Writing the Christmas Letter

Hey Folks,

Well, here we are again, many of us scrabbling around for last-minute gifts and worrying and fretting about what to buy for whom. And as of today, there are NINE shopping days (including weekends) until Christmas. It’s really odd, isn’t it, how Christmas sneaks up on us? It’s almost as if last year, on December 26, we somehow experienced a memory wipe and failed to realize we had only 366 days until Christmas. So what’s any of that have to do with writing?

If you’re a person who enjoys writing the annual Christmas letter, this will pertain. If you aren’t, maybe this will convince you to start. If you’re reading this at all, chances are you’re a writer. What better way to share your talents with your loved ones et al than writing a Christmas letter?

I heard a comment recently that sparked the notion to write this blog post. A lady who had received my Christmas letter said, ”You had me worried. I thought certain I’d open this and find things like ‘my kid made the honor roll’ and ‘my other kid joined the Peace Corps’ and ‘my third kid received the Nobel Peace Prize,’ blah blah blah.” But no.

Over the  past several years I’ve used the Christmas letter as an opportunity to let my insanity flow. It makes me feel as if I’ve been creative, and with any luck at all, it will entertain the readers. At the worst, since you’ll be sending your Christmas letter mostly to family and friends, they pretty much have to read it. And if they aren’t entertained… well, that’s their fault.

I generally pick one major topic or event from the previous year and expound on it without mercy. Here’s a slightly revised version of the Christmas letter I sent out this year:

How difficult can it be to grow a garden? That was the thought irradiating my poor little brain when I set out to plant a garden in the lush soil of Southeast Arizona in the Spring of this year. All it takes is a little sun, a little water and the proper mix of soil and nutrients, right? Of course in Arizona, which I understand is Swahili for Arid Zone, we have all the free sun we need, but very little water even if we spit a lot.

Well, we got the garden in, but it started disappearing pretty much overnight. See, there are these things called javelinas. They’re basically giant rats who eat everything in sight. People out here ride ‘em in rodeos. Anyway, there was no way to keep the vegetables away from the javelina hogs, so we figured we needed a fence. Only I’m seriously adverse to digging postholes in this dirt-laden rock when even a hydraulic post hole digger mounted to a Cat won’t get through. Okay, time for a bright idea. We’d lay railroad ties around the perimeter, nail upright 2×4s to the railroad ties, and then string fence around the whole blasted thing.

Did you know that one railroad tie weighs close to 200 pounds? Well, we loaded ‘em one by one into the bed of my pickup, then unloaded them one by one close to the garden site, then maneuvered, cajoled, kicked and cussed them one by one into place. Then we sat back, popped a tab, and thought of how smart we were. Ahem… then we realized what we really wanted all along was not only a vegetable garden, but also a walking garden with vegetables, paths, seating areas and a maybe even a water-feature, though a “sand feature” or an “air feature” or a “rock feature” would make considerably more sense out here.

Okay, so a few weeks later, we expanded the area with more railroad ties and more fence — TWICE — each time working during the day to complete what we could and stringing temporary fencing each day to keep out the javelinas that night. Oh, and those “features?” Eventually we settled for several “mesquite features” and a few “white-thorn acacia features,” mostly ’cause they were already there and they’re a LOT easier to leave be than to dig up. 

Well, about that time we realized that since the ground is hard enough to bend a steel post, there was no way we could dig a garden plot. Vegetables need dirt — not rocks — to grow (well, except for devil’s claw wild okra, but that’s a topic for another time). Have you ever seen a pickup going down the road with the bed resting on its springs, its front end swaying and front tires barely touching the ground with every bump? Yep. We bought 200 bags of topsoil and transported it to the garden. It’s easy to develop assembly line techniques when unloading and dumping 200 bags of topsoil. Later… much later… we found out all we needed was sieved, native dirt and horse… umm, manure.

Okay, so where to find a manure factory? Turns out my buddy Johnny Mangum, who raises and trains racehorses, also owns a front loader. He dumped a quarter ton of the stuff into the bed of my pickup and he didn’t laugh at me hardly at all. He has the front loader, but we have only our backs, arms, shovels, rakes, and a pitch fork.  Casey (our Chihuahua) couldn’t understand why for days we smelled like horse apples. We bought tomato plants — ten of them — and tomatoes clearly LOVE horse manure. Each plant, even the cherry tomato, was over four feet high and about 4 feet around. The beefsteak was probably six feet high and a good six feet around.

That was our year, live and learn. For one thing, we learned not to plant so many freakin’ tomatoes! We feel about tomatoes like Forest Gump felt about shrimp. We have dried tomatoes, boiled tomatoes, frozen tomatoes, tomato soup, tomato juice, tomato spaghetti sauce, tomato salsa, and enough of all of those to last several years. Ever had tomato enchiladas? They’re wonderful. Dry cereal in tomato juice? Tomato pies, tomato cakes, tomato candles, tomato soap, and I recently topped off the differential in my pickup with 90 weight tomato oil. Ahem…  

So there’s an example for you of a “creative” Christmas letter. Anyway, hope you have a great Christmas. And if you need any tomatoes, let us know. 

Special Announcement: I just received telephone confirmation that we have secured a new space in Tucson for our Writing the World seminars. I’ll publish the seminar schedule for 2010 later this week.

‘Til next time, happy writing!

Harvey

The Writing the World seminars are now available on DVD! See http://stonethread.com. Also, for a limited time, I’m offering a package deal on Punctuation for Writers and its companion, Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction. Buy both now, signed by the author, for $25, including shipping. For information, email h_stanbrough@yahoo.com.

A Room of One’s Own

Hi Folks,

A while back, in response to my plea for topics for this blog, Hugh Starkey wrote “a question that comes up quite often among writers at all levels of experience has to do with what constitutes the perfect writing space. As Virginia Wolf once put it, ‘Give me a room of my own.’ J. K. Rowling wrote much of Harry Potter in coffee shops, and Wayne Dyer once rented office space.”

Hmmm… I remember hearing or reading somewhere that the great poet, Dylan Thomas, actually built a second house, a small cottage, just down the hill from the house he shared with his wife. Seems she had quickly grown tired of hearing him “rant at all hours of the day and night” (reading his work aloud and e-mo-ting, don’tcha know). 

Several years ago I saw an interview on television with (I believe) either Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov. Whoever it was, his “writing space” office walls were lined with shelves on which sat an eclectic mixture of odds and ends: masks from Africa, a drum or two, a few Matchbox cars, figurines of every sort carved of stone and wood, etc. He said when he wanted to write but lacked inspiration, he had only to sit at his desk and look about his room for a few moments, that at least one story resided in each part of his collection.

The famous poet and national icon, Richard Moore, recently passed. I’m not certain of his writing space, never having found time to visit and take advantage of his wide-open hospitality, but having read much of what he wrote and having been fortunate to enjoy occasional correspondence with him over the past several years I strongly suspect his writing space was a mish-mash similar to the one described above. I wish, now, that I’d broached the topic with him. 

Jack Williamson—the Science Fiction Grand Master whose first works were published in pulp magazines before there even was a genre called science fiction and from whose wonderful mind came such now-common words and phrases as “android” and “humanoid” and “terraforming” and  “prime directive”—wrote in an office in his home in Portales, New Mexico. His office also was lined with shelves, floor to ceiling, but his shelves were neatly arranged and contained one copy of each of his novels in each language. At age 92, he was still turning out two novels per year for Tor.

I know a very successful novelist whose “writing space” is not a physical place but the connection between her mind and her laptop. She pulls out her laptop, most often in a hotel room or her office (she’s also a successful business woman), reads the last few lines of what she’s written, and begins writing again. It’s an amazing process to behold.

Another extremely good novelist, whose work is not yet published but is placed with a nationally well-known agent, does most of her work on her laptop as well, while sitting in a coffee shop.

If you’re curious, my own writing space used to be wherever I happened to be. When I was on the road a lot speaking at conferences and my only computer was a cumbersome HP that remained at home where it took up entirely too much of my desktop, my writing space was a hotel room or a lobby or a large rock near a pond or a patch of grass beneath a palm tree outside the hotel. I always carried with me a pen and either a yellow legal pad or a spiral notebook. And I wrote. Later, back at my desk, I’d perform the first rewrite as I transcribed what I’d written to the computer. But I digress… today my writing space is a small room in my home, replete with shelves (yes, on which reside a mish-mash of idea starters) and a vintage 1930s single-pedestal maple desk I bought at an estate sale. The lady said it was only right that I should buy the desk. She ran a delicate, fragile hand along its leading edge. “My husband spent many, many hours writing his novels at this desk.” How could I refuse? When I sit at this desk now, I feel as if I’m part of it, or it’s part of me, and we, in concert with my laptop, are a writer.

So back to the question. As Hugh so aptly put it, “What makes a space perfect for writing, or is there such a thing?”

Comfort and routine, Hugh—comfort and routine comprise the perfect writing space, not only physically but mentally and emotionally. Put yourself in an environment you enjoy, one with which you’re an integral part, one in which you feel completely safe and warm, one in which you can establish and maintain that ethereal connection between the mind and the page, a place where outside influences fade into white noise and you can focus on the love at hand. I know, it’s “the task at hand.” But isn’t “love” a better word to describe what occurs between the writer and the page during that very special time?

What about you? What is the “perfect writing space” for you?

Until next time, happy writing.

Harvey

Special Announcement: Want Writing the World writing seminars? The following are now available on DVD: 

• Creating Realistic Characters
• Conveying Emotion Through Dialogue
• Point of View & Narrative Voice

Writing Realistic Dialogue and Writing Electric Narrative are coming soon. Many more coming early next year. For information, please click http://StoneThread.com.

Got writing friends? Christmas is coming. Punctuation for Writers (http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html) and Writing Realistic Dialogue (http://www.amazon.com/) would make excellent Christmas gifts.

A Quick Guide to Punctuation for Writers

Hi folks,

Since I’ve written and published a book called Punctuation for Writers, the first of which went through two printings and the second edition of which has just come out, I thought it was high time I posted an entry on punctuation. Here it is, quick and dirty:

Whether you’re a beginning writer or an old pro, punctuation is one of the most important but overlooked tools in your inventory. Consisting of nothing more than a system of agreed‑upon symbols, it shows readers where to pause, indicates the length of the pause, and alerts them to the relationship between what they have just read and what they are about to read. The keyword here is pause, and the most important thing to remember is that the writer controls the pause, and by its use directs the reading of the work. Punctuation should not be used simply because some rule somewhere says to use it in a given case. Rather, it should be used intentionally to enhance the reader’s understanding.

Bear with me here. Conisder, in school, we typically learn about punctuation from the viewpoint of a reader (punctuation as a mild form of direction), but we seldom have a chance to consider it from the viewpoint of a writer (punctuation as a valuable tool). Ours is a living, breathing, necessarily flexible language. The rule says to join two independent clauses with a comma and a coordinating conjunction:

John’s eyes snapped open, and he sat bolt upright in bed. Something isn’t right. 

But the comma, as you can see (and as you’ll hear if you read the example aloud) interrupts the action. As a writer, I don’t want to interrupt the action at this particular point, in this particular sentence. I’m trying to get the reader involved in the story. (I mentioned this awhile back in the post on Creating Flow.) I want the reader to feel this tension himself, so I want to rush the reader through the sentence. I don’t want him to pause, so I would omit the comma:

John’s eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright in bed. Something isn’t right. 

I hope you’re thinking Hmm… okay, maybe it’s all right to break the rule in that case. But my point here is we don’t need rules in any case. As a writer, I need to know only two things:

1. How the reader will react to a given mark of punctuation every time he encounters it, and
2. How I want the reader to react to a given sentence or situation in my story or book or poem.

I can teach you, right now, in this blog post, how the reader will react to each mark of punctuation every time he encounters it. If you pay attention, when you finish reading this post you can throw away your Strunk & White, your HarBrace, and any other book that simply regurgitates the rules. Here you go:

Long‑pause punctuation is used in normal writing (prose or poetry) only at the end of a complete thought. Yes, that’s per the “rules” but it’s used there because it forces the reader to take the longest pause he’s going to take while he’s reading. Don’t use it because a rule tells you to; use it because you want the reader to pause for a long time. (The long pause gives the reader’s brain time to digest what it’s just seen and get ready for the next item.) Long-pause punctuation consists of

• the period, which indicates the end of a declarative (normal) sentence;
• the question mark, which indicates the end of a direct question;
• the exclamation point, which indicates the end of a command or to show strong emotion, surprise, or disbelief;
• and the colon, which is used at the end of a complete thought to call attention to forthcoming important information. The colon is also used following a complete thought to introduce a list; for example, “These are my favorite things: whiskey, horses and women.” Finally, a brief note of caution—a colon should never be inserted between a verb and its object. After all, it forces a long pause, and who wants the reader to pause as if he’s hit a period in the middle of a sentence? (Compare the use of the colon with the use of the em dash, below.)

Medium‑pause punctuation, which consists of the semicolon, the em dash, and the parentheseses, is transitional; that is, it shows the reader that what follows is very closely related to what she just read.

• In creative writing, the semicolon is most commonly used to join two closely related independent clauses. (The medium pause, as opposed to the longer pause forced by long-pause punctuation) allows the reader to “rush” to the second independent clause. In this way, the semicolon has the ability to show cause and effect or contrast:

Mary walked to school in the rain; she was drenched clear through.

Don’t use the semicolon because a rule tells you to; use it because you want the reader to pause for a shorter time than he would pause for this period.

• In creative writing, the em dash is most often used to indicate the abruptness of an interruption or a break in thought. When it’s used to indicate a break in thought, it should be used in pairs:

Our car—one that had lasted us most of our lives—finally gave out.

• The em dash also is used after a list to introduce the sentence (compare with the colon, above):

Whiskey, horses and women—these are my favorite things.

• In creative writing, parentheses usually are not used except to enclose parenthetical (extra) information. If the information is nice to have but not really necessary, you can subdue (quiet) it with parentheses. If you want the information to stand out, set it off with em dashes (see above) instead. If you want it to have the same weight as the rest of the sentence, set it off with commas. Look at this example I used earlier:

Our car—one that had lasted us most of our lives—finally gave out.

Our car, one that had lasted us most of our lives, finally gave out.

Our car (one that had lasted us most of our lives) finally gave out.

The only short pause punctuation is the comma. Besides using commas to connect clauses, we also use them to separate three or more items (words,  phrases, or clauses) in a series and to bracket (set off) parenthetical information in a sentence. I used to assume that most writers know how to use commas, but my experience as an editor proved me wrong. If you will follow these brief rules and break them only intentionally and only for a very good reason, you will make the reading experience much smoother for your reader: 

1. Never place a comma between a subject and its verb or between a verb and its object. (Realize that a subject may have more than one verb and that a verb may have more than one object.)
2. When a subordinate clause introduces an independent clause, separate the two clauses with a comma. (If you aren’t sure about clauses, Rule #2 is an example of itself, as is this explanation.)
3. Do not use a comma when a subordinate clause follows an independent clause. (In Rule #3, “Do not use a comma” is an independent clause and the remainder is a dependent clause.)
4. Use a comma before the appropriate coordinating conjunction to join two related sentences. (The coordinating conjunctions are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so.)
5. When you are in doubt about whether to use a comma, leave it out.

Finally, what I refer to as spelling punctuation are symbols that are used almost exclusively to form either new words or different versions of old words. Unlike true punctuation, these symbols do not create a pause when they are used:

The hyphen, which is used with the prefixes ex‑, self‑, and all‑, the suffix ‑elect, and between any two words that function as a single word, has no spaces on either side. It is also used between two or more adjectives that describe a single noun and between the words of spelled‑out fractions and spelled‑out numbers from twenty‑one to ninety‑nine (or twenty‑first to ninety‑ninth). I covered the hyphen, the em dash, and the en dash in an earlier post.

The apostrophe is used to show possession and to form contractions, but don’t use it to form plurals. Personal pronouns do not take an apostrophe to show possession (i.e., “it’s” = it is; “its” = belonging to it). The apostrophe also is used to indicate “single quotation marks” or “single quotes,” but it’s most often misused in this regard. Single quotation marks should be used only when a character, in dialogue, is exactly quoting another character word for word. Most of the time, there’s no need for that. When in doubt, paraphrase.

Quotation marks indicate direct quotes and short titles (songs, essays, short poems, short stories, etc.). Longer titles (books, CDS, TV shows, long poems, etc.) should be underlined, indicating italics. Or just set them in italics yourself.

Don’t let your inability to handle the little dots and dashes cost you a sale or confuse your reader. Your mastery of punctuation is a powerful tool that will save your editor some work, bring you that much closer to having your work published, and ensure your message is getting through to your reader.

Until next time, happy writing!

Harvey

For a lot more on punctuation as well as a grammar refresher, pick up your copy of the second edition of Punctuation for Writers at the Book Fair in Green Valley on December 5 or at any of my seminars. You can also order it online at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html.

Taking a Break

Hi Folks,

Instead of tossing out writing advice today, I thought I’d share a few venues I’ve found, or that have come to me from others, that can be valuable to writers, depending on what you write. Let’s jump right in:

BookLocker—If you’re considering self-publishing, I strongly recommend you take some time to browse www.BookLocker.com. I know the owners, Richard and Angela Hoy, personally and I vouch for their honesty. In fact, having published on the traditional-publishing side of the fence before, I now publish exclusively with BookLocker. On their site, they provide straight answers to the hard questions. For example, at http://publishing.booklocker.com/reasons-not-to-use-us/ they list several reasons not to use POD (Print on Demand) publishing. On the other hand, if you decide POD is right for you, check out their submission guidelines at http://publishing.booklocker.com/publishing/. You even get to see their contract. You’ll be surprised when you learn that BookLocker charges considerably less in set-up and printing fees than do other POD publishers. You can also find what Angela calls the Print on Demand industry’s “dirty little secret” at http://publishing.booklocker.com/secret.php. Also, unlike most other POD publishers, BookLocker does not accept just any old group of words that are thrown at them. If they feel your book is not a good investment, they won’t accept it for publication. Finally, I also strongly recommend signing up to have Angela’s weekly newsletter sent to your email inbox (it’s free) at http://www.writersweekly.com/. In it, she lists several paying markets as well as valuable insights and information that you probably can’t find anywhere else.

The Author’s Roost—A dear friend passed along The Author’s Roost (http://www.authorsroost.com/), “an interactive resource portal for authors, writers and public speakers who would like to extend their spheres of influence by becoming more available to the media and to other communicators.” According to my correspondent, the gentleman who runs this, Joe Carroccio, was the editor of Arizona Goodlife magazine for several years. I suggest you check it out.

Press Kits—Carol Barnes has put together an article titles “The Author’s Press Kit—What Is It? Do I Need One?” Visit http://carolebarnes.com and click the Article link at the top right corner of the page.

Rose & Thorn—I strongly suggest you drop by Rose & Thorn, the literary magazine that two of my friends are now editing. Take a look at www.roseandthornjournal.com. This is an aesthetically pleasing literary e-zine. You will find some excellent fiction and poetry here, and well presented. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find submission guidelines.

Our Stories—I’ve only recently found this one myself. Good fiction and great contests.  Take a look at http://www.ourstories.us/.

Predators & Editors—Many people already know about this next one, but in case you don’t and you want to know whether an agent or editor or publishing company is legit, take a look at http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/. This is “a guide to publishers and writing services for serious writers.” This site is loaded with information, including whether agents charge fees (legitimate ones don’t), what other writers have to say about particular agents and publishers, etc.

Here are some more links from my Friends of StoneThread page. Some are invaluable for writers:

Abney’s Typing Service—Teresa Abney offers much more than a typing service. Check it out at www.abneystypingservice.webs.com.

Authorlink—An important site that brings together editors, agents, writers, and readers. www.authorlink.com

The People’s Poet—The actual site is now closed, but they still carry several great links for poets and writers. www.thepeoplespoet.com

St. Louis Writers’ Guild (SLWG)—A thriving, multi-genre writers’ organization based in St. Louis, Missouri. These folks are serious about what they do and have a vibrant website. www.stlwritersguild.org. Also be sure to visit their literary blog at www.stlwritersguild.org/wordpress/index.php. You don’t have to be a member to glean some great information here.

Winning Writers—Winning Writers finds the best resources and contests for poets and other creative writers. For the second year in a row, this excellent site was recently named to the Writer’s Digest list of “101 Best Websites” and won the Preditors & EditorsTruly Useful Site Award for March 2006. Visit www.winningwriters.com

Word Journeys—The beautiful, well-designed site of Bob Yehling, offering interviews and a plethora of services for writers, including online classes, marketing help, and the Writes of Life SeriesTM. www.wordjourneys.com

Richard Moore—The website of a renowned American poet, offering poems, epigrams, information concerning his books, and much more. www.richardmoorepoet.home.att.net (Note: It’s come to my attention that Richard Moore recently passed from this life. I strongly urge you to visit this site while you can.)

B. E. Warne—A website in progress that offers tips and warnings regarding website design, continuity guides for some TV shows (this is a great resource for writers—think about it) and other features. www.bewarne.com

Mitch Whitington’s World of Writing—This crazy Texan’s many tips include press kit information and other links for writers. A fun and informative site. www.whitington.com

Treble Heart Books—Check out this great publisher in Sierra Vista, Arizona! Lee Emory publishes westerns, romances, SF, Fantasy, Horror, Mysteries and others. www.trebleheartbooks.com

Writing the World—I almost forgot to list this bit of self-promotion. See http://stonethread.com/events.html for the current schedule of Writing the World seminars. I’ve added (or will soon add) new seminars to the list.

Finally, here are a few more I haven’t checked out personally, but thought some of you might find them useful. Most of these have to do with Science Fiction and Fantasy:

Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America: http://www.sfwa.org

SFWA Bulletin (Professional journal): http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin

Writer Beware (Anti-scam site): http://www.sfwa.org/beware

Association of Authors’ Representatives: http://www.aar-online.org

Basement Full of Books: http://www.sff.net/bfob

Pitfalls of SF/F: http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/pitfalls.html

Do you know of any great writers’ resources you’d like to share? If so, let me know and I’ll do my best to get the word out. Also, if you have a topic that would be of interest to most writers and would like to see it addressed in this blog, email me your ideas at h_stanbrough@yahoo.com. If I use your idea, I’ll give you your choice of a free book or free admittance to one of my Writing the World seminars.

That’s it for now. Until next time, keep writing!

Harvey

The Second Edition of Punctuation for Writers is now available at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html in both print and electronic versions. With two new chapters and several new examples, you don’t want to miss this one. I’ll also have the print version available for sale at my seminars soon.

Writing Great Beginnings

Hi Folks,

During the month of December I plan to develop a few new seminars to teach under my Writing the World umbrella. One of those will be “Writing Great Beginnings,” an idea suggested by my dear friend, Penny Porter. (Thanks, Penny!) In today’s extremely competitive literary market, grabbing the reader’s attention at the beginning of your essay, story, novel or memoir is more important than ever. In fact, it’s a good idea to snap the reader up with the first paragraph, if not the first sentence or the first word.

But how to do that? In my day job as a freelance editor, I hear a lot of confusion out there, most often in the form of one writing “rule” or another. One writer will say, “I’ve heard it’s important to lay the background for the scene before breaking into the action.” Another will say, “The action starts toward the bottom of page one. That’s as close as I could get it. After all, I have to introduce my main character so the reader will know what he’s capable of.” Yet another actually wrote, “I still say the best opening line of any novel I’ve ever read was ’It was a dark and stormy night.’ What tension that brought to the scene!” (She was actually serious.)

The truth is, beginning in the middle of the action is the best way to hook a reader up front and keep him turning pages. Period. You can do that in either of two ways: You can open with a strong narrative that appeals to the reader’s physical and/or emotional senses or you can open with dialogue. For the purpose of this post, I’m defining physical senses as sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. The negative emotional senses are fear, trepidation, anger, caution, etc. (Notice that the negative emotional senses are those that the reader experiences when he feels tension.)  The positive emotional senses are joy, elation, and so on.

Here are a few openings for novels or short stories that were designed to appeal to the reader’s physical and/or emotional senses, enabling the reader to experience what’s going on in the scene and/or capturing the reader’s imagination. Some include state-of-being verbs, but none are passive constructions. (More on Passive Constructions or Passive Voice in an upcoming post, or you can attend my seminar, “Point of View & Narrative Voice.”) Notice that although these beginnings create a bit of tension or interest, none of them begin with a car squealing around a corner as bullets take out the back glass. In the parentheses following the entries are some possible ways you could continue with the story, or a tip to put you in the right frame of mind. If any of these beginnings pique your curiosity and make you want to write, feel free. You may imagine if they piqued your curiosity, they will also pique the reader’s interest.

As the siren wound down, the revolving ambulance lights chased each other across the old man’s face, up the brick wall and across the windows. (Why is the ambulance there? What happens next? Who is the old man? The perp? The victim? An observer?)

In her sixth summer, Maita discovered a magic glass imbedded in the ground near her home. (What is the “magic glass?” In my story, it’s the lightly blue-tinted bottom of an old Coke bottle. What makes such a thing magical for six year old Maita? Did you find anything that struck you as magical when you were a child? Did it inform your imagination?)

The intriguing vision lingered, and on the night he viewed his one hundred eighty-third full moon, he walked south, plodding away from the city. (Note the use of “plodding.” Might “skulking” or another gerund make a difference in the tone of your story?)

In a stodgy apartment on the west side of Tucson, Adam Stanton sat bolt upright in bed, every muscle in his body straining, cramping, the odor of cold sweat permeating the air, his legs twisted in the tangled sheets. (Jeez, what’s his problem?)

Wiping the counter with a dish towel, Mrs. Nelson peered out the window over the kitchen sink . Her heart leapt into her throat. She flung the towel to the yellow-topped dining table as she rushed from the kitchen to the front door. The screen door slapped hard against the clapboard wall of the house. “Haley!” (Hmm… what’s Haley gotten into?)

On the eighth day of my trek across Death Valley, I saw God. (And what ensued?)

The knock on the door was quiet, almost timid. (Want to answer it?)

It’s been twenty-six years since the world imploded and those scratching sounds crept into my mind.

On a cloudy, dreary day in a very small town in Italy, in a room much larger than it had ever been before, Serafín hunched over his time‑worn mahogany desk, laboring over a promised eulogy. (Most of the time it isn’t what you say so much as how you say it. Did this stir your interest?)

Shortly before eleven p.m. and in a light rain, Robert got out of his car and walked to the back, carefully counting his steps. The air was thick and warm despite the drizzle, and smelled of rotting trees and rocks covered with sour moss. The muddy roadside sucked at his boots as if trying to slow his passage. Seven steps, he thought, then unlocked the trunk. The first seven steps of any journey are the hardest. (What is the significance of the “steps?” Only you can answer that.)

Sometime in the past, Mr. Wilson had misplaced his mind. Now he was sitting in a comfy, overstuffed chair in Dr. Swenson’s office in what he hoped would not be a vain attempt at locating it. (A little more “formal” voice?)

Edgar stood in only his underwear on the far side of the bed, back against the wall, his hands clasped to his mouth, a scream trapped in his throat.

The little craftsman cottage nestled peacefully among tall maples just off the road a mile outside of Levinson, a village of just over 900 people. The woman lay just inside the front door, stretched out on the carpet as if asleep, her arms splayed over her head, her right leg bent at the knee and crossing her left. A child sat huddled in the corner, his chin on his chest, his back against the narrow livingroom wall. The man lay at the bottom of the attic stairs where he had fallen, blood still seeping from the gaping wound in his stomach and lower chest, and two small girls lay nearby, the thirteen year old on her back with her eyes frozen open in horror and the nine year old on her stomach, her right arm extended as if reaching for her father. Outside, the maples swayed lightly in the breeze, whispering their song into the night.

Strolling hand‑in‑hand across a moonlit field of wildflowers, they dreamed into the stars.

Katie Wells lay under a heavy quilt and tried to ignore the hushed voices that filtered through her half-open door.

Stripped to his underwear, Bill trembled, sweat pouring from his scalp as he struggled against his bonds.

We hadn’t been in town long before the silence gripped us. It wasn’t a typical silence, you understand, like that of a peaceful spring day punctuated by the occasional small birdsong wafting in on a soft breeze. Nor was it comparable to the lazy, heavy stillness of a humid Sunday afternoon in Georgia or even the quiet solace of a gray, stone-walled monastery. It was palpable and oppressive, the kind of silence that makes your shoulders slump involuntarily, that makes you feel overpowered by a dread.

Sarah Stein, four other women, and seven men gathered around a map spread across a heavy oak table in an abandoned bunker six stories beneath the surface in Baghdad. The twelve wall-mounted lamps had ceased working long ago. Some dangled from their mounts, unceremonious reminders of the final bombardments of the Inter-Arab War in 2139.

Wes Crowley pulled his lean, 5’9” frame over the side of the chute and carefully settled onto the back of the largest Brangus bull he’d ever seen.

Now it’s your turn. What’s the best beginning you’ve seen, whether you wrote it yourself or saw it elsewhere? When you read someone else’s work, consider the beginning. Does it make you want to find out what happens next? If so, how does it accomplish that? I hope this gives you some good ideas for your own writing.

‘Til next time, happy writing!

Harvey

Order your copy of Punctuation for Writers now at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html. A mere 104 pages, it will change forever the way you look at punctuation! You can also purchase a copy directly from me at my Writing the World seminars. For the upcoming schedule, see http://StoneThread.com/events.html.

Veteran’s Day

Hi Folks,

I’ll return to information about writing next week. Yesterday was the 234th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, and of course, today is Veteran’s Day. When I was in the Corps, we used to joke that if America were ever attacked, the attack probably would come on November 11 because most of our enemies probably realized we’d be hungover on that day.

Whether or not you’ve served personally, whether or not you’ve had to say goodbye to loved ones temporarily or permanently, whether or not you’ve had to suffer through combat or knowing your loved one is in combat, and whether or not you even know anyone serving in the armed forces of the United States of America, please know that they believe in You, that they live and die for You.

Be grateful you live in one of the few places on Earth, maybe the only place on Earth, where the purest of paradoxes still exists: that in this nation, men and women voluntarily place themselves in harm’s way and give their lives to ensure the right of others to protest their actions.

On this one day, please consider…

• It is the Veteran, not the reporter, who gave us and preserves for us our freedom of the press; 
• It is the Veteran, not the poet, who gave us and preserves for us our freedom of speech; and
• It is the Veteran, not the campus (or community) organizer, who gave us and preserves for us our freedom to demonstrate.

Blessed are those who have lived in the real world, for they will never forget that the ideal is a goal, not a brick-and-mortar destination. Then again, cursed are those who have lived in the real world, for they cannot enjoy the luxury of forgetting that the ideal is a goal, not a brick-and-mortar destination.

Enjoy the day. Like every day we are enabled to wake up in a free nation, it is a gift.

See you next week.

Harvey

From Dumbing Down to Dumbinger Down

Hi Folks,

I posted a version of this several months ago to Eliot, the literary blog of St. Louis Writers’ Guild, where I’m a member. What an energetic, living writers’ organization that is! I invite all of you to visit them at http://www.stlwritersguild.org. SLWG is pretty much the pinnacle of what a living, vibrant writers’ organization can be. Anyway, here’s the post, slightly updated: 

A few months ago I watched a movie, a comedy starring Luke Wilson, called Idiocracy. Have you seen it? Excellent social commentary thinly veiled as a comedy. It was even more over-the-top and humorous than the title would lead you to believe, but it was also terribly sad from a writer/editor’s perspective, demoralizing and a bit frightening. In the film, Wilson played a soldier who had been put into a deep sleep by the Army as an experiment. He was to be awakened in a year. Something went awry, and he slept for 500 years instead. When he awoke, it was to a world in which Corporate America controlled everything—for example, one lawyer in the film received his law degree at CostCo—and the citizenry had slipped to the bottom of the slippery slope of illiteracy and linguistic laziness. None could even form a sentence, and the populace—including professors, lawyers, doctors, politicians and judges—viewed anyone who spoke in complete sentences as a “fag.” Of course they knew the term was derogatory, but they didn’t know why or even realize it had once been used to insult a certain group of human beings.

As another example from the film, in the year 2505, the film that won eight Oscars, including Best Screenplay, ran for ninety minutes and featured only the naked posterior of a human male who occasionally passed gas, to the seemingly endless delight of the audience. One of the most popular television shows of the time was entitled Ow! My Balls! It featured what you might expect, a young gentleman being injured in various ways to a particular part of his anatomy.

So the protagonist, who back in 2005 had been tagged “the most average man in the US Army,” was suddenly the smartest man in America. To avoid going to prison for being too intelligent by contemporary standards, he taught the citizens, for example, that to grow crops and reverse the nationwide dust-bowl situation, they would have to start using water for more than simply flushing their toilets. Prior to his arrival, they’d used a sports drink not only in water fountains, but  on their lawns and fields. The salt content, naturally, had killed everything. In the end, the protagonist prevailed and set the United States on the road to recovery. Yay us.

That was the end of the film, and this blog post might never have been written, but I decided to watch the local news immediately afterward. Bad, bad Harvey. The news anchor began a heart-warming story about a group of one year old sextuplets. The headline at the bottom of the screen, mimicked aloud by the anchor, was “Sextuplets Earn University Scholarship.” I thought, Huh? What do you suppose they did to “earn” a scholarship? Perhaps they were awarded a scholarship or had been granted a scholarship or had even been gifted (ugh) with a scholarship, but earned? And of course, that thought led to others. (Yes, yes, I know the guy who now calls the White House his residence recently “earned” a Nobel Prize, but I’m not gonna talk about that. Too easy.) About 4 ½ years ago, news anchors both in the field in Iraq and behind their comfy desks in American cities routinely reported almost every night that US troops had uncovered another weapons’ cachet. That’s right. Not cache, but cachet (pronounced cash-ay), meaning aroma. While searching for weapons of mass destruction, our soldiers and Marines had apparently stopped to smell the roses… well, according to the news guys. And these are folks who make their living, as do many of us, with words. Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle et al must be spinning in their graves.

In the meantime, the media also seem to have decided collectively that likely and probably are synonymous, although likely is an adjective (despite the “ly” ending) that is synonymous with probable, not probably. Likewise with imply and infer. Also, impact has suddenly become a verb, as has the previously mentioned gift. And more and more writers are having their characters “try and” do something rather than “try to” do something. It might sound cool, but it’s impossible to “try and.” Oddly, they never use “and” when they use the past tense of try.

Sigh…. All of this, I suspect, began somewhere in the recesses of Corporate America, where some fifty year old whom I imagine still lives with his mother and hates his English teacher for giving him a B+ one time is doing his level best to bring our language to its knees. He’s the same guy who decided it’s perfectly all right to “grow” a business instead of developing or expanding it. He’s the same guy who does things “moving forward” instead of doing them “from now on” or “in the future.” He’s the same guy who decided several years ago that talking with people in your profession isn’t nearly as good as “networking” with them, and he’s the same word economist who decided “writing in a journal” wasn’t nearly as cool as “journaling.” But it gets worse. I’ve heard many television news personalities speak of the benefit of giving children “a orange” or “a apple” as part of their lunch. I mentioned to one of them that was “an fruity idea.” He didn’t get it.

Of course, lexicographers, those folks who get to decide what goes into the dictionaries, are trotting right along behind the rest of the lemmings, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. The word “till” (two Ls), which used to mean a cash drawer or what a farmer does to his land in preparation for planting, is now the accepted shortened version of “until.” The former shortened version (’til) is archaic, they say. Ugh.

 The dumbing down of America is real, folks. In your own writing, at least, please pay close attention to what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. If each of us does his or her part to safeguard the language, perhaps we can at least slow the descent.

‘Til next time, happy writing!

Harvey

Order your copy of Punctuation for Writers now at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html. A mere 104 pages, it will change forever the way you look at punctuation! You can also purchase a copy directly from me at my Writing the World seminars. For the upcoming schedule, see http://StoneThread.com/events.html.

Creating “Flow” in Your Writing

Hi Folks,

In response to my recent call for topics, one respondent wrote, “I always hear how my writing should flow well, but never much help on how to accomplish that. How do you create good flow?”

I told him I suspect that would be a great topic, but that I wouldn’t be able to address the “overall flow” of a memoir, novel or other long work in a blog post. There simply isn’t enough room. But I was wrong. I mean, I can (and will) give you a few examples of how to improve “flow” in a sentence or paragraph, and what is a novel or memoir but a series of interconnected sentences and paragraphs? Yeah, I know it sounds like I’m cheating, but bear with me here.

Several years ago when I was still in college, my favorite professor (who looked like the product of Albert Einstein and Mark Twain) asked our class in passing “What makes good writing?” Although some of us pondered it through a few semesters, we never came up with a satisfactory answer. Today, I know the answer. It is flow.

Okay, but what is “flow?” By my definition, it’s the characteristic of a written communication that captures and holds the reader’s uninterrupted interest from beginning to end. Does that sound about right? Flow has many sub-elements, of course, like plot and how the plot is delivered: realistic characters speaking realistic dialogue, a narrator who uses action verbs to set and describe the scenes and then steps aside so as not to be intrusive, a conscientious writer who makes sure he doesn’t use “waste” when he means the part of a woman that occurs just above the hips, etc. Anyway, if we accept the definition of “flow” as “the characteristic of a written communication that captures and holds the reader’s uninterrupted interest from beginning to end,” and if we accept that “the reader’s uninterrupted interest” is the key phrase, I suspect the whole secret to good “flow” is writing in such a way that doesn’t interrupt the reader unnecessarily. 

Again, bear with me. How can we tell the difference between a “necessary” interruption and an unnecessary interruption? Here’s an example. In school, we’re taught that when we combine two independent clauses (subject and verb, can stand alone) with a coordinating conjunction (and, or, nor, for, but, so, yet), we have to accompany the coordinating conjunction with a comma, thus: 

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk, and his boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

Of course, you’ll remember we can also join two closely related clauses with a semicolon, like this:

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk; his boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

Or we might choose to write the passage in two separate independent clauses, like this:

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk. His boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

That’s how we’re supposed to do it, per the rules of grammar and syntax. But is it really necessary to interrupt the flow of the sentence (and more importantly, the flow of the action in the sentence) with the short pause created by that comma, the longer pause created by the semicolon, or the much longer pause created by the period? Nope. So the reader can experience the mini-scene as one continuing action, you can omit the punctuation and write it like this:

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk and his boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

There is a similar example and a few others in previous posts on this blog. I hope you’ll scroll back to the archives and find a few of them. The only way to learn this stuff is to practice it, then practice it some more. Here are a few specific pointers that will immediately improve the flow of your writing:

Rather than letting your narrator tell the reader what the characters are saying, Let the characters speak for themselves so the reader can “overhear” the characters. When he’s telling the reader what the characters are saying, the narrator is a middleman who comes between the reader and the characters.  

Don’t allow your narrator to use the “sense” verbs: saw, smelled, felt, tasted, heard, etc. I addressed this in much more depth in an earlier post on this blog. 

Perhaps most difficult, Delete any narrative that doesn’t advance the story line. Again, even when the narrative is necessary, the narrator comes between the reader and the story line. That’s a necessary evil. But unnecessary narrative is an unforgiveable act of treason against you, the narrator’s boss. If your narrator refuses to simply describe the scene and get out of the way, I recommend you drive him out into the desert and shoot him.

And absolutely the most important, best advice I can give any writer—Read Your Work Aloud. No other technique will enable you to more quickly catch glitches in the flow of your writing.

Oh, one other thing—many of you know I’m a strong advocate of using dialogue to advance the story line. In a correspondence with another writer a few days ago, I mentioned almost in passing that Dialogue equals action in the written work, because it forces the reader to be a “character” in the story: The Eavesdropper. It forces the reader to lean into the story, just like a strong action scene written in narrative will do. And of course, if you can keep your reader directly engaged in your story line, you will enjoy a growing and appreciative readership.

That’s it for this time, my friends. Remember, if you have any ideas for future blog posts on topics of interest to writers, there’s a prize in it for you. If I accept your idea, you get your choice of free admission to one of my seminars (or a free seminar on DVD once they’re ready), a free copy of either of my books—Punctuation for Writers (2nd edition) or Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction—or some free editing. Write me for details at h_stanbrough@yahoo.com. 

Until next time, happy writing!

Harvey

The Importance of Writing Naked

Hi Folks,

Yep, you read it right: this post will be all about “writing naked,” another one of those phrases occasionally tossed around by writing instructors. I originally wrote this as a humor column for a poetry magazine, The Candlelight Poetry Journal, which is now defunct. It was a beautiful journal. The cover of each issue bore a reproduction of a famous piece of artwork, always depicting a candle. I was pleased to have my own poetry featured in it occasionally, and more than thrilled when the publisher asked me to write a humor column. Of course, I said yes immediately. Later, given time to think about it, I almost panicked. How does one write a humor column for a respectable, staid, serious poetry journal? But I guess it all worked out until the magazine’s expensive production values eventually drove the publisher to fold. Anyway, here’s the column, slightly altered from its original form: 

Despite what many folks think, I was actually writing both prose and poetry long before I started writing this blog, and like most writers and poets, I gleaned a wealth of valuable information from other, more advanced, writers over the years. Golden rules like “Write what you know” and “Write in different positions” and “Pace while you’re writing” and “Clean the candy smear off your manuscript before you send it in” and “Never write in first person” and later “Always write in first person” and “Never turn your back in the shower when your buddy has a damp towel twisted up in his hands.” Okay, maybe that last one doesn’t fit, but it’s good advice and I’m sure you get the gist.

The overall idea is that heeding the advice of more experienced writers will usually save you some time and keep you out of trouble. But one of the most often repeated tidbits of wisdom I have heard is that writers who wish to be even vaguely successful should strive to write naked. Write naked? Yeah, that one threw me, too. Apparently, though, it didn’t throw me far enough to avoid the problems it would cause.

Most writers take advice pretty well, but we seldom take it immediately. Instead, we mull it over awhile. It sits on a back burner in our mind until it ripens. Sometimes it sits back there until it starts to rot, but real writers prefer ferment. How many times have you heard writers and poets talk about letting an idea “ferment?” Then, one day when the writer’s mood, the piece he’s working on, and the fermenting advice gel, BAM! the advice kicks in. And what can you do? The timing is right, the moon’s lined up with the third planet of the fourth star system on the right in the Ford Galaxy, your muse has turned her impish back, and your editor’s yelling about deadlines. So like any good writer, you Go For It. All well and good, provided that you first ascertain advisory intent; that is, make sure the advice meant specifically what you took it to mean. There’s no substitute for measuring twice before you cut once. (I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds good.)

So anyway, I was stuck, and I thought there must be a way to unclog my mind. I began running down all the advice I’d heard. I’d already tried writing my short story in first person, then not in first person. I’d tried pacing while writing, and writing while lying on my back with my feet on my chair and my journal propped up on my knees. I’d already tried writing what I knew, and even what I suspected. Nothing worked. Blocked I was, and blocked I would remain. Then, like a banshee screaming out from the cobwebs of my mind, came the one piece of advice I hadn’t tried: write naked. After all, it’s rumored that Papa Hemingway wrote while standing in his underwear at a drawing table, right? And according to Robert Hendrickson in The Literary Life and Other Curiosities (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), William Blake, Samuel Boyse, D.H. Lawrence, Victor Hugo, Ben Franklin, James Whitcomb Riley, Robin Moore, and John Cheever also wrote in the nude or semi-nude for various reasons at one time or another. So I’m thinking What’s the big deal? Not only will I write naked, but I’ll be in excellent company!

And I disrobed, right there in front of my computer, gaily flinging my shirt hither and my jeans yon (when writers fling stuff, they fling it hither and yon) and kicking my boots and socks to a temporary resting place against the far wall. So far, so good. That’s when The Woman came in. For those of you who aren’t familiar with her, she’s the light of my life, my bride of several years, my pride and joy, blah, blah, blah. She’s also my immediate tie to the wide world of sanity, a world from which my departure seems continually imminent.

Anyway, she comes waltzing into the room with a smile on her face and a thought to share. “Honey,” she said. “You should come see this guy on television. You’ll never believe what he’s—Harvey! What are you doing?”

I absolutely beamed. “I’m getting ready to write naked.”

She took in the discarded clothing in a glance. “Naked?”

“Naked.”

Her hands moved to her hips. “And is there some particular reason?”

“Well, I was stuck. I was writing this short story and I got stuck… you know, blocked. Then I remembered somebody once told me if I got stuck, I should—”

“You should write naked?”

I grinned. “Yep!”

She handed me my jeans. “Here, put these on.”

“But if I put those on, I won’t be able to—”

“Put them on!”

“But I—”

“Now!“

I’m thinking, Pick your battles, Harv. She’ll go back into the living room in a few minutes. Then you can get naked and write your heart out.

Amazing how little it takes to calm the raging beast… er, so to speak. The simple act of pulling my trousers up over my hips and fastening the button had a soothing effect on her. “Harvey,” she said quietly, stroking my forehead. “You misunderstood. To write naked means to bare your soul.”

“I know, but you just said—”

“No no… you’re still not quite getting it.” Apparently patience is her virtue. “To write naked, you bare your soul, not your body.”

“Not my body?”

“No.”

“So I don’t have to get undressed?”

“No.”

New information. “Hmmm. Guess I looked pretty silly, huh?”

“Not half as silly as the time you tried to walk from here to the park on your hands so you’d know how Atlas felt.”

“That was pretty dumb, wasn’t it?”

“Good thing that car missed you. Or the time you pretended to sleepwalk so you’d know what it was like before you wrote an essay about it.”

“Yeah, that was a little off too.”

“Or that time you—”

“Okay, okay! I get the point already!”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“Sure you got the point?”

“Yeah.” I all but purred.

“Okay. I’m going back to the living room now. Let’s not have a replay of this, okay?”

“Okay. So what’s the guy on TV doing anyway?”

“What guy?”

“The one you came in to tell me about.”

“I forget. Besides, that was fiction. You’re real and you’ve got him beat by a long shot. I guess it’s true what they say about fact being stranger than fiction, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

She bent to kiss me on the forehead. “Remember, Sir: Bare the soul—leave the body in disguise.”

So my advice to you, my faithful readers who come tripping along here roughly once a week mining for a gem in this coal hill, is… Write Naked! Just be sure you’re alone in the house first.

Until next time, happy writing!

Harvey

To Capitalize or Not to Capitalize

Hi Folks,

Nah, I can’t go on with the parody I started in the title, because when it comes to capitalization, there really is no question.

A correspondent from OCS (over choppy seas) invited and inspired this blog post. She’s noticed recently the apparently intentional decision on the part of many writers to omit all capitalization from their writing. This one is easy, a real no brainer. Hey, when it comes to capitalization, if you wouldn’t omit it in a term paper for a college professor when the paper counts for fifty percent of your semester grade, don’t omit it in your fiction, essays, memoir or poetry either.  As I said, it’s a no brainer.

Anything—and I mean anything—that distracts the reader from your storyline or the topic of your poem is an automatic no-no. After all, why would you want your reader to stop reading what you’ve written? Sometimes, of course, we use punctuation or word juxtaposition in unique ways to enhance the story or poem, but even then we have to weigh the value of the intended enhancement against how much it will distract the reader. After that it’s simple math: if there’s a good chance it will distract the reader more than it will enhance the story or poem, don’t do it. Period.

With that in mind, let’s look at capitalization. Everybody knows proper nouns, nouns that designate a particular person or a particular place, should be capitalized: George, Mary, John, Sue, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, Arizona, the United States of America, Fred, Bill, Alex, et al ad nauseam.

What not everybody knows, apparently, is that titles also are capitalized, but only when they’re used in place of a name or as part of a name. All of these examples are capitalized correctly:

• I saw George Bush, former president of the United States, on television yesterday.
• I saw President George Bush (or Former President George Bush, if you prefer) on television yesterday.
• Later I stopped by to see my mom (or mother).
• Later I stopped by to see Mom (or Mother).
• My doctor is Joe Wilson.
• When I need medical opinions, I talk with Doctor Joe Wilson.
• I dreamed of the king and queen.
• I dreamed of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

This same practice is carried through any title when it’s used as a name or as part of a name.

In manuscripts, I occasionally see the use of ALL CAPS to indicate stress. That is also a no-no. The italic font attribute is adequate to indicate stress, and even that should be used sparingly. The only good use I’ve seen of all caps lately was in a manuscript in which the author had indicated a headline:

• The next morning Nick, sitting at his kitchen table, looked at the article and photos splashed on the front page of the Sentinel’s Saturday morning edition below the headline: DON’T  STOP  BELIEVING.

Of course this is an appropriate use of all capital letters because it lets the reader “see” the actual headline. (It’s also set in italics because it’s the character’s thought. Anything that the character is reading silently is an unspoken thought.) For those of you who are nitpicky, you might have noticed an extra space between each word in the headline above. That is a common practice among layout artists. If you choose to use all caps for a particular reason, hit the spacebar twice between each all-cap word. If you don’t, the words seem to run together. Here’s the same example with only one space between the words of the headline:

• The next morning Nick, sitting at his kitchen table, looked at the article and photos splashed on the front page of the Sentinel’s Saturday morning edition below the headline: DON’T STOP BELIEVING.

In the example to which my correspondent referred, a lengthy passage of prose, the author chose to use none of the normal capitalization: the personal pronoun I appeared in lower case, the first letter of the first word of each sentence was in lower case, and for all I know, even proper names were in lower case. I agreed with her when she called the style “pretentious.” Still, I’ve never understood why even the most haughty, pretentious writer could be so full of himself that he would want to call more attention to himself or his “writing style” than to the topic he’s writing about or to the storyline. Ugh.

As far as omitting all capital letters goes, it’s been done. e.e.cummings did it in his poetry, and before that, Don Marquis did it in a series of newspaper articles written as fictional social commentary that came to be called Archie and Mehitabel. At least Don Marquis gave the reader an up-front reason, though. The personna who wrote the commentaries was a cockroach. It couldn’t physically depress the Shift key on the typewriter, so it couldn’t form a capital letter. Marquis’ approach, at least, made a modicum of sense. It worked because it made sense, not because it was “cutting edge” or “intellectual” or otherwise pretentious.

If you have questions about a particular capitalization problem or comments on this post, please feel free to comment directly using the small link below. That way we can share your question or comment with other readers. Of course, you can also write to me directly at h_stanbrough@yahoo.com.

Happy writing!

Harvey

And now, a very special announcement for a friend:

You are cordially invited to attend an “open house” beginning Wednesday, October 14, in honor of the newly renovated Rose &Thorn Journal: http://www.roseandthornjournal.com. Drop by, sign up for the newsletter, check out the new digs (and blog!), follow us on Twitter and Facebook, leave us your comments/thoughts, and wish us well!

Rose &Thorn is a quarterly literary journal featuring the voices of emerging and established authors, poets and artists. Now…go enjoy the open bar and appetizer spread! (Note from Harvey: Don’t forget to visit Angie’s unique blog at GumboWriter: http://angie-ledbetter.blogspot.com/)

Angie Ledbetter &Kathryn Magendie, Co-Editor/Publishers, Rose & Thorn Journal