On Writing

Jennifer, if you like Dean Koontz, have you read his WATCHER and STRANGERS?" (I can never remember which title is singular and which plural.) I've read a lot of his books, and I think they're his best. Unfortunately, some of his more recent books are not up to the standard he once set; I've been disappointed.

Barbara

Post 61

Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 3:20am

Thomas L. Knapp wrote: "I'm a working (although not necessarily always eating) writer apart from my personal projects. I've sold some magazine pieces and have a regular ghosting gig (every piece on spec). "

Congratulations! I have never done well writing on spec. After a couple of failures, I looked for a better path. I send out ten or 20 letters to editors, offering to work on assignment. Ten days later, I call them to make sure the materials arrived. I ask for a meeting. Usually, they decline. The one who says yes is the one I meet in person. I bring a lot of samples and I talk a lot and I ask a lot of closing questions. When two people meet, a sale takes place: either you sell them on hiring you or they sell you on why they shouldn't hire you. If I don't make the sale, I do make sure that we had a good time and if this was lunch, I pick up the check. If it results in an assignment, then I go from there. I would rather put my time and effort into making the sale than in writing something that did not sell. So, I do not work on spec. That you do says a lot for you.

Publications are important because they establish you. From 1991-1993, I was a fulltime employee of a multinational (Kawasaki) and I wrote nothing freelance. That happened again 1999-2000 when I worked for Amos Press as their international editor. When I needed to get back on course, I published anything anywhere immediately. Once a couple of those appeared in print, I could send them out with older material.

I try to hit on a wide range of areas. Having numismatics and aviation for hobbies works well for me because I can place a feature in those venues easily, even if I do not get paid in cash for it. (I have a lifetime membership in the Georgia Numismatic Association as a result of one arrangement.) The point is that the next editor I pitch does not know or care what I got paid. Coins and airplanes are interesting. Writing for business magazines, I have intereviewed lobbyists, restauranteurs, pet groomers, musical theater directors, private detectives, truckers, and many more kinds of people. About a dozen of those resulted in nice covers. So, it makes a good pitch.

Post 62

Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 3:31am

My other market is technical writing. I create user manuals and other documentation for financial management and factory automation systems.

For those assignments, illustrations are important and I am not an artist. So, that is a challenge. In a previous post, I mentioned reading level. Managers are concerned about that. For me, learning is a thrill, so I enjoy the entire process of getting the information into my head and then putting it down on paper (or online). The best part of any book is creating the index. I really excel at that and my inspiration has been Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, indexed by Allan Gotthelf. The scholar's edition of Human Action also has a great index.

Post 63

Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 3:46am

Alec Mouhibian wrote: "Since Stephen King's On Writing has come up, I have to quote this actual sentence from that book. It is hilarious:
�With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn�t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or picture across.�
Talk about a sentence being an unintentional parody of itself! To top it off, it's in a book called "On Writing."

Stephen King and the entirety of popular fiction is for people who have time to waste. That broad generalization condemns some innocents, no doubt. Still, I think of people on vacation or people who have day jobs and no families or people who otherwise have large blocks of unproductive time. They do not even have hobbies. So, they read. For them, the more words the better. Stephen King sells words in commodites exchange shipments. Yet, as you point out, Alec, King has not solved the problem of the impersonal pronoun.

I did stop to think about his claim that adverbs signal weak writing. That may be valid.
1. He ran quickly.
2. He ran, puffing and sweating.
3. He ran for his life, the blocklong line of parked cars sliding away in a minute of lung tearing agony.
4. (Then we get to Stephen King.)

To me, King's point about adverbs underscores the advice, "Show, don't tell."
Then, there is Aristotle's advice to be moderate.

Post 64

Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 9:18am

Barbara,

"Okay, Tom, I'll give you one line from King, but I won't give anyone Miller."

You're probably right on that one. I tried to recall so much as a single line from "The Crucible," and couldn't.

Personally, I enjoy most of Stephen King's novels. Most of his protagonists are good but troubled people who thrash through their own contradictions to _find the heroic_ within themselves. That they _do_ find it is the redeeming feature of his work. For all that he's a horror writer, he seems to have more romantic sense of life than many would give him credit for (especially in the Dark Tower books and in _Desperation_).

Tom Knapp

Post 65

Friday, March 25, 2005 - 4:06am

Jennifer wrote: "There's also a gentleman by the name of Robert Bidinotto who has published more articles than all of us put together... "

Thanks for the pointer to Bidinotto's work. He certainly has achieved much and I was impressed.

It is humbling to not be known to your peers. Last weekend, I was at a local coin show. One of the local collectors was set up at a table as a dealer. I was writing up the show for the statewide quarterly that I edit for $3000 a year. I asked him a few questions and I was impressed that he is actually a member of the American Numismatic Association. (Fewer than 30,000 are, even though perhaps 10 million people claim to "collect coins" according to the U.S. Treasury.) Anyway, I introduced myself -- and waited... and waited... Then I told him that I write the "Internet Connections" column for Numismatist magazine... and a glimmer of a light almost went on. He gets the magazine every month. It is the primary benefit of his membership. He had no idea who I am. An American Express card would not have helped. It gets better. He was reading a King Test Review, a book for pilots preparing for an FAA written examination. Among my other venues have been Great Lakes Pilot and Plane & Pilot News out of Ravenna, Ohio, two regional periodicals that he must have seen. I have written news and features for both and even had a column in P&PN with my picture. Of my 20 or so articles on www.studentpilot.com half a dozen are about learning to fly in and around Michigan. Nothing. No idea. Not a clue. I was a total stranger.

So, there was this time when I got a call from an editor who said they needed to cut a line from my piece. They had pulled all the tricks with leading and size, but needed to make it a bit shorter, even though it was pretty tight writing. What would I cut? they asked. Take out the by-line, I replied.

Post 66

Friday, March 25, 2005 - 4:14am