Writing

Mattina Underway – so what happens to my writing?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 9 Comments

It’s travel time again. Matt, Farley and I are heading south along the Florida east coast and hoping for a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream and enter the Bahamas. We are traveling with one buddy boat and trying to hook up with 2 or 3 more. It’s fun to arrive in a pack, with your friends already imported with you.

While we are traveling, I have no idea if I’ll have internet access along the way. My next shot at blogging will probably be once we are in the Bahamas. So if I’m quiet on this end, that’s why.

I always think I’m going to have time to write while we are underway, but it never turns out that way. Somehow, when the sailboat is in motion, I can’t concentrate on writing. Writing while sailing is a romantic idea to me. It’s a dream, really. The reality is I get busy.

I need to be in a quiet anchorage in calm weather to produce a good word count.

See you on the flip side.

Thanks for reading . . .

British Dictionary and American Style Guide Used by a Canadian

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 14 Comments

The Chicago Manual of Style says, “The more we learn, the less we seem to know.” Anyone else feel this way about spelling, punctuation and grammar?

So here is a question.

I follow the Oxford English Dictionary for spelling but the Chicago Manual of Style for grammar and punctuation.

The first is British and the second American.

Should I be following the Oxford Guide to Style if I use the Oxford English Dictionary? Or is it okay to follow one British and one American as long as I am consistently British in my spelling and consistently American in my punctuation and grammar? Now let me add that I am Canadian, and I get really confused. The borders seem to be disappearing on me.

And this gets me back to the first line, “The more we learn, the less we seem to know.”

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading . . .

Comma Splice: Acceptable or Not?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 22 Comments

Like anything else in life, grammar rules adapt and change.

Some say it’s okay to spilt an infinitive, start a sentence with ‘but,’ and end a sentence with a preposition.

My question: Are comma splices becoming acceptable?

I’m finding more of them in novels than I used to, and I’m not sure if this is due to the way publishing a novel has changed or due to a change in acceptable style.

I’d love to hear your opinion.

Written by a person (me 🙂  )who edits out every comma splice she sees.

Thanks for reading . . . and hopefully commenting.

Writing While Cruising

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Writing while cruising seems like a dream come true. And mostly this is the case, but there are pros and cons as there are with most things in life.

I enjoy having time to myself without distractions. We often go days without Internet access, which frees up time. The temptation to check how many people have read my blog, if my agent has sent me an email, or – and I hate to admit this – check Facebook disappears. My phone never rings since I don’t actually have a phone. J

On the flip side, the difficultly comes when I want to research a topic. At home, I can do this any time I want. Underway, I have to wait until we have a decent connection with enough bandwidth to be able to search. I am less active with other blogs and don’t tend to comment as much, so sometimes I feel like I’m missing things.

Each year in the Bahamas we find the WiFi access improves. I use my Kindle for email, but can’t really do much else with it on the Internet. At least I can stay in touch with family, usually on a daily basis. I start to worry if I haven’t connected for a while.

Internet gets removed as a distraction, but other distractions get added while we are sailing. If something is happening on the boat that needs attention, I might have to stop typing mid-word. There’s no time to finish a thought.

One evening, I was alone on Mattina after dark and having a productive writing session. The winds picked up, changed direction, and it started to rain. So while I was writing without distractions, I was keeping an eye on the GPS. It gives us our exact position and would let me know if Mattina started to drag. A little bit of tension and stress doesn’t hurt (I don’t like to be alone in a storm after dark on the boat – did I mention I was alone?), but it does mean I’m not 100% focused on writing.

Every ten minutes or so, I walked around the boat to check our position and check other boats in the anchorage. The risk of being dragged into rises with the number of boats in the anchorage.  All ended well, but I probably wrote fewer words than I would have if the weather had remained calm.

Would I trade Mattina for any other place to write? No way.

Thanks for reading . . .

Scrivener Writing Software: Pros and Cons

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Based on recommendations from other writers, I decided to try Scrivener. I’ve been using Microsoft Word and Pages (on my Mac) and like both but am always game for something new.

I’ve finished my month free trial and bought the software.  Overall, it’s useful for writing a novel. It has some features I liked and others that I didn’t.  These are listed below.

I’d love to hear what your favourite features of Scrivener are. It’s time-consuming learning new software and if you would like to share how you use it, I’d appreciate it.

My Likes:

  • Try before you buy: Only the days you open the software count toward the trial period. I had a month of days to play with and learn the software.
  • Split screen: Allows you to read 2 versions of a scene at the same time. This is useful when you are trying out changes but don’t want to commit.
  • Meta Data customization: I’ve used this to replace my Excel spreadsheet.
  • Meta Data located at the side: You can fill in as you write the scene.
  • Automatic Chapters: This avoids typing the wrong chapter number.
  • Customization to compile into word: You can format the way you, your publisher or agent prefers.
  • Notes: Handy to have right in the scene you are writing or for the overall document.
  • Synopsis: Reminds me what I wrote in the scene.
  • Comments: When I imported my manuscript from MS Word, my comments imported too.
  • Cork Board: I don’t like index cards, so this works for me.
  • Page Breaks: You can indicate which sections you want a page break before when having the manuscript scenes compile into a novel.
  • Text to speech: Is easy to use. I always have to dig through Microsoft’s menus to find this.
  • Storage of documents: Everything related to my manuscript is now in one place. I don’t have to use Excel and multiple word documents. This makes referencing the different information quick and easy.
  • Importing research files (right into folder) – Keeps me organized. I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to store documents.
  • Saving to ZIP file at end of session – good for obvious reasons.
  • Highlights dialogue if quotes don’t match.

My Dislikes:

  • Meta Data sorting – I re-sorted the title column, and I couldn’t can’t get it back to original sort, so I had to number the titles
  • Converting section to folder: If found this awkward. I think there should be a new chapter command. If you know of one, I’d like to hear about it.
  • You can use command and click to get a new folder but it took me a while to find this.
  • Couldn’t figure out how to import so chapter and section breaks were there. I had to manually put them in.
  • For Meta Data, the software doesn’t pick up that a word has been types earlier in a column like Excel does. Have to type each word.
  • Software defaults to courier:  This is fine, but I like Times New Roman. I had a hard time figuring out  how to get all text to change. The chapter heading kept going to Courier.
  • Folder outline: If a chapter only has one section then you can’t just have the top folder. You have to have a folder and a section.
  • Folder Numbering: I thought folders should number automatically.
  • Snapshot: Is hard to use. I wanted to snapshot the manuscript, but could only get it to do each scene at time. Too time consuming.
  • Switched to straight quotes in the middle of a scene and I have no idea why.
  • Spell checker seems slow to catch errors. Not sure how to activate it properly.

I’m going to keep using Scrivener until I get better at it, but I think it’s going to work for me.

Again, if you have any tips, please share J

Thanks for reading . . .

 

For another review  see M.Q.Allen.

Copyediting – Proofreading Comments Summary (Part Two)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

 So we continue with copyediting and proofreading comments . . .

After my five-part blog on copyediting and proofreading, I collected the comments from this blog and from the LinkedIn writing group called Crime Fiction managed by Theresa de Valence.

Today I’ll focus on Having Others Proofread Your Work:

I received some interesting ideas about having others proofread your work and have grouped the comments below. Some comments gave a similar message so I picked one of them to post. I hope you find these helpful.

  • I threw a party…after my manuscript had been proofread by a pro (and she was good). I invited five well-read, literate friends and gave them each five page stacks of non-chronological parts of the manuscript. They were to read them over, mark what was wrong, tag those pages with coloured stickers and then trade with someone across the table. I reassembled the manuscript and made the CX where needed. It’s a constant process as you know. Not perfect, but darn close . . . I was in the room because . . . when my readers had questions about dialect or some military or nautical term I could answer them immediately. They read silently for the most part . . . unless they had questions. Having the pages out of context made for closer scrutiny . . . helping eliminate the usual tendency to mentally fill in words automatically . . . which the writer may do when reading one’s own book. . BTW, the manuscript was 102,000 words and having five readers meant it was accomplished in about four hours. I had a thank you card and gift for each reader when we were done. They liked the chore so much they volunteered to do it with future books . . . and I’m going to take them up on it.

 

  • If you can, have two of your most obsessive compulsive friends or relatives read the galley. They’ll work hard to find the little mistakes, the kinds that editors miss. However, in the end, don’t beat yourself up over every error; we are human. 


 

  • As a newspaper reporter, I knew many editors, but only a handful as meticulous as needed for a book manuscript. When I receive galleys, I ask two really good editors to read copies. Each of the three of us has her own copy. It is amazing to see how many errors each of us find, mistakes not duplicated by the other readers. And this is after the books have been through editors at the publishing house. Wow! For the first several books I used editor friends whose work I knew. I took them to dinner or some other entertainment as compensation. In all, five different editor friends have read for me. Now, I write them checks, which are never enough for what they contribute. They fuss, but will cash the checks. They get a kick out of reading the first print-outs, even boast about doing it. Others have volunteered, but I need pros. It works for me.

 

  • Genre is extremely important. You have to know the
genre to be able to tell the timing, rhythm, wording and nuances of the
story. Each one has its own blood pressure and heartbeat. Editors are
inclined to pick out things that they say are wrong, and may actually take 
more
away from the story than they put in. They tend to be superior in demeanour. 
For
example, an editor might tell me that the language in EINAR is too formal, 
but
they do not know Scandinavian speech patterns. I speak Norwegian, Danish,
Swedish , as well as English, German and Dutch to varying degrees and know the
rhythm of all the languages. It also helps in research. It is their opinion
unless they are on the payroll of one of the major publishers. In that case you
kind of have to do what they say for the most part if you can’t prove your
point.

 

  • Be careful who you go with as an editor. Be absolutely sure that they are well versed in your specific genre. If you write horror, do not settle for a fantasy editor, it is not the same thing. Always look for personal compatibility. It is your baby that you are entrusting them with, not some mangy red boned mutt from the pound.

 

  • Trade with someone – you proof theirs & they proof yours. Errors tend to get less detectable with repeated readings, until they look more “normal” than more “correct” usages. And that script reading by your characters is probably a good idea for reasons way beyond proofing – might want to do it while you’re doing drafts as well, to try out alternative sequences. An audience helps, although they’ll get testy after a while, no matter how good the writing is.

Thanks for reading and thanks for the comments . . .

Related articles

Copyediting – Proofreading: Summary of Comments (Part One)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Now that I have completed  my five-part blog on copyediting and proofreading, I’ve grouped the comments into topics and ended up with too much information for one blog, so . . . I’ll split it into several. I’ll add information that I didn’t include in my original blogs and that was kindly contributed by readers of my blog.

I collected the comments from the blog series and from the LinkedIn writing group called Crime Fiction managed by Theresa de Valence.

The topics from the comments are:

  • DON’T TRUST YOUR SPELL CHECKER
  • Having Others Proofread Your Work
  • The Eye Sees What it Wants to See
  • Read it Backward
  • Read it Out Loud
  • Read it Big
  • Adjectives and Adverbs
  • Split Infinitives
  • E-Readers
  • Computer versus Paper
  • Templates
  • Taking Breaks
  • Proofreading versus Copyediting

And yup, you guessed it. I’m going to cover the bolded topic today.

DON’T TRUST YOUR SPELL CHECKER

One theme among the comments was the quest for a list of the most common words authors have issues with. You can find that list a little farther down in the blog.

The following is a humorous excerpt (paraphrased a little) from one comment I thought summed up why we have difficulty seeing the typos, and I’ll call them typos, because most of us know how to spell and we know the correct word choice, but our fingers seem to have a will of their own and type what they want.

Never met a spelling you didn’t like, eh? Well they’re (their?) hard to (too?) spot, even for those of us who can spell some and know lots of words. They hide or just sit there defiantly, while your integrative, Gestalt brain fills in the gaps and skips over extra letters on its own, without telling you. That’s why proofing is so difficult, aside from the tediousness. And you’re (your?) usually doing it at the 11th hour, under time constraints, and all your (thy?) helpful friends have abandoned you to your dire fate.
What happens to me kicking out the stops on the mighty netbook, is letters get omitted due to detritus among the keys, and the spell checker thinks “ad” instead of “and” is good to go. Etc., or is it Ect.?

There was consensus that homophones and typos that create a correct word, but not the word you want,  are a problem in manuscripts. The following are the words I received in the comments to the blog. This list contains words that other authors have stated they have issues with. I’ve bolded the ones that I didn’t include in my original blog.

  • Ad/And
  • Aisle/Isle/I’ll
  • Barely/Barley
  • Calf’s/Calves
  • Ect./Etc.
  • Here/hear
  • Heard/herd
  • He’ll/Hell
  • It’s/Its
  • Flee/Flea
  • For/Fro
  • Form/From
  • Grown/Groan
  • Manor/Manner
  • No/Not/Now
  • Own/Now
  • Series/Serious
  • So/Sew (use needle and thread)

  • Sit/Sight
  • Then/Than
  • Then/The
  • There/Their
  • There’s/Theirs
  • Throne/Thrown
  • Thin/Thine/Thing
  • Thy/Thigh
  • To/Too
  • Were/We’re
  • Whelps/Welts
  • Where/Were
  • Who’s/Whose
  • Wringing, Ringing
  • Your/You’re

For those of you who dictate your copy, you may find the dictation software created homophones throughout your manuscript. So guess what? You get to be especially careful when checking for them.

To help find this type of error, one reader suggested: the smaller your device or viewing window is, the better it will be for proofreading. Also, since such narrow focus is both tense and tedious (contradictory, but true), take frequent breaks – maybe alternate with another task that has nothing to do with this or any other book.

Another reader said: this isn’t 100% on topic, but I use the “Add to Dictionary” and “Ignore” feature in MS Word to stop the software from picking up odd character and place names as mistakes in my manuscript. If I don’t do that, then those words get flagged so frequently that I start ignoring Spellcheck completely…and then miss things like “teh” and “tihng.”

Thanks to everyone who shared how they create an error-free (okay – so as close to error-free as possible) manuscript. It’s helpful to learn how others work.

If you have other words that are often a problem, don’t be shy. Please share them with me.

Thanks for reading . . .

Copyediting – Proofreading Process articles and comments can be found at:

Copyediting – Proofreading Process (Part Five)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 12 Comments

What a week! I can’t thank everyone enough for their contributions. I’m going to have to work hard at getting the comments and ideas summarized.

So you’ve finished copyediting – proofreading the manuscript, and it’s time to send it back to the author. This is usually when I think about the work I’ve done and have I done what the author asked of me. It’s a good time to pause and re-read ALL the comments. I ask myself:

  • Are the comments clear?
  • Are the comments consistent?
  • Have I introduced any errors?

If I am working on a computer copy of the document, I’ve asked the author not to touch their version until I’m done (I probably should have mentioned this in part one). With only one version active, the author can accept or reject changes without introducing new errors. Also, I figure if I’m going to spend the time editing, the author should wait for me and not create another version of the manuscript. It’s frustrating to have to repeat the editing process.

I usually summarize my detailed comments in an overview. I remember to tell the author what I liked about the story. This is important. Every writer needs to hear what he/she does well. It’s easy to focus on criticism, and my goal is to motivate the author to continue to write. I don’t want to de-motivate them because I made too many comments.

In the summary, I remind the author to do the following before shipping the manuscript to an agent, publisher or uploading it to an e-book site (if they are self-publishing):

  • accept or reject suggested changes
  • delete any remaining comments
  • turn off mark-up or track changes
  • remove bookmarks
  • check under properties that the title is correct

When you’re ready, ship the manuscript back to the author and see what he/she thinks. I’m usually nervous at this point. It’s an honour to read and work on another author’s manuscript, and I hope I’ve found a balance between being helpful and not being overly critical.

One final caution: I find it difficult to edit my own work. My eye reads what I think I wrote and not what I actually wrote. I do my best to correct my manuscript before I give it to someone else to edit, but I try to have a sense of humour and laugh at myself when errors are found. Nobody’s perfect ☺

Thanks again for reading . . .

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Copyediting – Proofreading Process (Part Four)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

First – thank you to everyone who has contributed thoughts on my blog and in LinkedIn. I’ve enjoyed putting my process out there and improving it based on the new ideas I’ve received.

We’ve made it through two readings of a manuscript. During the third reading, we get to propose changes that are subjective, and even though, as an editor, I want all my suggestions included in the next version of the manuscript, I have to accept that the author gets to decide how to handle each idea I put forward.

The first three blogs in this series are: Proofreading Process (Part One), Copyediting – Proofreading Process (Part Two) and Copyediting Proofreading Process (Part Three).

So here we go . . . Things to check during the third reading:

PASSIVE versus ACTIVE

Point out passive clauses but don’t change them. Passive or active is the author’s choice, but what if the author slipped into passive without noticing? I comment and then move on.

TENSE

Keep an ear out for tense and check for consistency. Tense can change during the course of a novel. Linwood Barclay uses past tense and present tense in his new novel Trust Your Eyes, but he keeps the tense consistent in each scene. The result is a fast paced, exciting novel. My point: It’s important to understand the author’s intent for tense and then edit accordingly.

FIRST, SECOND or THIRD PERSON      

This can change throughout a novel, but is it consistent per scene? If switching person takes away from the story, mention it to the author, but again, the author gets to decide whether to change it or not.

THAT

Check every use of that and decide if it’s needed. If that is not needed for clarity, suggest its removal. Here’s an example of when you don’t need that:

I used to think that it was easy to use a comma.

I used to think it was easy to use a comma.

The meaning of the second sentence without that is clear. Now compare the following two sentences, and I think you’ll agree that is needed.

Ignoring the shadows that vaguely reminded him of his long dead relatives, . . .

Ignoring the shadows vaguely reminded him of his long dead relatives, . . .

The meaning changes in the second sentence. That is needed  for clarity. The first sentence tells us the shadows remind him of dead relatives. The second sentence tells us ignoring the shadows reminds him of dead relatives.

ADJECTIVES

Are there cases where more than one adjective describes a noun? Yes? Then I ask if the author could pick the most important one and delete the others.

REPEATED WORDS

If a word jumps out at you as overused, it probably is. It’s okay to suggest alternatives, but it’s the author’s job to come up with a new word (if he/she agrees the word is overused).

WHAT’S NEXT?

I’ll post the final touches on Monday . . .

Thanks for reading 🙂