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Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Word of the day - Mugwump
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Word of the day - absquatulate
transitive verb
1 : to leave a place suddenly and secretly : decamp
2 : to go away and take something that does not belong to you : abscond
Friday, April 8, 2016
Happy FryDay
Need someone to critique your work? Just ask in the comments :)
After all, we humans just love to opine!
Thursday, April 7, 2016
The Write Life shares all you need to know about beta readers
Writing Feedback: The Ultimate Guide to Working with Beta Readers
July 30, 2014 By
Is there a better feeling in the world than writing “The End” in your manuscript? It’s a moment to be celebrated: you’ve done it. You’ve written and completed an entire book. Not everyone can say they have.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Word of the day - CONTRETEMPS
It's WORD OF THE DAY WEDNESDAY
contretemps
\KON-truh-tahn\
noun
1. an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance: He caused a minor contretemps by knocking over his drink.
Quotes
Pan had been amongst them--not the great god Pan, who has been buried these two thousand years, but the little god Pan, who presides over social contretemps and unsuccessful picnics.
-- E. M. Forster, A Room with a View, 1908
Origin
Contretemps is a loanword from French. Its initial element is the combining form contre- meaning "against," and its second element is the French word meaning "time." It entered English as a fencing term in the late 1600s.
contretemps \KON-truh-tahn\
noun
1. an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance: He caused a minor contretemps by knocking over his drink.
Quotes
Pan had been amongst them--not the great god Pan, who has been buried these two thousand years, but the little god Pan, who presides over social contretemps and unsuccessful picnics.
-- E. M. Forster, A Room with a View, 1908
Origin
Contretemps is a loanword from French. Its initial element is the combining form contre- meaning "against," and its second element is the French word meaning "time." It entered English as a fencing term in the late 1600s.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Sentence Composition Cleanup
3 Cases of Sentence-Composition Confusion
By Mark Nichol
from DailyWritingTips.com
It’s not only quite possible but also quite common for what initially appears to be a well-written sentence to turn out to fail to express what the writer intended. Readers may be able to understand that intent, and may not even notice the error, but confusion is likely. Here are three sentences that don’t quite say what the writer thinks they say, followed by discussions and revisions.
1. Jones teamed up with another future Hall of Famer named John Smith.
This sentence literally states that Jones’s name is actually John Smith; “another future Hall of Famer named John Smith” implies that the previously mentioned person shares that name. To eliminate this distraction, simply replace name with a comma: “Jones teamed up with another future Hall of Famer, John Smith. (Alternatively, change another to fellow and delete named: “Jones teamed up with fellow future Hall of Famer John Smith.”)
2. Gillian Anderson was offered half of David Duchovny’s salary for the return of The X-Files.
Here, the take-away is that half of David Duchovny’s salary was taken away and offered to Gillian Anderson—obviously not the intended meaning, which is that Duchovny was paid twice as much as Anderson to return to the television series. The fact that Duchovny’s salary is mentioned only for comparative purposes should be emphasized: “Gillian Anderson was offered half of what David Duchovny was paid to return to The X-Files.” (Alternatively, write “Gillian Anderson was offered half as much as David Duchovny was paid to return to The X-Files.”)
Note, too, the rewording in each case of the end of the sentence, which originally was written as if to suggest that she gave the series back in exchange for taking half of Duchovny’s salary, rather than that in exchange for reprising her role in a new edition of the series, she is earning half of what her male co-star is being paid.
3. I managed to pinpoint the location of his first housing development, but finding the first house he built was about as easy as locating men who worked on his construction crews.
To compare one difficult task (finding the first house a housing developer built) with another (tracking down his contractors) by writing that one was as easy as the other could confuse readers. (As it is, only the counterpoint conjunction but provides a clue that the second and third objectives were a challenge to achieve.). For clarity, replace “as easy as” with “as difficult as”: “I managed to pinpoint the location of his first housing development, but finding the first house he built was about as difficult as locating men who worked on his construction crews.”
By Mark Nichol
from DailyWritingTips.com
It’s not only quite possible but also quite common for what initially appears to be a well-written sentence to turn out to fail to express what the writer intended. Readers may be able to understand that intent, and may not even notice the error, but confusion is likely. Here are three sentences that don’t quite say what the writer thinks they say, followed by discussions and revisions.
1. Jones teamed up with another future Hall of Famer named John Smith.
This sentence literally states that Jones’s name is actually John Smith; “another future Hall of Famer named John Smith” implies that the previously mentioned person shares that name. To eliminate this distraction, simply replace name with a comma: “Jones teamed up with another future Hall of Famer, John Smith. (Alternatively, change another to fellow and delete named: “Jones teamed up with fellow future Hall of Famer John Smith.”)
2. Gillian Anderson was offered half of David Duchovny’s salary for the return of The X-Files.
Here, the take-away is that half of David Duchovny’s salary was taken away and offered to Gillian Anderson—obviously not the intended meaning, which is that Duchovny was paid twice as much as Anderson to return to the television series. The fact that Duchovny’s salary is mentioned only for comparative purposes should be emphasized: “Gillian Anderson was offered half of what David Duchovny was paid to return to The X-Files.” (Alternatively, write “Gillian Anderson was offered half as much as David Duchovny was paid to return to The X-Files.”)
Note, too, the rewording in each case of the end of the sentence, which originally was written as if to suggest that she gave the series back in exchange for taking half of Duchovny’s salary, rather than that in exchange for reprising her role in a new edition of the series, she is earning half of what her male co-star is being paid.
3. I managed to pinpoint the location of his first housing development, but finding the first house he built was about as easy as locating men who worked on his construction crews.
To compare one difficult task (finding the first house a housing developer built) with another (tracking down his contractors) by writing that one was as easy as the other could confuse readers. (As it is, only the counterpoint conjunction but provides a clue that the second and third objectives were a challenge to achieve.). For clarity, replace “as easy as” with “as difficult as”: “I managed to pinpoint the location of his first housing development, but finding the first house he built was about as difficult as locating men who worked on his construction crews.”
Friday, February 12, 2016
Let's March!
Does it seem like you never have the time to get around to your writing projects? Do the ideas for your stories merely swirl around in your head or are trapped on random sticky notes crammed in the back of a catch-all drawer?
Join our LET'S MARCH writing challenge and with a doable 1K words per day writing goal, by the end of the month you'll have more than 30,000 new words written — that's a novella!
Click here for our Facebook event page, where we'll be supporting one another through every grueling writing session and hard-won word.
Join our LET'S MARCH writing challenge and with a doable 1K words per day writing goal, by the end of the month you'll have more than 30,000 new words written — that's a novella!
Click here for our Facebook event page, where we'll be supporting one another through every grueling writing session and hard-won word.
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