Tag: writing

Writing Advice

Writing Advice: On Definitely Using the Right Word

Harriet Phoenix

Spell checkers are excellent things, but I think we can all agree that over-relying on them is a mistake. Like anything else, they have their limitations. The one I’m talking about today is wrong word usage.

I posted a column a while back about beta readers and why we need them. One thing I discussed in that column is that spellcheckers, for some reason, don’t always notice when you’ve used the wrong word. I used to have a weird habit of using “reign it in” instead of “rein it in,” a small but glaring malapropism that my spellchecker completely missed but my beta readers (wonderful human beings that they are) didn’t.

That’s the great thing about humans over spellcheckers; spellcheckers only know if your writing matches the rules they’re programmed with. Humans are able to think and thus realise what you meant to say and where you’ve gone wrong. We humans have our own internal spellchecker that we’ve been reprogramming every time we’ve read anything our whole lives. It’s not infallible, however, especially when it comes to our own work, which is one reason we need beta readers.

Where it gets fun is when a person’s spellchecker ends up with a bit of programming that is just plain wrong.

A girl I knew at school once got shouting angry over the word “hasty.” She was convinced it meant “slow” and was absolutely ready to die on that hill (we English nerds attract each other, alright?). We finally called over an English teacher, who thought it over and concluded that she’d misunderstood the phrase, “more speed, less haste.” Another girl was absolutely sure that magenta was a shade of blue, and smugly insisted that I, the author of a book I cited as evidence, and friggin’ Crayola were idiots for thinking it was actually pink (that girl and I were not on the kind of terms that allowed for a lot of unpacking, and so the mystery of how she came to this conclusion remains unsolved).

So, yeah. Humans can think, but our programming is as able to be wrong as a spellchecker. That’s why, as with most things, it’s best to use a variety of methods to give yourself the most opportunities to catch mistakes.

Throw words you’re not sure about into a search engine before you use them. Use your spellchecker. Use beta readers. Sneak in quick rereads at odd moments, and one last one before you his SEND just to be safe.

Finally, just accept that, no matter how many times you read your brain-baby through, or how many beta readers check it over for you, after sending it off you will find a glaring mistake that somehow got missed before, and it will be embarrassing. That’s just how it works.

Writing Advice

Writing Advice: Unpopular Punctuation: Colons and Semicolons

Harriet Phoenix

My GCSE English teacher had many fun little quirks, one being that he hated semicolons with a fiery vengeance. He considered them useless articles, easily and better replaced with other forms of punctuation.

Did anyone else have this? A teacher who just sort of religiously took against a random feature of the language? He was pretty good-humoured about it, but still. That’s weird, and I’m saying that.

I, however, use them all the time. Okay, partly because I formed a habit in response to the above just to be contrary; fair comment. However, the semicolon wouldn’t exist if it didn’t serve a purpose, so let’s dive in.

A semicolon is effectively a “super-comma” used to link two complete, but closely related sentences as if they were clauses in one complex sentence, just like I did in the preceding paragraph. “… just to be contrary,” and “fair comment,” are sentences in themselves, and I used a semicolon to smush them together into one. A comma won’t work, because they only join sentence clauses, not sentences.

Basically, when a comma doesn’t feel like enough but a full stop feels too much, throw a semicolon in there and see if that works.

Now, my former teacher probably would have told me to just make them separate sentences, but I feel that a full stop would create a full-stop-level break in the rhythm that I don’t want there. Other alternatives, such as ending the first sentence and beginning the next with a connective word, like “however…” or “because…” clearly wouldn’t work there. A semicolon does.

If a semicolon is a super-comma, then the super-semicolon is… uh… a colon. Colons are mainly used to end a complete sentence and introduce something else: the basic difference between this and a semicolon is that a semicolon links two complete sentences, whereas what follows a colon is dependant on what came before to make sense. Like just there, where using the word “this” makes what comes after the colon a sentence fragment without the part before the colon. If I’d instead written, “the basic difference between a colon and a semicolon…” then that would be a complete sentence and would have to be preceded by a semicolon. Confused yet? Great!

Colons are also used to introduce a list, with the list items separated by commas (e.g. the countries of the UK are: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales). However, where a comma is already in use the semicolon can once again step up as a super-comma to clarify things with an additional degree of separation. For example:

My favourite sci fi novels include: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams; The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers; Trading in Danger, Elizabeth Moon; The Martian, Andy Weir; Earth Girl, Janet Edwards; and Leviathan’s Wake, James S.A. Corey.

(List is in no way comprehensive.)

Yes, I know; I could have used “by” instead of the commas and then commas instead of semicolons. Whatever, it’s just an example. The point is; far from being useless, the semicolon has specific uses, and gives you some flexibility in how you express yourself. It’s where the rising comma meets the falling full stop. Embrace it.

Writing Advice

Writing Advice: Finding Competitions to Enter

Harriet Phoenix

Once you’ve finished your story, poem, creative non-fiction or whatever variety of brain-baby you make, and you’ve made it all shiny and nice, you’ll probably want to try and publish it somewhere. Entering your work into writing competitions is a pretty good way to do this, but where do you find them? Here’s my non-comprehensive list of places to try:

Writing magazines! You ARE subscribed to at least one, right? If not, sign up to one right now (or, if budget is an issue, stop by your local library and see if they have any. If they don’t, find a librarian and ask if they’d consider signing up. And then write to your MP, governor or whoever is in charge of these things in your area about keeping libraries open). Seriously, every writer should be receiving at least one writing magazine for inspiration and information. Also, as well as running competitions themselves, any writing magazine worth reading will have a section where writing competitions and publication opportunities of all kinds are listed, often by writing form and genre. Chances are, you’ll be able to find something there that works for you.

Alternatively, there’s the standby: just Google it (using the search engine of your choice; other options are available). Plenty of literary sites list competitions, so hunt around, bookmark a few you like and check them on the regular. Throw in “writing competitions” whenever you’ve got a few minutes and see what you can find.

Of course, any publisher or other entity who have run a competition that has interested you in the past is worth checking again, even if you didn’t end up submitting or your entry didn’t make the cut. If they ran one competition that felt like your thing, chances are they’ll run another at some point, so keep a list somewhere and drop in every month or so just in case.

Obviously, once you’ve found a few competitions you like the look of you’ll want to do an organised-person thing, like make a note of it somewhere so you don’t forget and miss the deadline. I have a spreadsheet for competitions I intend to enter (for someone who doesn’t like spreadsheets very much, I do seem to have a lot of them), with columns for things like competition title, wordcount range, deadline, publisher and a hyperlink. If you’re like me and getting organised is tricky for you, then taking an hour or so to throw something like that together can save infinite headaches for Future You.

So, that’s my incomplete list of places to start your search for competitions to enter. I’ve undoubtedly missed something, but hopefully I’ve given you a few good places to start. Have fun with whatever competitions you choose to enter! Coming soon: How to Deal with Rejection!

Writing Advice

Writing Advice: Cover Letters

Harriet Phoenix

Another nuts-and-bolts column today. Loathe ‘em or hate ‘em, cover letters are a necessary part of submitting your writing absolutely anywhere, so hold hands and take a deep breath: let’s get this over with.

Most creative work is submitted electronically these days, so your cover letter will likely be copy-pasted into an online form, or the body text of an email with your story attached.

While the quality of your submitted work is most important, you should assume your cover letter will have a bearing on your submission’s chances; this ties back to a previous column about making life easy for whoever deals with your submission. Your cover letter is where you tell them what you’re sending and what you expect them to do with it. That might seem obvious, but imagine being the person trying to sort hundreds of incoming entries for five different competitions. They’ve probably set submission guidelines to tell you exactly which information they want from you, so read those and follow them carefully.

Your cover letter has different requirements depending on what kind of creative work you’re submitting. If it’s part of a greater project, such as an anthology or a magazine, then keep your letter short; greet the editor by name if you know it or “Dear Editor” if you don’t. In your first paragraph, tell them the name of your entry, the genre or subgenre and the wordcount. The next paragraph should be an author bio if they’ve asked for one; if not, assume they’ll ask if your piece is accepted. Then thank them for their consideration and sign off. That’s it; remember that hypothetical person with hundreds of these to go through, and don’t waste their time.

A cover letter for a novel is different. It’s an introduction to someone with whom you hope to forge an intense and prolonged business relationship; the investment of time and resources in a debut novel is immense, and the agent or publisher you’re reaching out to needs to know who they’re dealing with. Where a cover letter for a short piece needs to be to the point, this kind requires you to take your time and elaborate.

When I attended the Stockholm Writers Festival in August, I got to discuss the submission process with Liv Maidment of the Madeleine Milburn Agency, who told me a cover letter for a novel should be written “as if the person reading it will be fed up and hung over.” Going too formal is a mistake; you’re giving this person an idea of what the next few years will be like if they choose to invest in you. Don’t obscure your personality; try and cast yourself in a fun and friendly (but still professional!) light.

(It’s worth noting that I didn’t realise any of this when I was submitting my first novel and went ridiculously formal, which is maybe why no one went for that one. Maybe.)

For the same reason, don’t copy-paste this one. Personalise it. Mention why you’ve chosen this agency, this agent, in particular (“I wrote a book and you do books” isn’t it). For example, if I were to submit a work to Liv Maidment, I would definitely mention having spoken to her at a festival. If you’re a fan of one of their authors, say so, especially if you think it has a bearing on the work you’re submitting. Also; talk about your influences. Which existing authors would your work share a table display with? Pick someone well-known and recent.

So, that’s cover letters. I’ll try and do something fun next time, I promise.

Writing Advice

Writing Advice: Fanfic: Yea or Nay?

Harriet Phoenix

Okay, cards on the table; this column felt like a piece of harmless fun when I picked it, and now that feels like a mistake, because there are a lot of opinions out there on the subject of fanfic and whether or not it’s artistically valid or even morally acceptable.

Some of these opinions come from some very high-profile authors, such as Anne Rice, who has stated that “It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters,” or George R.R. Martin, who “[doesn’t] wanna read it and I would not encourage people to write it.” Diana Gabaldon colourfully expressed the desire to “barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.”

Clearly, emotions run high when fanfic is under discussion.

And yet, AO3 processes 6 000 invitations per day. That’s the population of a village seeking an account from which to post or view fanfic, every day. That’s an awful lot of people for the folks mentioned above to be annoyed with.

On the other side of the fence, Neil Gaiman has stated that “all writing is useful for honing writing skills. I think you get better as a writer by writing.” Meg Cabot concurs; “I think writing fan fiction is a good way for new writers to learn to tell a story.”

Me personally – and I’d like to state for the record that this is JUST AN OPINION, DON’T SHOOT – I do find fanfiction artistically valid, although I can definitely see why others would feel differently. For one thing, I have no idea what it would be like to come across fanfic involving my own work. I imagine I’d be blown away at the idea that something I’d written had made such an impact on someone, but I don’t know that. I can also imagine wanting to avoid such works wherever possible, for the usual legal reasons and to avoid my vision getting tangled with someone else’s. But its actual existence means someone really engaged with your work, and isn’t that what we’re going for?

Finally, writing fanfic is fun. Let’s face it, writing can be tough. It’s not something anyone does because it’s easy, it’s something we do because we love it, and if you want to be able to maintain your writing then it’s important to keep touch with the fun.

I’ve made no secret lately that I’ve been struggling. Covid took a baseball bat to my immune system in the spring, I keep getting annoying little bugs and my brain keeps getting stuck on low-power mode. None of this is making it easy to keep writing, but I’ve found that if I take a break, it becomes even harder to start again. I tend to side with Gaiman and Cabot on this topic, because one way I’ve found to work with my brain is to write fanfic. It’s fun, there’s very little pressure which makes it easier, and best of all it keeps me writing.

Just, y’know, don’t expect it to advance your professional writing career or anything. I hear the copyright holders can get snippy about that sort of thing.