The Professional Writing Organization for Writers in Missouri
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ARTICLES BY MEMBERS JUMP TO:
Disconnect, Reconnect, and Write: "Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas everyday. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any." – Orson Scott Card Writers are like pilots; they specialize in transporting people on a smooth journey to a specific destination. Unseen by the audience, hours of practice and preparation go into the perfect flight and the seamless story. Writers are like pilots because they both benefit from a simple trick. A trick to improve flying skills and avoid writer's block is to disconnect the autopilot and reconnect the senses. A plane on autopilot flies itself and can lull the pilot into complacency; a brain on autopilot can dull the writer's senses, allowing the creator to sleepwalk through daily activities. Disconnecting the plane's autopilot improves flying skills; disconnecting the brain's autopilot ignites the writer's mind with ideas. How does that relate to real life? Recently in San Francisco, on a mission to write song titles, I mentally disconnected my brain's autopilot. I took off toward Fisherman's Wharf, focused on connecting to the environment. Fully engaged, I listened and watched with my heart and my head. Ideas flew at me from all directions. A cunning street person transformed into "Crafty Beggar"; a handsome homeless man morphed into "Sexy Loser"; a couple at the water's edge reminded me of "Two Lover's Looking Over the Pier." Walking past story ideas happens when the brain is on autopilot. Writing is like flying – disconnecting the autopilot improves observation skills. So, disconnect, reconnect, and have a nice write. Bio: Cindy Allen is a member of Saturday Writers, a chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild. (www.saturdaywriters.org). She describes herself as:"Enthusiastic Writer. Airline Pilot. Nature Lover. Favorite quote: 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.' – Gandhi" Ask the Book Doctor: About E-mail Submissions,
Standard Manuscript Format, and Using the Names of Periodicals
Q: Are literary magazines now accepting short stories by e-mail (Word documents)? A: In general, more periodicals than ever prefer electronic (e-mailed) queries and submissions, but before making any assumptions, always check the submission guidelines for the magazine you want to approach. Q: How do you format Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 to achieve twenty-five lines per page? A: The guideline for standard manuscript format is twenty-three to twenty-five lines per page, and once you set Word for twelve-point Courier type, double-spaced, it automatically comes out to fit between twenty-three and twenty-five lines per page. To ensure it is double-spaced and not one-and-a-half spaced, go to the bar at the top of the page that shows the heavy B symbol for Bold and the italics letter I for italics, and look across until you see a series of lines with one arrow that points up and one arrow that points down. That is the line-spacing window. Open the line-spacing window by clicking on it, and check 2.0 for double spacing. As an alternate, in some programs you can pull down Format, go to Paragraph, and put in 25-pt. spacing in the line-spacing window, and you’ll get twenty-five lines per page. If the manuscript is already typed, you can change the whole manuscript by first selecting all (either go to Edit and move down to Select All or hold down the Ctrl key and press the A key). When the whole document is highlighted, then go to the line-spacing option and change it to 2.0. Other fonts and other point sizes may not create the standard twenty-three to twenty-five lines a page, which is why Standard Manuscript Format calls for twelve-point Courier type, double-spaced, with margins of at least an inch on all sides. The margins usually fit that format automatically as well, unless you change them yourself. Q: I'm working on a romance about a pair of movie stars and want to tell parts of the story through media blurbs, news stories, tabloid excerpts, etc. Is the use of names of actual publications permissible? Do I have to make up my own media world? A: I’m not an attorney, but put yourself in the place of the owners of those periodicals. If you owned a publication and someone simply mentioned the title of your publication, it’s good publicity. If, however, someone falsely attributed information as having come from your periodical, it’s a sticky situation. If someone attributed information to my own newsletter, The Writers Network News, and I had not put that information in my newsletter, I’d have a serious problem with the person who did it. If I were you, I’d play it safe and create my own media world. Q: I received a rejection from an acquisitions editor, and I am confused, because I don't understand when she said, “It all felt a bit device-y to me and got in the way of my identifying with the characters.” I don't know what she means by “device-y.” What the heck is that? A: In literary terms, a device is something designed to create a particular effect, something planted within the story with the intention of evoking a particular response from readers. Contemporary writing focuses on showing a good story as it unfolds. It draws readers in with conflict, tension, strong characters, and a good story, instead of relying on embedded literary devices. Some small devices that come to mind are uses of terms such as “suddenly,” “at that moment,” or “without warning,” in an attempt to build tension instead of creating tension by showing tension-filled events as they happen. Exclamation marks used incorrectly and strictly for emphasis can also be considered a device. Here’s an example of an exclamation mark used as a device: The trunk was open! On a larger scale, devices might be plot turns that have been used in well-known books or characters that are stereotypical and therefore not realistic or believable. Bobbie Christmas, book doctor, author of Write In Style (Union Square Publishing), and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to Bobbie@zebraeditor.com. Read more “Ask the Book Doctor” questions and answers at www.zebraeditor.com.
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