GROWING GRAMMAR: Sites for soaring

Today I’m featuring a few sites of interest and invite you to explore them. I hope they provide information, entertainment, and justification for being on the internet.   Double-Tongued Dictionary: A site to behold! You can find new words, slang, and jargon. The “About” page bills the site as one that “records undocumented or under-documented words [...]

Follow up on Fiction Editor

In her last post, Meredith Efken, freelance fiction editor and friend, shared about what a freelance editor can and can’t do for your! You might want to check it out first, then jump back over here and read what other great tips she has for us! As a freelance editor, I have seen my editing [...]

GROWING GRAMMAR: Where were you on National Grammar Day?

In case you neglected to mark this on your calendar, and since Hallmark has not yet officially designated it a greeting-card holiday, you may have missed: In the name of educational fun (and, no, that’s not an oxymoron), and to exercise your pointer finger, I’m providing the following links for your clicking: The Society for [...]

Reflexive Pronouns Should Not Be Involuntary Reactions

This is the what the sound of fingernails (think long, acrylic) scraping against a chalkboard would look like: hisself theirself/theirselves themself STEP AWAY FROM THESE WANNA-BE PRONOUNS! If you’re using them as dialogue for a character who speaks non-standard English, fine. Otherwise no, no, and no. The STANDARD reflexives are: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, [...]

What a Fiction Editor Can (and Can’t) Do For You!

Can Do A good fiction editor can take a manuscript that has potential and help it reach that potential. This may include different types of editing and can often take as much as forty hours of work for a detailed, substantive edit of an average manuscript. When you get your manuscript back from a freelance [...]

GROWING GRAMMAR:

“Help Stamp Out, Eliminate and Abolish Redundancy!” –Unknown, Unknown, Unknown My students are fond of writing, “I was thinking in my mind. . .” or “I was thinking in my head….” This concerns me as I wonder in what other parts of their bodies thinking may (or may not) be happening. These repeated or unnecessary [...]

GROWING GRAMMAR: WONDER WORDS (as in…I wonder which word to use?)

Would you rather be nauseated or nauseous? This is extremely important to know. It could, in fact, make or break a relationship. If you’re nauseated, something is making you ill; perhaps the smell of your recent WIP ablaze in the fireplace where you tossed it in a moment of frustration. If you are nauseous, which [...]

The Evolution of Chapter One

Just when I thought I was finished with chapter one. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better. Just when I thought I had finally finished a draft worthy of submission, I get Margie Lawson’s Deep Editing Lectures in my inbox. She taught an amazing early bird session at ACFW and my head is [...]

Growing Grammar: Planting Words So Sentences Can Sprout

One of the most challenging lessons for students to learn (and for me to teach them) is that diction (word choice) and syntax (how words are arranged in a sentence) are crucial in understanding the piece we’re reading. Truly, the most difficult perception to hack away at is the notion that writers just don’t pay [...]

Taking Your Writing Up a Notch

So you’re finished with the first draft (at least I am) not it’s time to polish. Where do you start? Here are some things to look for when you start the editing process: Look for ways to make your verbs stronger. Below is a list of passive verbs, but not even an active verb can [...]

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