Writing Wrongs

October 07, 2006

Early morning:

The oddest thing happened the other day. I opened my notebook at lunch, prepared to jot down notes on a scene or maybe a short story. What I started to write was the query content or the blurb (a word I dislike for no apparent reason--I just don�t like it) for Geek Girl's Guide.

It came from nowhere. Although I did mention to Marianne earlier this week that I needed to figure one out for Geek Girl�s Guide. But I didn�t give it any conscious thought. Zero. Which was why I was so surprised to suddenly have the format and some of the content flow from my pen. Usually it doesn�t work that way.

Later that same morning:

I deciphered my notes, made them coherent, and came up with something I really like. It will need revising and editing, and it�s a bit long, but for now, I�m pleased. I�m applying the same rule for synopsis writing to query writing. If I start hearing the query in my head, drop everything and write. I will not remember it later.

I�m still working on one paragraph. It started life as a 54-word sentence. Uh, that�s a little long, especially for a query. Now if I were Virginia Woolf and I were writing To The Lighthouse that would be acceptable. The other day, I was surfing about and saw some feedback about sentences being too long in someone�s work. The longest sentence in question was all of fourteen words.

I really hope we�re not becoming so stupid we no longer understand compound sentences. I like short sentences. I like one-word sentences. I like long sentences too, sprinkled with em-dashes. Sentence length is merely one tool in the writer�s toolbox.

Like bullet points, which I used in the query (and as a technical writer, I�m really excited about this development). Maybe it isn�t 100% �kosher� in some circles, but I like it.

Houston, we have a query.

Charity Tahmaseb wrote at 11:21 a.m.

|