I looked at some of my earliest posts hoping for inspiration for a guest article — I figured with an archive of 1,380 posts there should be something of interest for me to resurrect and expand on. I was surprised to discover how few of those early posts still had significance. Many were about my efforts to attract the attention of an agent, editor, or publisher, and I have since found a publisher. If ever I found myself unpublished, I’m not sure I’d embark on a quest for re-publication — I had my fill of querying years ago. (Not sure I’d self-publish, either, which would leave me exactly nowhere.)
It’s not only personal posts that time has rendered obsolete, but also posts about the publishing world. Things sure have changed in the six years since I began this blog!
Some of my early posts focused on what I had learned about Capturing the Attention of an Editor. We have an image in our heads of editors and editorial assistants eagerly pawing through the slush pile in search of our literary gems. In truth, all they are looking for is a reason to dismiss our manuscripts. If our first words don’t grab them, too bad. That’s all the time they are going to give us. And if by chance our first words do entice them to read further? They are going to be looking for any excuse to stop.
The trouble with this advice is that many writers now go directly to self-publishing without doing any research on how to capture the attention of an editor. As it turns out, what agents, editors, and publishers seem to be looking for are self-published books with a strong following, making my post redundant.
Other of my early posts focused on Basic Tenets for Good Writing, such as using dynamic verbs and concrete nouns; putting the action before the reaction; eschewing passive voice; not being clever for the sake of being clever; and paying attention to spelling, punctuation on grammar. I thought these tenets were undebatable, but all over the internet, writers are debating the necessity of such basics.
Still other posts mentioned what readers look for when they pick up a book, such as Paragraph Size, Italics, and Dialogue. If the paragraphs are too long, they feel that the work will be ponderous; if the paragraphs are too short, they think it will be lightweight. And if all paragraphs are more or less the same size, they get an immediate impression of stagnation. If there are too many italics, readers lose interest because long passages in Italics tell readers those passages can be skipped. As for dialogue, dense paragraphs of dialogue look like preaching, and few readers are interested in sermons, and large sections of one or two-word dialogue looks inane.
This advice, too, is now redundant. With ebooks, readers no longer flip through a book to scan it. They might use the “look inside” feature to read a page or two, they might scan reviews, or they might simply download the book sight unseen.
As it turns out, in a round about way, I found what I was looking for. Although I didn’t find inspiration for a guest post by searching my early blogs, I did find inspiration for this post.
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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
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