family birthday parties and had fun (not too hard!)

I watched the Phoenix Suns move to the next level of the play-offs with a bit of blood, sweat & tears, got a paycheck, and have lots of work for the week ahead.

Other than the fact that I haven't had time to blog (this will have to do), does life get any better?

New pubs for 2010!

Yay for me! Two new books out from Gale Group's Greenhaven Press. I'm the third editor, which means I wrote some of the intros, found articles, cut them--even learned to do some paste-up stuff.

Of course, all this was done last summer, so having copies of the finished books delivered to me was a Very Nice Surprise. But also--none of the work looks familiar. Did I really write any of this? Skimming through, I found one phrase (in the Middle Class book) that stuck: Love Jones Cohort.

Professor Kris Marsh at UNC coined the term to refer to "a new kind of middle-class black: young, never-married, urban professionals living alone."

Love Jones Cohort. OK, now I remember! My immediate reaction had been "Love Jones? Was that some Pam Grier movie?" Hey, I'm a boomer--that's my cultural reference point!

But Love Jones was a 1997 movie about a Chicago poet...a young (in 97) Chicago poet. A yuppie in the 2000s, then, and Marsh's symbol for a new stereotype.

But isn't it funny how quickly we forget our work, once it's finished and we must move on to other articles/studies/books? Two months ago I finished a piece on important Supreme Court decisions. Do I remember any of the new facts I encountered while writing that? Beyond what I already knew--Miranda v. AZ, Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education?

Nah. Maybe one thing: What Happened to Mr. Ernesto Miranda.

Miranda's case, Miranda v. AZ, established that a suspect must be read his/her rights before being questioned by police.

Miranda confessed to a rape without being told of his legal rights, so when the Supreme Court decided his case in his favor, Miranda won a new trial--and was convicted again! Turns out, the police didn't even need his confession because they found a witness to his crime. Yup, the whole reason for the famous Miranda case turned out to be moot for Mr. Miranda!

The hapless Miranda got killed in a bar fight a few years later, after serving his sentence for the rape. And--irony of ironies--while his killer escaped, the police picked up an accomplice and read the guy his Miranda rights while Miranda lay dying or dead.

Shout out!

How exciting--my writing pal has moved fast in the last 2 months. She went from being a (sigh) writer-in-search-of-an-agent who (like me) sent over 150 queries on her fantastic book idea, wondering about the meaning of life and joining me in a weekly rant about the unfairness of the agenting world to poor, struggling authors like ourselves, to being zapped with the magic wand of a real, live, fairy god-agent! Within weeks she had a contract with a publisher and is now being mentioned in Publishers Weekly and (today) The Biographer's Craft.

Debra Ann Pawlak; remember the name.

Actually, she was two up on me to start with--she's authored two books already. The Arcadia book at left, and the Bruce Lee bio at left-left.

Still, those agents are slippery little buggers and very hard to catch.  Go, Deb!

One More Book for Moi!

Whoopee! Another tome to add to the pile (figuratively, of course. I can't afford to buy this book, even though I contributed to it.)

Latino History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (Sharpe Reference) contains articles that I wrote about Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (which forced Mexico to cede California and the Southwest to the US, way back in the 1840s), and a charming little piece titled "Conquest of the Americas," in which I accomplish the amazing feat of describing centuries of bloodcurdling cruelty in 1500 words.

Yeah, I don't believe it either. But they rewrote it so many times to make it politically correct that all the really nasty stuff has been toned down. I almost wish they'd taken my name off it!