Did your parents tell you about their growing-up days? Would your children and grandchildren like to read about how they coped during the Great Depression? The Second World War? What their teenage years were like? What do you suppose your children and grandchildren would like to know about your own growing-up days? Do they know where you were born? Where you went to school? What you and your family and your friends did together? I’m talking about writing for the … Read More »

If you have a particular interest, activity, or hobby, there is a magazine out there that wants you to write for it. Do you run? Play tennis? Like dogs? Fix bicycles? Play the piano? Attend church? Plant wildflowers around your house? Watch birds? Like rocks? Anything you do and know something about can be fodder for an article that some magazine will be interested in. My efforts at writing fiction have never gone anywhere. But I was involved in many … Read More »

People need people. Most of us humans are a gregarious sort. When the writing life becomes discouraging and lonely, it helps to be able to talk to another writer. This is the virtue of a writers’ group. I have started a writers group in an area that had none (with one other person over coffee at the kitchen table) and also have come to new areas that had existing clubs to join. Perhaps this discussion will help you in your … Read More »

Oh, boy! You’ve finished your nonfiction book, and it’s been set in type, copy-edited, and proofed. You have the proof copy in your hand. Nice design, no typos, pages all in order, and everything. Now it needs an index. The publisher wants you to hire someone at your expense to index it. But you know your book and the subject matter better than anyone else. You can do this. You’ve seen some of those books that have been indexed by … Read More »

Sending an editor really clean copy is a big plus. In the old days, clean copy meant it didn’t have any smudges or coffee splashes or penciled corrections. Now it means your manuscript has words spelled correctly, capital letters and punctuation used properly, paragraphing is appropriate, and apostrophes are in the right places. One editor I sent articles to regularly said my copy was the cleanest of any he received. If my memory is not too fuzzy, he changed a … Read More »

When Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice back in 1596 or ’97, he peppered it with commas. His commas were meant to tell the actors in his play to pause in their reading or emphasize a word or phrase with a hesitation. For thousands of years, commas served as directions to actors and readers. When I directed church choirs, the composer of the anthem would write the music to show where he wanted a pause. Occasionally, when my choir would … Read More »