Inventing Reality Editing Service

Write then publish your next book

The more books you write, the more you’ll sell. Generally speaking, don’t devote yourself solely to promoting a single book for months on end. Promote it a lot during the first few weeks after its release but then taper off to just one effort a day as you dedicate the bulk of your time to writing the next book. Sales of your first book will go up with the publication of your second one. Before the “7 Minutes a Day…” series, I wrote four books, and inevitably each boosted sales of the ones published before it. In fact, if doing a countdown of which of my books have sold the most copies, it would correlate perfectly with how many weeks it’s be available for sale…often the longer the book has been out, the higher the sales.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Syracuse, New York, or a small town like Hicks, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

 

Editing client published second comedic novel

An editing client of mine, Kenneth Newton-Allen, has published his second satirical novel, “Leftovers from the Last Supper.” The book tells the tale of Reverend “Burley” Jesus (pronounced hay-seuss) McWhurley, the nation’s most prominent preeminent all-media evangelist, who hoping to raise money to build the greatest cathedral in Christendom that God has apparently directed him to build in Beverly Hills, embarks on a nationwide debating tour with atheist E. Mason Hyde, an obscure writer just hoping to promote his unknown book. When the tour is over, however, Hyde is startled to find a stranger at his door who claims that he is Jesus (pronounced gee-sus) Christ. Is this stranger professing to be Jesus merely a ploy by Burley? Is this stranger just another wretched mental defect who honestly believes that he is Jesus? Or is this stranger in reality Jesus Christ, making what would have to be billed as history’s Ultimate Comeback? The book is available for purchase online.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Colorado Springs, Colorado, or a small town like Big Chimney, West Virginia, I can provide that second eye.

Serial comma: Use, don't use, or don’t worry?

A number of grammarians, teachers often think that punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar rules are absolute. The reality is that grammar hardly is black and white. It evolves over time, and depending on your current location in the world – the United States or the British Commonwealth; Canada or England – different rules generally are considered the norm of what constitutes proper English. Indeed, even within a country, various editors and teachers will espouse conflicting rules.

One such rule is that of the serial comma (aka the series comma, Oxford comma, or Harvard comma). For example, The MLA Style Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual all give one rule while the Associated Press Style Manual gives a contradictory rule...and the AP rule generally matches what most British style guides say, though even in Merry Ol’ England not all grammarians agree.

The serial comma rule issue centers on whether a comma is needed in a list. For example, in the sentence California, Oregon and Washington border the Pacific Ocean, should a comma appear after the second to last item on the list (Oregon)? The MLA Style Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual say “yes.” The Associated Press Style Manual and most British style guides say “no.”

Worse, these rules shift slightly when the listed items are phrases. Most stylebooks – including the Associated Press – say a comma is needed after the second to last item in a series of phrases, such as in the sentence: Common weapons used in science fiction stories include ray guys based on laser technology, disrupters that utilize concentrated sound waves, and plasma blasts of highly concentrated ionized gas.

When editing, I generally follow the Associated Press Style of Manual rules on the serial comma. Why? Because readers are less likely to think of it as an error as they primarily read media reports either in print or on the Internet that follow this style. In addition, many readers pick up books British Commonwealth authors who don’t use the Oxford comma in a series of single words.

All is relative, however. As a writer, you should follow a stylebook and stick to it. If your publisher follows The Chicago Manual of Style or your professor follow The MLA Style Manual, then that’s what you should go with. Whatever you do, be consistent with the style within the book.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Charleston, West Virginia, or a small town like Frog Eye, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

 

Incorporate imagery into your story

When creating your story’s setting or explaining what your characters are doing, you’ll need to use imagery. Imagery is necessary to move along the plot and to establish tone.

When describing a landscape, character or action, you’ll need to appeal to one or more of the senses that people use to perceive the world. There are five senses:
• Sight – What we can see with our eyes, as in Nevar examined the black hole ahead. It had the diameter of a mere asteroid. X-rays shot from the white-hot disc at its center, each ring farther out as darkening from white to blue.
• Sound – What we can hear, like As Nevar quietly assisted, her brother tapped here and there.
• Smell – The scent of something, as in The smell of sweat trickling down her temple overtook the faint whiff of ozone permeating the cockpit.
• Touch – What we can feel when things come into contact with our bodies (or they can be a description of the body’s sensation of touch), as in Nevar’s back ached.
• Taste – The flavor of something when it comes into contact with the tongue, as in Her mouth grew dry.

Using as many of the senses as possible makes a scene more real. In everyday life, we experience all of these five senses at all times. Sitting in a coffee shop writing this entry, I see the barista racing to and fro as filling an order, hear the hushed voices of the couple sitting behind me as they try to keep their disagreement from bursting into a public scene, taste the bitter coffee, catch a whiff of the pear-scented perfume of a woman passing my table on her way to the counter, shiver at the cold breeze from the air conditioner that is working on overdrive. In fiction, the key is to make these different senses work with one another to create tone.

When writing imagery, follow these guidelines:
• Make sure it serves a purpose – Any description should move along the plot and help develop characters and dramatic tension. If it’s solely being used to establish the location of the story or to indicate a background character’s actions, keep the description quick and simple.
• Avoid flowery prose simply for the sake of waxing poetic – Purple prose only makes the story campy.
• Remain cautious about offering lengthy descriptions – Descriptions in novels obviously can be longer than those in short stories. Still, the longer the description, the greater the chance that it will cause the reader to forget what’s going on in the story.
• Capture the “essence” of a place/moment/character through description – If a landscape is supposed to be inviting, then describe it as such by noting the ferns hanging over the waterfall, the bubbling brook, and the shade from a green willow. An inviting environment would not be excessively hot with the sun beating down.
• Use sensory details rather than internalized ones – Sensory details (blue, sour, loud, smooth) are specific rather than general. Internalized details (angry, pleased, innocent, civilized) amount to using fuzzy words and give no real impression of what is being described.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Little Rock, Arkansas, or a small town like No Name, Colorado, I can provide that second eye.

Consider using counterplotting in your novel

One solid plotting strategy for a long novel – though it also will work in a novella or a long short story – is to split the main characters into two groups and alternate the focus of scenes or chapters between them. The two groups then reunite at the story’s climax. This technique is called counterplotting. It’s often is used in quest novels.

Counterplotting is a great way to achieve dramatic tension in a longer story. This can be done by ending each chapter or scene with a cliffhanger, which sets up the narrative hook for the next chapter or scene in which those characters appear. The writer keeps the suspense alive by making the reader wait to see what will happen.

Another advantages to counterplotting is that the writer can more easily build an image of the world through a “narrative collage” or a “kaleidoscopic” journey through it. Seeing the world solely through the eyes of a lone main character can be limiting.

More skilled writers tend to artfully use counterplotting by creating a parallel process between the two groups. For example, to resolve the story’s central problem, each group learns enough that they have a partial solution. When they come together, their partial solutions combined offer the actual answer for overcoming the antagonist.

An offshoot of counterplotting is the multi-stranded plot, when three or more groups form a narrative thread. This is most often used in disaster stories or tales with a large cast of main characters. The movie “Star Trek IV” employed it when Kirk and Spock as one group try to locate whales, Scotty, McCoy and Sulu as one group gathered materials to build a whale tank on their ship, and Uhura and Chekov as a third group try to find a nuclear reactor to re-energize the dilithium crystals.

The danger of counterplotting is the author can leave the reader in suspense for too long between chapters/scenes. In other cases, especially with multi-stranded tales, the plot becomes too complicated for readers to follow and enjoy. Ultimately, too many loose ends can occur at the story’s end, much to readers’ dissatisfaction.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Greensboro, North Carolina, or a small town like Weed, California, I can provide that second eye.

Five Great Quotes about the Business of Writing

“There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing – to find honest men to publish it – and to get sensible men to read it.” – Charles Caleb Cotton

“Writers are schizophrenic. On the one hand we tell ourselves, ‘This is a work of genius! I’ve created Art!’ Then we try to peddle it, like a widget, to The New Yorker, Playboy, or SF Age.” – Ken Rand

“Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.” – Richard Curtis

“Sir, nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” – Samuel Johnson

“Instead of marveling with Johnson, how anything but profit should incite men to literary labor, I am rather surprised that mere emolument should induce them to labor so well.” – Thomas Green

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Columbia, South Carolina, or a small town like Caulksvile, Arkansas, I can provide that second eye.

Don’t let fear hamper you: Dare to write

For many, writing remains merely a hobby. If you find satisfaction in that, that’s all right. Many people enjoy sewing but don’t make clothes for a living; many people enjoy hiking but don’t become wilderness guides. A beloved pastime need not be turned into a career, and a written story or poem never need be published.

Regardless of one’s goals, though, virtually all writers want to pen something that they feel proud of. Unfortunately, writers tend to be excruciatingly self-critical of themselves – sometimes to the point that though they yearn to write they can’t bring themselves to commit words to paper or computer screen.

You probably are not afraid of writing but afraid of disappointing someone – your readers, your instructors, your family…and most likely yourself. You’ve become too judgmental of your writing and in doing so feed your fear so it has the power to control you.

Now be honest with yourself: You have no idea how others will receive your writing until you write and share it. Further, writers who are extremely judgmental of their abilities actually tend to produce quality books because they hold themselves to such a high standard! Your writing may be quite well-received.

Fortunately, there are many ways you can gather personal courage and dare to write:
• Ignore the bullies – Don’t listen to your inner voice (or others) who are critical of your writing. Allow yourself to write “poorly” realizing that you’ll only get better with each page you pen.
• Rethink why you write – Rather than write to master the craft of writing, write for the journey of self-discovery. Writing then becomes rewarding for reasons other than craftsmanship or being published.
• Start small – Rather than attempt too large of a project, such as a novel or even a short story, aim to write a lone paragraph or a single page. Don’t set yourself up for failure but work slowly and steadily toward completion of a project.
• Change the genre and style in which you write – Perhaps you’re more suited to writing in a different genre or to writing nonfiction instead of a novel. In addition, don’t force yourself to write in ways or to use techniques that you don’t agree with, even if that’s what the writing gurus say should be done.
• Write what you’re compassionate about – Don’t write about topics for which you feel no heat. Just because an issue, topic or theme is popular is no reason to waste words on it; in fact, doing so can make you a hack writer. Write for different reasons than simply being commercially successful.
• Find supporters – Network with like-minded, positive writers who offer constructive criticism and point out what is good about your writing. Encourage each other to write and keep at it.
• Never give up – Any goal worth achieving takes hard work. If you want to improve as a writer, if you want to become a respected writer, then you must write.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Dayton, Ohio, or a small town like Why, Arizona, I can provide that second eye.

How to stay focused on writing one book

Sometimes inspiration strikes for an entirely different book than the one you're working on. Unfortunately, this can create the problem of stopping one book and starting a new one so that your original work never gets finished.

The odds are that the new project you started won’t get completed either, though. You'll come up with another great idea for a book and start working on that one.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to stay focused on writing one book:
• Limit new project ideas to note taking – If an idea comes to you for a new book, quickly jot it down and forget about it. Keep those notes in a separate folder or file. That means no research on the new book, no outlines of it, no writing character sketches, etc.
• Set a deadline – If you can write 2,000 words a day, you'll need 35 days to write a 70,000 word novel. Being realistic – you may be ill, holidays occur, emergencies with the kids happen – give yourself a few extra days. So, that means in 50 days you will complete your novel. That means no other writing can interfere with your goal of 2,000 words a day for about two months.
• Dedicate time slots – If you need two hours to write those 2,000 words, then set aside two specific hours each day in which you only work on your book. Nothing else can be written during that time.
• Bet on yourself – One wild trick I've heard some writers successfully use is to give a hundred dollars cash to a close, trustworthy, relative or friend. When you complete the novel and show it your relative/friend, then you get the money back. You need not use money; perhaps you instead agree with your spouse that if you don't complete the novel by a specific date, you will do the one chore you absolutely hate to do for the next two months.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or a small town like Slap-Out, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

How to get rid of Word’s proofreading marks

Among the most annoying features of Microsoft Word’s Track Changes program is that every time you reopen a file, the corrections show up. To not see the corrections, you have to toggle the “Display for Review” setting to “No Markup.”

This is a default setting because Microsoft says it doesn’t want you to share with others an edited document in which you haven’t approved the corrections. That approach may be fine for micromanagers and control freaks in the corporate world, but for the rest of us, most of the time it’s just plain annoying.

The easy solution to the problem, Microsoft says is to approve or disapprove of each correction. But if you receive a manuscript back from an editor with several hundred proofreading corrections, that’s a time-consuming task that you probably consider unnecessary.

Fortunately, you can change the default setting so those pesky proofreading corrections don’t show up every time you open a file. Rather than have the default setting open your Word file in “All Markup” mode and instead have it open in “No Markup” mode, do this:
• Open your document
• Click “File”
• Click “Options” (in Word 2010, it appears at the bottom of the page’s left side); a new window will pop-up
• Click “Trust Center” in the new window’s left menu; this changes the options in the right pane
• Click in the right pane “Trust Center Settings”; this in turn opens another window
• Click in the new window’s left pane “Privacy Options”
• Uncheck “Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving” in the new window’s right pane
• Click “OK” on both open windows

Test your document by closing and then reopening it. No proofreading marks should show. If you do want to see them, simply change the Track Changes setting to “All Markup” and then under the “Show Markup” dropdown menu, check the types of corrections you wish to see.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Allentown, Pennsylvania, or a small town like Chugwater, Wyoming, I can provide that second eye.

Scrubbing out those cleanup vs. clean up errors

Many writers misuse clean up and cleanup. Time to sweep away those errors!

Cleanup is a noun that means making something clean. Metaphorically, it also is used to indicate that someone has made a lot of money or that a complete job was done. For example: After the party, only a few of the so-called volunteers actually helped with the cleanup.

Clean up is a verb that shows someone in the act of cleaning. By extension, it also can be used to show that someone is making a lot of money. For example: I volunteered to clean up the hall after the big bash.

Now that you know the difference, you writing should be all spick–and–span from here on out!

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like El Paso, Texas, or a small town like Wanderoos, Wisconsin, I can provide that second eye.