Authors Electric

Autumn rainbow from the window I very nearly forgot about my post this month, because the time had gone so quickly since the last one. This was partly because of several family birthdays and an unexpected babysitting opportunity, but also because my voluntary role as secretary to a local committee has expanded into other areas since the organisation moved to new premises. One aspect of the expansion is that our new place has a built-in reception area which almost cries out for someone to man it during opening hours, but the existing very small staff don't have time to do this and we can't afford to employ anyone else at the moment, so volunteers have been recruited and I've unwisely said I would act as an emergency back-up. It's quite difficult to tell exactly how much work will be needed at each session, but what I've found during the few times I've been acting as receptionist is that generally activity groups that mainly consist of women (knitters, crafters, e...

I wrote a similar piece some years back, so I’m plagiarizing my own work with this article. If you guessed that I’m writing about the overuse of the exclamation mark again—you are correct!!! The Internet has made communicating so easy there is a tendency to disregard grammar. That goes for texts, emails, blogs, and comments on all social media platforms. In today’s electronic age, the skill to communicate is not only determined by how well we write, but also by how familiar we are with emojis like smiley or sad faces, acronyms like ROFL, LOL, ICYMI, and bolding of words to create emphasis. All these tools are meant to help us express our thoughts more clearly, but have they made us lazy writers in the process?  When someone writes a sentence using all uppercase letters, I imagine them screaming at me. If they also bold it, they’re screaming even louder. If they punctuate the sentence with several exclamation marks … it’s downright deafening.  The Chicago Manual of Style says...

Copy-editing is the thing I hate most about being an Independent Author. It’s a grinding, methodical task that takes a lot of time and concentration and it has to be absolutely perfect, because one of the main criticisms of Indie published books is the standard of proof-reading and copy-editing.  I’m still being sent books for review that are littered with typos, punctuation and formatting errors. I don’t want mine to be one of them, but my books simply don’t earn enough to pay a professional - for a full-length book it can be as much as £750.  I can’t afford that as well as the advice of a good structural editor - and the latter, for me, is of the utmost importance. I’ve been doing the copy-editing myself, reading and re-reading, but something always slips through and I hate it!  Your eyes see what they think should be there rather than what is actually there.  And then you die of shame as soon as it’s up there on Kindle and someone points out what you’ve misse...

Recently I've been reading a lot of other people's work – stories by school children that I'd met on school visits who are hugely keen to be writers; another is a friend who's written a short novel about his travels; then there are 101 other pieces – yes 101 exactly, which are entries for a competition I'm judging – all requiring critiques. I get a fee for the competition, but whether you're getting paid to provide help with writing skills or not, there's nothing better than seeing someone's writing coming on in leaps and bounds - particularly after following your advice. I love doing workshops in schools and I'm often massively impressed by the standard of writing that can be achieved by youngsters as young as eight and nine with a little extra support and help. As for adults, I hope my courses have helped people, even if only to get them making time to write. The satisfaction of giving others a helping hand on their writing path pr...