TECH: 101 Tips (54)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 3 Dec 2009

Writers' Digest, October 2004, pages 26 to 33, has a collection of short "nuggets of wisdom" related to getting published. Maria Schneider is the author of the compilation. Take a deep breath, and here we go:

"Always read and reread your manuscript to be sure it's clean -- no grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. And make sure the story idea is appropriate for the publication to which you are submitting." Maria Witte

Read and reread -- but first you probably need to set it aside so that you can look at it with fresh eyes. That's one of the reasons to have several pieces of work going, to help you get away from one manuscript so that you can look at it as a reader. They used to suggest that you should proofread from the ending -- reading backwards. I'm not sure that I've ever seen anyone actually doing that, because it's really hard to convince yourself to read one word at a time.

Anyway, again the notions are to make sure that the presentation doesn't distract from your story. Grammar, punctuation, spelling -- strange paper -- anything that makes the slush reader and editor have to stop and think for a moment, gives them a chance to set your story aside and reject it. You want them to fall into your story and just keep reading, without ever noticing that there are words there. So make the grammar, punctuation, spelling, style is clean and transparent as you can.

Write?