I am a word nerd. I love to geek out on weird and wonderful applications like Scrivener, Microsoft Word, Grammarly and the Hemingway Editor. These programs are innovative and can do some of the heavy-lifting for writers, especially in commercial writing, social media and journalism, catching spelling mistakes and proofing for small errors. But for novelists, poets and short story writers, editing programs are like talking to your drunken roommate from college; they don't always make a lot of sense. Allowing an editing program to decide how you should write is a critical mistake. Writing software has certain weaknesses, just check out the infamous spell check poem which proves conclusively that spellcheck is not the boss of you. Editing programs cannot detect rhythm or poetic metaphor or choose when the passive voice is more powerful than the active voice. Complex sentence structure baffles the algorithms of these applications. One day maybe, but not now. Editing and spelling software cannot replace education or instinct. Writers need to learn the rules in order to make … [Read more...] about The Corrections: Hemingway Editor scores Nobel Prize winning author’s prose as “poor”
Author Robert Gregory Browne on Storytelling and the Art of Composing
The age of eBooks has opened the door to an exuberant array of writers. We have new voices, bright with potential. Sometimes they are raw, tentative and hobbled by an uncertain grasp of spelling, grammar or technique, but the talent is there. On the other end of the scale are the seasoned pros, writers with a past who for one reason or another have stepped away from traditional publishing. When I run into these writers, it’s always a bit of a surprise. They have old school polish but are producing work in the new frontier of the Internet, riding the cutting edge of technology. These writers are sleek and agile craftsman, wordsmiths who know how to turn a phrase, build tension and create tight, well paced plots. Why are they good? Because they’ve done it before. ALOT. They are professionals. Robert Gregory Browne is one of those writers. Robert has been to the mountaintop. An ITW Thriller Award nominated novelist, he started his career penning short stories and went on to write books for St. Martin's Press and Penguin Dutton. He’s worked under his own name and under top … [Read more...] about Author Robert Gregory Browne on Storytelling and the Art of Composing
Big Five Publishing: A Murmur of Denial
Lately, a strange murmur has rippled across the publishing industry and echoed through my inbox; e books are just a fad, close your eyes, take a deep breath and they'll go away. Despite Nielson's own findings that print sales of adult fiction have declined by 37% since 2009 to the tune of over £150m loss, a brief flurry of physical book sales at Christmas appears to have triggered an industry-wide fantasy. Articles proliferated across the web declaring the e book dead. I must have read Tim Waterstone's quote half a dozen times, "— e-books have developed a share of the market, of course they have, but every indication – certainly from America – shows the share is already in decline. The indications are that it will do exactly the same in the UK.” A revisionist reality began to take shape. And across the post modern boardrooms of the Big Five, I could practically hear the murmurs of denial. At this year's London Book Fair Publishing for Digital Minds Conference, keynote speaker Author David Nicholls characterized publishers as social crusaders saying, “But we should … [Read more...] about Big Five Publishing: A Murmur of Denial
