Being Practical

Happy New Year! I know a lot of us seem to be happy to see 2016 come to an end, as it was a difficult year from all over the world.  The first day of the year always brings a renewed feeling for better times, and I do wish that for everyone for 2017.

I mentioned in my last post that I would let you know more about my latest project, The Practical Writer.  If you have been reading my blog from the start, then you know about my first project, The Practical MT. I taught medical transcription for 13 years, and most of what I dealt with as far as questions and instruction were issues regarding grammar and punctuation, not medical questions. Once I got into self-publishing and reading other indie authors, I was finding a lot of great stories, but many lacking in quality—not with the storyline, but with errors in grammar, punctuation, missing words or run-on sentences, and so on. I’m not saying that everything I read was showing too many errors, but enough that I thought it would be helpful to especially new authors to create a reference that would focus on quality.

You won’t find how to run a contest, do give-aways, or tips on writing a novel in 90 days. There are plenty of articles and books on how to accomplish those things. But I found very little written about how to make sure the quality of your story is as good as the story itself!  I know for myself, I thought I was pretty good at grammar and punctuation, but I was amazed at how much I did forget once I started teaching medical transcription and getting questions from my students.  Oh, I knew the basics. I had to because I did write a lot of articles and was even editor of a newsletter for the local chapter of my professional organization in the 90s. There was still a lot I didn’t know or had forgotten. So in a way, I was relearning all those old rules and guidelines right along with my students.

This isn’t a long book, a tad over 100 pages. It would probably take you only a few hours at most to read it front to back. My hope is that this isn’t going to be a book that you will read through once and put it aside or pass it on. My hope is that you will refer back to it over and over again. With many of the chapters, I provided a blank page at the end for “My Notes,” so you can add things I might not have addressed or perhaps add new details. Even if you have the E-version, you can add your own notes in a notebook or electronically. So both the print and E‑versions will work either way. 

 

You might ask why I wrote this reference. It’s for a couple of reasons. One is that I do love to mentor. When I was teaching MT, I felt more like a mentor than instructor. Maybe because the course I taught was more a self-teaching course, and I was there to answer questions and helping students find and improve upon their weaknesses, build on their strengths. Secondly, I want to help better our industry. Self-publishing has become huge, but despite our growing numbers, we do have an uphill battle in not only getting our stories out there, but also showing our readers that our novels are as good, in some cases if not better, than traditional publishing house novels. This reference guide can help make sure of that!  

Look for The Practical Writer later this month!  Enjoy your day and thanks for hanging out.