Matthew 25:36

In the last few days there has been a swirl of coverage and conversation about comments made by Governor Romney about people who "who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

I think it was when he disparaged people who thought they were entitled to food that I'd finally had enough.


Mr. Romney professes to be a man of faith.  I don't know enough about the Mormon religion to know if they use the Bible the same way Catholics and Protestants do.

I don't know if Mr. Romney believes as I do that the central teaching of Jesus Christ as that we do unto other as we would have done unto us.  That our highest purpose in this life is to love one another as Christ loves us.  To feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Visit the prisoners.

A teaching so simple and so elegant it can be the guide for an entire life.

And God knows we will fall short in achieving that. We try knowing we will fail.

But one of the great things about government, about OUR government, is that it IS us.  That it can act in our stead. It can make one person mighty. It can do what we alone can not.

I can not feed a hungry man in New Orleans. My government can.

I can not clothe a man devastated by disaster in Colorado. My government can.

I cannot help a child imprisoned by poverty in the rural west. My government can.


Because I believe that faith without works is hollow, I am glad to support the government doing what it is beyond my power to achieve.

Will there be mistakes, waste, fraud, downright chicanery in the allocation of resources and planning of priorities? Without a doubt.

I accept that risk. I would rather do something than nothing. I would rather try and fail, I would rather my government try and fail, than do nothing.

I pray that Governor Romney is so caught up in the craziness a campaign becomes that he said things he doesn't mean and does not believe. I pray  he has a blinding moment on the road to Damascus and realizes what he said wasn't what he knows in his heart.  Christ does not call us to feed the hungry only if they deserve it; to clothe the naked if they failed through no fault of their own.  To visit only those imprisoned unjustly.

Christ calls us to love all of God's people. There are no ifs ands or buts. No clauses, dependent or otherwise.

It is a difficult and holy calling.

But if you ask me if I can vote for a man who says hungry people are not entitled to food I can not.

Friday Night Saturday Morning at the Question Emporium

I love to edit. I love getting first dibs on a friend's story and figuring out what tools the author could use to shape the story to match their vision.

But there isn't a lot of guidance on the internet on how to be a good editor. There are plenty on self-editing, writing, how to be a good alpha or beta reader, how to find a good editor, and dealing with requested revisions and edits, but not much on the process of editing someone else's work.

It seems like this is a skill and knowledge set that is generally passed on through an apprenticeship (as an intern to an editor or agent) or by evaluating edits that you, as a writer, have received. I don't have access to either. I have a full time job that I love, and this is what I do in my fun time. I want to make sure that I am conveying my responses in a helpful way for the writer.

When you edit for flow, character, story arc, big picture elements, how do you convey your responses to the writer? A revision letter? Comments on the manuscript? Both? Do you do line edits at the same time, or wait until the big revisions are complete? Are there elements you emphasize over another?

I realize "How do you edit?" is almost as ambiguous a question as "How do you write?" But there are hundreds of people who share how they write and self-edit, letting budding writers pick and choose the tricks and processes that will work for them. I'd love to see the same for budding editors.

The first time I saw an honest to goodness real edit letter I realized to my marrow I was not an editor. I am a reader, a fact-checker, a cheerleader, and I hope a good agent, but man oh many I am not a real editor.


You're right. It's a learned skill. The agents I know who started out as editors (Betsy Lerner primarily) talk about reading the editorial letters their bosses sent to see how editing happened.


I send editorial letters and a marked up manuscript.


I send big picture, get all the pieces in place notes first and then go through line by line.

But, every good editor finds their own way. It sounds like you've got the one thing a good editor needs: a passion for the job.

Listen to what people tell you about your edits, and watch what other people do. I don't think there's a right or a wrong way to edit. I think there is what works to get the project the best it can be.

Some of my clients deliver manuscripts that can go directly to the editor.

Some of them need only a spell check.

Some of them need a fact check.

And some of them need a reality check. Those are the calls we all dread, but every one of my clients who's gotten a call like that has sucked it up, and done the work. There's a reason we call them Fabulous and that's one of them.

If any of our blog readers have links to sites about editing/editors that they think are useful/helpful/entertaining, let me know.

View from our new digs!

ok, so I'm not getting any work done cause it's more fun to look out the window to watch what's going on across 29th Street! I'm a total nerd for heavy equipment. I have no idea why. (I can hear Kari Dell laughing at this all the way from Montana!)

Friday Night at the Question Emporium

I'm a freelance editor, and have gotten two questions from writers in the past week about self-publishing one's manuscript in order to get pre-publication blurbs to put in query letters.

Have you heard of this? Are agents starting to ask for a bunch of blurbs from random readers, or is some bad advice making its circuit through the Interwebs?



This seems like some new evil way to occupy newbies with a Sisyphean task that isn't writing or querying, but maybe I'm falling out of the loop.

Yikes!

Blurbs from well-known, bestselling authors, sure, but random readers?? No!


Here's the other warning: self-publishing IS publishing. Once a book is published it has sales numbers or rankings and we all get to look at them. (See yesterday's blog post about this)


If an author thinks self-publishing is the way to get interest in a book, they better take a close look at the number of copies sold for people who then got traditional publishing deals. It wasn't 100. Or a 1000. It was TENS of thousands.


And it's the sales numbers that woo editors, those avaricious yet shy woodland creatures.


It doesn't matter what Stylish Reader in Poughkeepsie says about a book unless it's "I bought ten copies to give to my friends for Christmas."



And just to be clear: I ignore blurbs in query letters. I don't care what anyone else thinks about the book. At the query stage I only care what I think. I'm pretty sure most of ilk agree, but the comments column is wide open for discussion.

"A hero is a man who does what he can"

Friday Thursday Night at the Question Emporium

I've been trying to get a semi-definitive answer on the following question, but no one seems to have an answer. What would be the ramifications of an author querying a novel in one genre while self-publishing a novel in an unrelated genre via digital means on Amazon and the like?

An author, Nick Harkaway, pointed out that selling something in the range of 20K to 40K words wouldn't cut into any potential deal a press wanted to cut with for the hypothetical print book. True?

True, but let's all settle down and realize that once you're published, you have sales numbers and a track record.

And when you sell 20 copies of The Beast That Ate Cleveland (a rhapsodic love letter to the Mistake on the Lake) I have to explain to an editor why that doesn't translate to you're going to sell only 20 copies of your thriller.

And frankly, that's not the stuff I want to be talking about with a debut author.  I want you to be fresh, unsullied, and brimming with enthusiasm. I want you before publishing reality  has beaten the innocence out of you.

Now, if you sell 2 million copies of THE BEAST BITES CLEVELAND it's  a different matter altogether.

The thing is, authors ALWAYS think they're going to sell more than they do. ALWAYS.  You are NOT the exception to this rule and if you learn one thing today, I hope it's this: you never get a second shot at making your publication debut.

I'm a big fan of aiming for where you want to end up.

There's nothing wrong with publishing shorter works on Amazon first, but it's not some sort of golden ticket to a big-ass book deal.  Not even close.

guess what this is!***

***and win a prize!

The more specific your answer, the better your chance to win.

All decisions are entirely subjective. Two people are barred from entering or coaching any one else about the entry (you know who are J&J!!!)


Post your guess in the comments column of this blog.

One guess per person, please.

The prize is a book of course!

New chum bucket time

I love doing the Chum Bucket query experiment but the timing is less than ideal.

Let me know if you have a preference about day of week and time of day.
Here's a poll for that


Also, I may switch to receiving the queries during that time period but answering later.

Let me know what you think about that too.

Fall is in the air..

...when this what you see on the sidewalk here in the Flower District!


 

WDGS?

You've seen all the kids with WWJD wristbands right?

WWJD stands for What Would Jesus Do. It's intended to keep you on the straight and narrow path.

Of course, some people have had some fun with the concept.

Well, I now have one that says "WDGS?"


After this post by Gary Corby, and the other one he did about the Higgs particle, it's clear that after I read the news my only question now is What Does Gary Say?


45 of the great things about my job are the clients -- smart, articulate, hilarious!  Man oh man, I love my job!

Cover me!

Does this look just slightly wrong to you?

Here's a great story on how that cover came to be this cover

Fabulosity

Sentences like this just make me happy happy happy to represent Kari Dell.

"... a hill on Meriwether Road (named after Mr. Lewis, who toured this area less extensively than he'd planned thanks to the Blackfeet)."

Results for the New Digs Writing Contest

Thanks for helping us celebrate the move to the new office!

Some of the entries had amazing turns of phrase. Here are four that stood out:

"giddyup crowd" Lisa (9/14 12:22pm)

"space effervescence" and "star farts" A.E. Welch (9/14 12:51pm)

"the sweet gravity of a friendlier universe." 315herder (9/14 4:26pm)

I just loved these sentences:

"I guess after thirty-five years on the force in Arizona, when you hear someone’s an alien, you never consider they might be the kind armed with acid bubbles from the Carboric galaxy.”
Mrs Silverstein (9/14 12:26pm)

 "“Zorblaxagon, you’re the universe’s worst wingalien!” 
Steve Forti (9/14 4:31pm)

"My heart trampled through my chest, stepping on my lungs, kicking the crap outta my sternum." Kelley Harvey (9/15 9:52am)

Something I'm sure LaSlitherina knows how to do:

"use barbecue sauce for perfume" Patchi (9/14 1:13pm)

These just cracked me up:

"Bob the Alien" --Aspiring Author 9/14 7:41pm

"(Yes, I have a barbeque next to my bed.)" Lynn(e)Schmidt 9/15 2:53PM

"Whoever said there's someone for everyone never watched this guy eat. " Guzin1 9/15 3:00PM

Gives a whole new interpretation to "sweet and savory"

John Arkwright  (9/14 2:23pm)

These entries were good, but closer to a scene than a story:

daniellelapaglia 9/14 2:45pm

Nelson Gregg 9/14 3:53pm

David 9/14 4:46pm

Kim Velk 9/14 7:47pm

Sharon Davidson 9/15 1:25 am

Princess Sara 9/16/ 12:10am

xCoooooot  9/16 11:17am

holy moly!-not quite a story but deeply disturbing in a way that bodes well

for readers in the future!

Rebekah Stewart Yami 9/16 12:57pm

enigmatic but oh so enticing

Eric Morgan 9/14 4:35pm

hilarious political skewering

Otin 9/15 9:34am


These entries made the long list:

Colin Smith (9/14 2:59pm)

Patrick DiOrio (9/14 3:44pm)

Sam B (9/16 10:36 am) (with the best title ever  "The Hazards of Hooking in Area 51")

Here are the four finalists:

Sheila JG (9/14 4:39pm)

“GET IT OFF ME!”

“Hold still, Mike,” I said, as he ripped off his shirt.

“Oh shit, it burns! It’s a BOB, isn’t it?”

I scanned his back, tweezers ready. Yep, there it was, between the shoulder blades - The Burrowing Oven Bug. The little alien ticks entered through the skin, and then gradually, over days, barbecued their host from the inside.

I pulled. A wing came off, the rest of the bug disappeared, leaving only a bubble of blood.

“Mike, if it gets in . . . “

He didn’t have to finish. I released the safety on my gun.

TeresaR (9/14 5:10pm)

Blame it on the stupid Labor Day cookout. I had the barbecue sauce on the grill and was about to stir it when I noticed a wing sticking out of the thick muck.

Ewww, right?

But it wasn’t that kind of wing. When I pulled it out, it was attached to a miniature spacecraft. Then I noticed the diminutive…alien…being tossed by the bubbles in the pot.

I watched it bob up and down a few times in horror before I had the sense to pull its limp body out.

No wonder they interpreted it as a hostile encounter. I’m sorry.

Ashley Whitt (9/14 11:11pm) (I had to read this one three times to get it)

The skipping rope and bubble wand lay abandoned.

Chalky letters spelt her name on a gritty sidewalk. Lucy. They knew her only as The Taker. Whether she was alien or god, that, they did not know. But occasionally, particularly on days that the sun seared the packed earth, one of their own would go missing.

They would send scouts, darting into the open air, with heads that bobbed above the grassline, but it was futile. All they would find was a wing. A leg. The smell of burnt thorax.

Glass turned light into a deadly beam.

A cruel barbeque, indeed.

Sisi (9/16 9:30am)

A whole hour to talk about some story called “Bernice Bobs Her Hair?” Michael slunk lower into his desk, longing for a fire alarm, an alien invasion, anything. Across the aisle Trevor nibbled on some barbecued meat from a baggie. Two rows over Harrison blew a huge bubble and showed it off to Lexi.

Lexi, who made that stupid song, “The Wind Beneath My Wings” play in his head. She smiled at Trevor, and Michael looked away.

When the window shattered and a figure too tall to be human stepped through, Michael sat frozen in fear and guilt and relief.

And the winner is:

Ashley Whitt (9/14 11:11pm) 

 

Ashley, drop me a line and we'll either set you up for a query/ms critique (one or the other, not both) from my boon companion in crime Brooks Sherman, OR if you don't need that, we'll find a good book for you!  Congratulations.

 

Congratulations too for all the entries! Thanks for helping us celebrate!

Best time to go to the flickers in NYC!

The 10:30am showing is pretty much a private screening!

This is a Times Square multiplex too!

For this showing I saw Ted starring Mark Wahlberg (yes I'm a besotted fan) and then I zipped across the street to see Bourne at 1pm. Not quite empty but fewer than ten people in the theatre!

this cracked me up

“You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say?

Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?”

from OKAY FOR NOW by Gary Schmidt

(Brooks Sherman gave it five stars 

so I hope to steal his copy soon)

Writing Contest!--UPDATED with PRIZE!

FinePrint has new digs! We're rolling out the welcome mat to our friends and neighbors.  Of course  LaSlitherina and her trusty bubbles were first through the door.  Bubbles is the champagne, not her companion.

So of course we must expand the celebration to include a writing contest!

Usual rules: 100 words or fewer. Tell me a story using these words (which may or may not have been inspired by the photo!)

alien
bubbles
wing
barbecue
bob

Contest opens at noon today, 9/14/12 and runs through Sunday 9/16/12 at noon. All times are Eastern Shark Time of course.

Post your entry in the comments column of THIS blog post.

One entry per person. If you need a mulligan, delete your comment and repost.

PRIZE: your query critiqued by Brooks Sherman, my boon companion in crime...and coffee.

Ready?
set?
Not yet!
Contest opens at  noon!
WRITE! 


closed!

Chum Bucket results 9/8

Total queries: 15! Lowest turnout yet.


First draft writing: 3
A good query gets me reading pages and often as not, the novel simply isn't ready to query. Over writing, starting at the wrong place, no world building, too much dialogue, lots of things can make me stop reading those pages and say no.

One of the best ways to train your eye to recognize this is read good books and copy  the first couple paragraphs in your writer's journal.  The act of actually writing the words you're reading helps you  see them. It trains your eye and ear for cadence and balance. And if you read 100 books, you can start synthesizing some of the tricks that all authors use to get you into the story.



Novel was too short: 1
I look for novels between 80-100K. I don't auto-reject anything  for the adult trade market until it's below 60K.

Middle-grade (referred to Brooks Sherman): 1
I don't do middle grade books but Brooks Sherman does and he's actively looking for projects.

 

Referred on: 2
I don't have as much room on my list as some of my colleagues so if I think something sounds good, but not quite what I'm hungering for, I'll pass you along to one of them.


Can't sell it: 1
There's a blog post about this here








Not actively looking for this
--small scale, amateur sleuth, regional mystery: 1
--YA fantasy: 1
---Urban fantasy: 1
---Zombie novels: 1
--too introspective or abstract: 3



Next chum bucket is Saturday 9/15!

FPLM field trip: Cornelia Read

"When we first moved to Boulder, I was entirely too happy -- a state of being so rare in my experience that I found it rather terrifying."

I have been a devoted fan of Cornelia Read for years.  Her great line from FIELD OF DARKNESS "Dear Reader, I decked the bitch" is one of the few I've seriously considered getting tattooed on myself. Maybe even on the forehead.

Thus when Cornelia's fourth book was published this week, I went to her signing as did many of her other fans.  I was smart; I got there early. I was REALLY smart: I bought the book before they sold out.

If you haven't yet discovered Cornelia Read now is the time. Start with FIELD OF DARKNESS. Read the books in order. 

If you don't like them, you'll need to show me a note from your doctor verifying you've taken leave of your senses or we can't be friends any more. 

the department of tell it first to control the spin!

There I am in a glamorous apartment having lunch with Famous actor and Famous writer. I'm kinda beside myself cause I love and admire them, and their work.  That means I'm trying to behave myself.

Not burping after a discreet drag from the flask.
Not using the boarding house reach for the mozzarella cheese.
Not using my knife like a conductor's baton during conversation.

Yanno, the stuff you're supposed to do without having to think about it.

Lunch happens and we're all regaling each other with tales of triumph and the woes of our enemies (cause those are the best kind of course.)  Coffee is served.

I am talking animatedly.  I'm in peak form.

I pour cream in my coffee and just a dash/pinch of sugar. Then figure what the hell, and put in a big teaspoon. One might even say heaping.

I take a big ol' gulp.

And realize I've dipped my spoon into the bowl of salt, not sugar.

What to do?
Spew on Famous One or Famous Two?
That doesn't seem like the right idea.

Spew on Brooks Sherman, my boon companion in crime sitting next to me?
Better choice, but really not all that good either.

So, I swallow. Oh yes, indeed, nothing like a good swig of salty coffee.

I pray no one notices.

Only then, I hear a small noise from my left.
Well mannered, well appointed, gentleman Brooks Sherman, following my lead
has ALSO put salt in his coffee.

He looks at me.
I look at him.

He swallows.

In the cab ride home, he fixes me with a stare that soon will be feared by editors across the land.

"I'd like to discuss my raise."

Wait! Wait! I'm not really crazy!

I'm a devoted fan of the NPR News Quiz  show Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me.  I listen to it on my ipod on my way to and from work.

 Since I live in NYC,  to and from  generally involves a subway.

And since it's NYC I very rarely commute by myself.  In fact, an empty subway car means generally one of three things:

1. There is a foul odor such that car occupants fled mid ride;
2. The air conditioning is broken;
3. You're on the train right directly behind the train that is stuffed like a cattle car.

All this to say, when you have your Ipod plugged in to Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me you can find yourself laughing outloud on a crowded subway car like a crazy person.  Tonight the crazy lady on the train was me.

Here's the setup.  The show has a segment called Lightning Fill in the Blank in which a caller must fill in the final word of a limerick.


Limerick:
I can face all the undead hordes calmly,
even if they can learn how to bomb me.
In my fort I keep fresh,
and they won't eat my flesh.
My new home will protect me from _________.


(pause)

(pause)





Contestant: Romney?



I was on the floor!
As was the listening audience, the host and the panelists.


Usually when I find myself laughing on the train I can discreetly chuckle into my backpack but this time I was laughing out loud on a subway car at rush hour and normally unfazed New Yorkers were inching away.  (That was ALMOST as funny as the podcast!)


Of course the real answer was zombies, but that wasn't anywhere near as fun.