Good Links: September Edition

Well, September came and went, just like that. Now here we are in fall. Wah.

Here are some of the good links I came across this month.

Grammar, Style, etc:

Have you been wondering about spacing around your dashes and ellipses? I haven’t either, but I did discover I wasn’t spacing around my ellipses correctly when I read How Publishing Really Works’ article about it.

Along with spacing issues, do you wonder about which font to use? The Rejectionist pokes fun at Courier font while making a nice, valid point for not using that crappy old font.

Passive tense, anyone? Not sure what it is and why you should possibly avoid it? This article will help you out. (Passive tense can be more wordy, more convoluted, but it can also highlight the action instead of the agent performing the action.) Here is a nice little quote from the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL):

You can recognize passive-voice expressions because the verb phrase will always include a form of be, such as am, is, was, were, are, or been. The presence of a be-verb, however, does not necessarily mean that the sentence is in passive voice.

What the heck is an Oxford Comma and where and when do you use one?

On Writing:

Is your character reactive or proactive. Do things happen to your character or does he or she make things happen? Rachelle Gardner explains a bit about reactive and proactive characters.

Finished your project and dreaming up that perfect title? While a perfect title is good to have in the querying stage, don’t get too attached to it. BookEnds Literary explains.

Brenda Hiatt shows us the money in publishing romance. And who says getting your work with a big publisher doesn’t pay?

More on publishing and money, this time the goods straight from a literary agency. Basically, you’ve got to sell a lot folks. And that means you, the writer, have to get your butt in gear and sell your work. It ain’t no free ride.

And here’s the pitch! Rachelle Gardner advises you to tell the actual story in your pitch. Is it an emotional journey? Big deal! What actually happens.

Guide to Literary Agents’ 5 Ways to tell if you and a literary agent are a good match.

Just for Fun:

Universal Studios unveils plans for a Harry Potter theme park in Florida. Thanks, guys. I think bloody ol’ England is closer to my house than freaking Florida.

How much time do you spend listening to muzak while trying to get a hold of a real person when calling a company? Ha! Listen no more. Here’s what number to push to get to a real person. Love it!

Rick Astley (remember him?) only has one dance move. Seriously, though, this is a fun mash-up between Rick Astley and Nirvana.

Cow abduction is a very serious problem. Please check it out and be sure to offer your support for the cause by clicking on the cow. (Some folks have way too much time on their hands and I love them for it.)

And there you have it, September in a nutshell.

Good Links, May Edition

Wow, there goes May. Hello, June. Might I say you are looking mighty fine?

I didn’t spend a lot of time surfing the net this month, but I still came across some great links to share. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Here’s what I found:

On Writing: Many writers like to use archetypes in their stories or build around a myth. Karen Harbaugh, over on her blog, discusses characterization, plotting, fairy tales and archetypes. It’s an interesting read and a blog I will be checking out regularly.

Pitching your Work: Camy Tang discusses how to create a strong 50 word elevator pitch (story summary) so you can pitch agents or editors in person. They are also great for query letters. I’m currently taking one of Camy’s online classes and it is fantastic. This writer knows how to simplify a difficult task and even makes writing a synopsis fun! (Really!)

Building a Query: Former publishing lady and query guru, Molli Nickell, has a new blog called The Query Letter Wizard. She offers tips and exercises on her blog. She also answers questions and helps folks out with their query questions and blues. You can also find her on AgentQuery and on her website.

General Writing Interest: So, many you may be like me and live outside the publishing haven known as the United States. Maybe you spell funny, adding in extra ‘u’s here and there. You say “zed” and not “zee”. And your manuscript reflects that. What to do, what to do… Well, thankfully Jessica Faust over at Bookends Litererary addresses grammar and spelling in her post.

Future of Publishing: On Demand Books. You may have heard of these already, if not, this article is an interesting look at those little machines that print a book as you wait. It is an interesting idea that could become ‘big’. (And possibly save the planet.)

Marketing: If you are wondering about how popular your blog is, or want to compare some websites or blogs you know, pop them into Market Leap and it will compare these sites for you. You can list one site or up to three for comparison.

About the Money: Editorial Ass gives the real scoop on writers and money. Everything from royalties to right sales and more.

And for fun: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotations. You got it, it is a blog exhibit of signs people have submitted that use unnecessary quotations.

It’s All Kid’s Play: This is my website and blog. It contains over 780 activities to do with children that are free or almost free. Feel free to pass it on to your friends or enjoy it yourself. It has everything from crafts, to staycation ideas to game rules, car ride games and much more. Enjoy!

Best news of May: A buddy on AQ found an agent who LOVES his work. He is now represented, so a huge congratulations to Thrownbones. I am incredibly happy for this writer as he has put in his time, working, working, working. Best of luck!

I hope May was good to you.

Gender Genie

I love cool Internet toys!

And okay, the online test I took a few weeks ago did declare me a uber-geek, but still. This Gender Genie online toy is freaking cool!

What you do is paste 500 or more words into the box and it looks at the words and decides if the author is male or female. So, I took a 644 word section out of the middle of my last blog entry and pasted it in. The result: male. Female score was 1004 and the male score was 1054. I’m a boy?

Then I tried a section out of my chick lit story and guess what? I’m a girl! Okay, Allie is a girl. Out of 1082 words, the female score was 1287 and the male score was 1105. This was a section with both male and female dialogue but from a female point of view.

On a more female note, I tried putting in 613 words of dialogue between the two girl friends chatting about guys and ta-da. They are still girls with a female score of 839 and a male score of 680.

Even more interesting, I pulled a quick 96 words of dialogue belonging to a stiff-as-a-board-I-have-no-famale-sensitivity male character out of that same story and put it into the Gender Genie form. And guess what? He’s a boy! (Yes!) Male score was 175 and the female score was 4. It is hard to say if the score would be that slanted if I used 500 words, but either way, it is good to hear that I am making my males sound like males–although maybe a bit too much?

If you are curious about how they come up with male or female, here is some background from BookBlog’s site (which also contains a useful tip for writers):
“In the most basic terms, the computational linguists behind the algorithm, Koppel and Argamon, took a bunch of fiction and looked for trends based on gender. Using complicated formulas, they determined that male writers tended to write more about specific things like an apple, a book, or the car. In contrast, female writers wrote about connections to things like my apple, your book, or our car. The nouns themselves (apple, book, car) didn’t matter much but the preceding qualifier, whether an article (a, an, the) or possessive (my, your, our), did.”

 Try it out, it’s Fun with a capital ‘f’.