Guest Post: Pass on the Passive

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Tracy Crump is a writer and speaker whose work has been published online and in numerous print periodicals. She also presents workshops at conferences and team-teaches workshops on writing for the Chicken Soup compilation books. She publishes an e-newsletter for writers entitled “The Write Life.” Subscribe here.

Which of the following sentences arouses more righteous anger?

  • The World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001.
  • The World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists in 2001.
  • Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in 2001.

Though all three sentences are grammatically correct, the last uses the active voice or construction which conveys more power, emphasizes the actor, and is clearer and more direct. The first two use the passive voice which generally expresses an idea in a weaker, less straightforward manner.

To understand passive versus active voice, simply remember: In the active voice, the subject performs the action; in the passive voice, the subject receives the action. The passive voice always combines a form of to be with a past participle. Sometimes the direct object acts upon the subject (as in the second example), and sometimes the actor vanishes from the sentence altogether (as in the first example). Your sentences will carry more clout and communicate better if you use the active voice. Continue reading →

In-Style Writing

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Recently, I posted a book review of Alpha Teach Yourself Grammar and Style. Read the entire post here. If you choose not to read the review, I’ll refresh your memory. Grammar, the mechanics of language, is not the same as style. “Style” means “a distinctive manner of expression,” according to Merriam Webster online dictionary. As you ground yourself in grammar, you should also work on developing a unique personal style that adheres to the style guides for your intended market.

Magazines and newspapers usually follow Associated Press style. Book publishers, however, use the Chicago Manual of Style. Check out the following style guides, and, if you’re not familiar with them, now’s the time to enlighten yourself. Public libraries might have some of them in their reference sections. Continue reading →

More Writers’ Online Helps

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“Toot your own horn, or the same shall not be tooted.” Such was the advice I got from a college music teacher. I’ve always thought that he should have added something about having some humility, too. This sage advice came to me as I thought about the wealth of writers’ resources I’ve collected on this site.

Last week, I posted links to several sites featuring writer helps. Together, the writers featured in that post have published hundreds of books and articles. Who better to help you figure out how to get your work published than somebody who has traveled that road ahead of you?

This week, I want to point out the resources available on my site. First, you might want to know more about me before you check out the advice I’m passing out. See a partial listing of my published work here and visit my bio page here.

I’ll now take you on the grand tour. Continue reading →

Writer Helps Link Roundup

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Announcement: The second winner of the drawings for Time Management is David Telbat. He’s working on his website and will provide a link when it’s ready for public consumption.

This week I’m sharing links to other sites and blogs that I follow regularly. Some I may have mentioned before, but I think they’re worth a second mention.

  • Cec Murphey’s Writer to Writer. Especially useful for beginning writers is the recent series entitled “Articles First?” Many beginners dream of writing a book, but they need publishing credits. Writing articles can help with that. Read the five posts here. Then check out the other posts.
  • Jane Friedman’s There Are No Rules. One of the Writer’s Digest blogs, this one has great information on every aspect of writing for publication.
  • Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers’ Marketplace. Sally posts regular updates to listings in her market guide.
  • Rachelle Gardner’s CBA Rants & Ramblings. Rachelle is a literary agent serving the Christian market. You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
  • Terry Whalin’s Right Writing. This is not set up as a blog, but the site offers a wealth of how-to information for the Christian writer, beginner or otherwise.

Book Giveaway Winners

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Time to announce the winners of the drawings for the book, The Time of Your Life: How to Accomplish All That God Wants You to Do.

Winner Number One is Sue Tornai, a regular subscriber to Blog4writers. Visit her site, www.suetornai.com. Also take a look at her blog: www.missue.blogspot.com.

The second winner is a regular subscriber whose e-mail address begins with ditelbat. I’ve received no response to e-mails asking for name and mailing address. Will you please e-mail me at [email protected] and give me your mailing address so that I can mail your book?”

I’ll be doing book giveaways about once a month for the rest of this year. Subscribe to Blog4writers so that you will be eligible for future drawings. Go to http://emilyakin.com/blog/, and enter your e-mail in the Subscribe box and follow the directions. If you need help, don’t hesitate to e-mail me for help: [email protected].

Book Review: Teach Yourself Grammar and Style

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Full title: Macmillan Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours, by Pamela Rice Hahn and Dennis E. Hensley, Ph.D., published by Pearson Education Macmillan USA, 2000.

Have you wanted to attend a writers’ conference but couldn’t afford it? Have you considered online courses but passed on them for the same reason? Consider getting a copy of this book, and give yourself a thorough workshop on the basics of writing. Although the title may intimidate you, the book is not boring and pedantic. It’s designed for anyone needing a review of grammar basics, but it also targets those who need to improve their writing.

You may be wondering what’s the difference between grammar and style. The first sentence in the first chapter explains, “Grammar is the study of sentence structure and the rules that govern it.” “Style” means “a distinctive manner of expression,” according to Merriam Webster. The first 12 chapters give you grounding in grammar, while the rest of the book helps you develop your style.

The title says you can accomplish your study in 24 hours. Sounds amazing? Well, you won’t be able to do it overnight, unless you just don’t sleep at all. Each chapter is constructed so that you can study and absorb the material in one hour. Then you take the multiple-choice test. If you do one chapter a day, you can finish in 24 days. Do two chapters a day and be done in 12 days. Maybe it’s not “quick and easy,” but it is effective.

The book offers several appendices with tables, resources, lists, and a detailed index. If you’re a published writer or one who wants to get work published, this book will be a good refresher course. It’s available both new and used on Amazon.

Preview the book on Google books.


Book Giveaway: The Time of Your Life

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Last month, at Kentucky Christian Writers Conference, I led a workshop on getting organized. I recommended Mark Porter’s The Time of Your Life: How to Accomplish All that God Wants You to Do. The book is meant for Christians seeking to integrate their work with their spiritual life, and I highly recommend it to Christian writers.

A review of The Time of Your Life is on Blog4writers here. In the Getting Organized posts, I mentioned some of the concepts in the book. See those posts here. Continue reading →

Marketing: Selling and Re-Selling

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Writing for peanuts—that’s what you’ll be doing if you sell each article, story, or poem only once. You may be tempted to skip this article if you’re still trying to get your first piece published. Resist the temptation, because, once you do sell something, you can sell it again as long as you don’t sell all rights. Keep submitting according to publisher guidelines, and follow this plan.

Avoid all rights and work-for-hire. If you’ve never been published, and an editor wants to buy all rights, you may decide to agree just to get something in print. There’s no shame in that, but you won’t be able to re-sell that piece, ever. Work-for-hire pays pretty well, but, again, you give up any and all rights to your work.

Submit until you’re accepted. Sell first rights or non-exclusive rights only. Once the first-rights piece has appeared in print, you can sell any number of reprints to others. Some publications will accept simultaneous submissions, but you must inform them when you submit. If it’s a first-rights piece that’s being considered, you can sell first rights to the first editor who responds. Then you should notify the others that first rights are no longer available.

Sell reprints (as-is or piecemeal). Once the piece is eligible for reprint, submit it to other editors with no changes. I’ve found that this is not impossible but definitely difficult. Rarely will you find two publications whose guidelines are exactly alike, but you can find publications that are similar enough that you can submit with minimal changes. Most editors want to know when and where the reprint article has appeared, mainly to be sure a competitor has not used it. In the Sunday School papers market, for example, most readers will not see any paper other than the one published by their denomination.

A 1500-word article might be divided into three 500-word articles and sold separately or as a series. Each smaller article would qualify as a single reprint. Usually, you don’t get paid as much for reprints as for first rights, but this approach might soften the blow a bit. Again, you will have to tell the editor when and where the article(s) appeared.

Submit regularly, and always be on the lookout for markets for your reprint sales. You won’t get rich quick writing for publication, but you don’t have to write for peanuts.

This is the last of three posts on crafting your product for the marketplace. Previous posts were “Editing Your Work” and “Who Is Your Customer?”

Other Resources:

Details on the various types of rights

Submission Tracking Methods

One Article, Many Checks

Marketing: Editing Your Work

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What does editing have to do with marketing? Well, since the quality of your product will affect its “saleability,” you need some quality control measures. Publishing houses just don’t have the resources to do extensive edits on the mountain of submissions they receive. They routinely reject manuscripts that are shot through with spelling, grammar, and usage errors. So—don’t handicap yourself by submitting your work without thorough proofreading and editing.

Self-editing is the only way to make sure you submit your very best work, short of hiring a proofreader. Here are a few of the methods I use to edit my articles.

  • Use the features of your word processor. I use MS Word 2007 which includes a plethora of editing helps that go way beyond the standard spellchecker. Settings appear on the Microsoft Office Button menu under Word Options, then Proofing. You can choose grammar and style as well as readability statistics. My last post on this blog rated 7.0 on the Flesch Kincaid readability scale. That means the reading level is 7th grade. Check here to find out how this is calculated. If you use a different word processor, explore your help section or search online for help on how to use the features you have.
  • Perform a screen edit. The spelling and grammar checkers will not catch some errors. For example, I recently caught an error where “pane” was used instead of “pain.” Spellings of people’s names are rarely in the spell-check dictionary. As you read through your work on-screen, sometimes it occurs to you that you should re-order a sentence or shorten run-on sentences. Reading out loud can help you catch awkward constructions, too.
  • Print a hard copy. Once you’ve corrected the errors you’ve found, it’s time to print it out. This is a good time to let the document sit overnight, if possible. I was taught to “let it rest” in my high school English classes, and it’s one of the most useful things I learned there. Mark the errors you find on the hard copy. Read it aloud again, and mark revisions to transfer to the electronic file.

If you think this might be more time-consuming that the original writing, you’re right. A familiar writers’ adage is “writing is rewriting.” Resist the temptation to send your first draft after you’ve run the spellchecker. A thorough self-edit might cost you some time but it will earn the editor’s attention when you submit.

Online Helps:

Proofreading Tips

Self-Editing Checklist

Marketing: Who Is Your Customer?

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You are a writer. You’d like to get your work published. If you are a beginning writer, your best chance to get published quickly is to submit short pieces to magazines. You might produce articles, short stories, puzzles, and poems. If you’ve had your work published, but you’re not getting regular acceptances, perhaps you need a fresh approach.

Think of yourself as a manufacturer. Most writers think of themselves as artists. If you write for your own purposes, there’s no need to worry about what others think of your work. However, if you want someone to publish it, you enter a different realm, the world of business. Imagine yourself as a manufacturer of a physical product. As you plan and manufacture it, are you thinking about your customer? Are you building something you like, or are you creating a product that people need or want?

The publisher is the retailer. Because publishers can’t accept every piece of writing that is submitted to them, they only buy products that they know will interest their readers. You are the producer, and you have to sell your product to the retailer. Publishers have to know their customers—what they need and want. They will not buy your work if it does not fit the specifications for what their typical reader likes. As manufacturer, you have to craft your product to impress two customers, readers (end users) and the publisher’s representative, the editor.

What does the reader want? Find a one or more copies of your target publication. Use the table of contents to summarize the number and subject matter of articles. Read some articles to get a feel for the preferred style. Find the writer’s guidelines for the publication to get specifics on what the publication wants. Usually, you can find guidelines on the publisher’s Web site. If not, you’ll need to find the listing in the market guide and write or e-mail to request guidelines.

What does the editor want? First, be sure that you follow the guidelines to the letter. Some editors toss every piece that does not comply with guidelines. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by ignoring guidelines. Next, make sure you offer a quality product. Editors do not exist to re-work your writing. Their job is to find pieces that fill their need with the least amount of editing. New writers, consider finding a freelance editor to critique or edit your work before you submit. You might have to pay for the service, but consider it part of your education as you learn to write for publication.

Yes, a writer who is in business to get published must consider his or her customers from beginning to end of the creative process.

Previous posts on on product quality here.

Next post: Editing Your Work