Beyond the Elements of Style

Kirkus Lives Again!

Kirkus Reviews, which describes itself as posting “over 500 pre-publication book reviews every month in multiple genres,” and was (to our horror) shut down in December by the Nielson Company, has been resurrected! Oh, frabjus joy!

Kirkus’s new owner is Herb Simon, “the owner of the Indiana Pacers, the NBA team, and chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group, a shopping mall developer,” according to the New York Times. Plans are for Kirkus to continue to be published “as a print magazine while beefing up its digital offerings.”

“With the growth of e-books and e-reading devices, no one can really see the future of publishing. But turmoil like this creates opportunities,” said Simon in the NYT article. “At a time when even the definition of a book is changing, my love of books makes me want to be part of the solution for the book publishing industry.”

Simon is apparently just as interested in publishing as he is in sports: he is already the owner of an independent bookseller (and we love independent booksellers!).

So there is hope in these changing times, and your next book in prepublication may yet see the light of day in the new and possibly improved Kirkus Reviews. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

More on Book Marketing: the Blog

Most writers (myself included) consider themselves to be, first and foremost, creative people. And we are, there’s no doubt about that. if you’re anything like me, your life is centered around sitting in a room and writing.

There may have been a time when that was enough. Writers wrote, and passed their work on to others who took it to market—edited it, packaged it, sold it, promoted it. That’s every writer’s dream, isn’t it? leave me alone to create, you do the rest.

If you’re just writing for yourself, that will work. You can sit and write to your heart’s content. Write a diary, fill notebooks with your deathless prose, feel good that you’re getting the words and thoughts and people out of your head. But if you want someone else to read what you’ve written … well, that’s going to take you out of your quiet room and your quiet writing and out into the bustle of the marketplace. Ewwww.

But take heart — there are a lot of ways to market your work, and among these many activities you can find something that will work for both you and your writing.

In the next few posts I’ll discuss some of these activities. If you haven’t thought much about marketing, try and see this as a buffet: think about each method, try it out, explore it, see if it resonates as something you feel you can enter into and work with.

One of the easiest and quickest ways to market your book—and one you can and should begin before the book is even published—is to write a focused blog. Before we go any further, write this on your brain: this is not the kind of blog where you offer opinions, share your breakfast menu, comment on the movie you saw last night, or diss your coworkers. A blog that markets a book needs to be devoted to that book, and everything that you write in it must have the goal of promoting the book.

A few years ago, Guy Kawasaki wrote a brilliant article about blogs that remains absolutely the best advice available for blogging, and I strongly urge you to read and re-read his words.

A good analogy is the difference between a diary and a book. When you write a diary, it contains your spontaneous thoughts and feelings. You have no plans for others to read it. By contrast, if you write a book, from day one you should be thinking about spreading the word about it. If you want to evangelize your blog, then think “book” not “diary” and market the heck out of it.

So think about writing a blog, even if it’s just to document your progress. One of my clients, Andy Kaufman, maintains this site where he blogs about what’s going on with his yet-unpublished thriller. I’d have liked to see more frequent updates, but you get the general idea (and Andy’s attention has of necessity been elsewhere). Getting people excited about your book before it’s published gives you an immediate sales lift when it does come out, and creates more buzz about it.

Buzz is what you’re looking for. Getting people to subscribe to your blog, link to your blog, talk about your blog and your book—that’s the goal. Work on it, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Poets and Writers Grants Submission Calendar

Did you know that you can access grant and contest submission information (deadlines, requirements, fees, etc.) for many literary journals online, thanks to Poets and Writers magazine?

The submission calendar is well worth checking on a regular basis: you may have some old unpublished piece that just fits in perfectly — or be inspired to write something new! Either way, keeping up with submission information will keep you … beyond the elements of style!

2009’s New Vocabulary

Well, it’s that time of year again. When popular culture is acknowledged in the musty tomes and corridors of academia, and new words are admitted into the sacred space of the dictionaries.

Well, the Oxford English Dictionary, anyway.

Then again, the OED’s “new” word of the year is “unfriend.” But it’s probably news for Facebook users that unfriending has been around for a very long time indeed. The OED itself notes:

1659 Fuller _App. Inj. Innoc._ iii. xxxjb, I hope, Sir, that we are notmutually Unfriended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.

In addition to unfriending people, this year we’ve added zombie bank, hashtag, sexting, birther, ecotown, and tramp stamp, among others, to the list of accepted vernacular vocabulary.

Pleased? Disconcerted? Time marches on, and like it or not, someone you know is already using these words. Or maybe it’s you. In any case, try some of them out! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

To Be Honest … Or Not?

So after a hiatus from this blog to take care of matters in my personal life, I’ve been jogged back into it by reading this article, because it captures so much of the experience one has when beginning writers ask for an “honest” evaluation or critique.

One I’ve had recently, to tell the truth.

The reality is that most beginning writers have no concept of the fact that it takes more than a good idea to produce a book or a script. Everyone has good ideas. My car mechanic has good ideas. Should he write them down? Should he? Probably not.

It takes a great deal of time learning to take a good idea and translate it into something that people will want to read or go to the theater and see. Call it an apprenticeship if you will. Call it paying your dues (though that part is often reserved for the deluge of rejections one is sure to receive). Call it learning your art. whatever you call it, it’s essential to know that great writers become great writers by practicing, getting honest feedback, thinking about it, incorporating it, and practicing again. You’ll note the use of the word “become” in that sentence — it doesn’t happen overnight. Most “overnight” successes have been writing for many many years in obscurity.

Ask for honest feedback only when and if you’re willing to take it. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Social Media for Readers and Writers

So let’s start our tour of social media with my favorite group of people—people who read and people who write! With some exceptional help from some of my colleagues at LinkedIn (a social network site you’ll find mentioned here), I’ve put together a list of social media sites you might want to check out. They’re not in any particular order, so don’t bother looking for one; perhaps you can see it as an example of the random nature of the Net!

Remember as you browse the first rule of social media: there’s no one-size-fits-all here. Some of these sites may interest you; many of them will not. And that’s as it should be, because you don’t want to spend all of your time online! Explore the sites at your leisure, see which ones seem to work for you, try them out. If you don’t like one site, move on.

And if you find more to add to the list, drop me an email at jcezanne@customline.com and let me know!

• Literature Map: Gnooks is a self-adapting community system based on the gnod engine. Discover new writers you will like, travel the map. of literature and discuss your favorite books and authors.
• Book Glutton: Read books online with other people—suggest books, discuss books, see who’s reading what. Sign on as a glutton and take the video tour!
• Library Thing: So if you feel a need to catalogue your personal library online, Library Thing is the place for you. You can do it here, and then connect with others whose libraries you like. Note that there’s a fee once you pass 200 books.
• Good Reads: Another book cataloguing site. Also offer some great lists and trivia. (As I write this, Twilight is simultaneously on the “best books ever” and “worst books ever” lists, so it’s even-handed!)
• Author’s Den: From the site: “While some of the other sites focus on readers, here’s one that focuses on authors as well. From the site: “The largest most vibrant free online literary community of authors and readers! Visited by 1,400,000+ readers/mo.” It claims that authors “willreach many readers” and that readers
  can “discover, interact, get personal, buy and read!”
• Red Room says that it’s “where the writers are,” and explains, “Red Room provides authors and members with free, easy-to-use, elegant online homes. It’s a place for the literary community to promote their work, express themselves, and connect with their favorite authors.”
• Swap Tree is a book- (and music-, DVD-, and video-game-) swapping community. Have a book you want to trade for another? This is the place for you!
• We Read: Ger personalized recommendations for books, share your recommendations with others. Includes discussion forums.
• Write Lit“aims to bring writers and readers together from all parts of the globe. It seeks to help the writer — technical, commercial, and literary — earn a living, and find audiences for his work. Furthermore, it aims to provide a venue for readers to share their passion for the written word.”
• Authonomy: This is a community sponsored by HarperCollins UK that “invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project – and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read. Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.”
• Writers’ News/Writing Magazine: This is a singularly useful site, a clearinghouse for a number of different activities: competitions, classes, book discussions, forums, links … it’s all here.
• Bookworm: a blog that celebrates books and reading with lovely enthusiastic reviews by the author, Lubya Kably.
• Media Bistro: Though not strictly an author/reader sort of site, Media Bistro is a community that can be useful to writers looking to improve skills, get jobs, and connect with other media professionals. They have local chapters throughout the United States that offer get-togethers in person.
• Book Marketing Network, part of the whole Ning family of social networks, describes itself as being “for book authors, self-publishers, book publishers, publicists, marketers, and others involved in writing, publishing, and marketing books.” Includes, in true social media style, something for everyone—photos, videos, discussion boards, events, and blogs.
• The Book Place, also a Ning community, features a blog, podcasts, reviews, and discussion.
• Writers Digest: the online community associated with the grande dame of aspiring writers’ magazines, Writers Digest , the site offers some social networking but mostly supports the magazine. Online subscriptions are available.
• Gaia Community: once you join the community you’ll have access to the books section. Very useful if you’re interested in spirituality and healing topics.

In addition to the list above, there is a Facebook application called Visual Bookshelf that you can access from inside Facebook. It’s another community that shares reading lists and reviews.

So that’s it for now! I’ll update this list periodically, as community life on the Net is always changing, always growing … but this should get you started. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

A Paradigm Shift

It used to be that marketing writers—like me—were always helping our clients to sell. And that worked for a long time indeed. It worked when we used to send out direct mail and slide infomercials into magazines, and it worked when we created websites and landing pages and advertising copy.

But change is the only constant, and the web is changing faster than anything else, it seems. The new paradigm, the essence of social media marketing, isn’t helping people sell—it’s helping them buy. Changing the focus from pushing Product X to pulling people in to buy Product X. It may seem like a matter of semantics, but if you think about it you’ll see that it’s far more radical than that, a seismic shift.

It doesn’t mean that other forms of marketing are obsolete. In fact, social media marketing sits in snugly with search engine optimization, because at the end of the day, it’s still all about content, still about getting people to one’s site and having them buy once they’re there.

And there are as many ways of getting them there as there are people in any given conversation. But that’s another shift, isn’t it: from advertising (i.e., talking at people) to evangelizing (talking with people). Social media types find advertising invasive, anyway, so we’ll be seeing less and less of it; but one can evangelize from within—a community, a club, a social group—specifically because one is a group member. One belongs. One listens. One supports.

So the first tip for those of you who want to join the conversation? Listen! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

More on Strunk & White

Well, I’m clearly not the only one celebrating the anniversary of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: The New York Times has weighed in, with a kinder, gentler approach than the review I cited in my last post.

My favorite part? This story:

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once wrote, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

And then there’s this gem:

White argued that Strunk had also been motivated by sympathy for the writer’s victims: “Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground or at least to throw a rope.”

So you can pay your money and take your pick of reviews, but no matter what anyone says, it’s staying on my shelf. My friend Rachel once told me that her favorite book in the world is Emily Post, because she can look at it and be reassured that somewhere there’s a place with all the answers. An illusion, perhaps, but a comforting one.

So choose your favorite illusion of perfection and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Nothing “Beyond” Here

Well, in view of the title of my blog, I feel obligated to pause and note the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White’s famous contribution to the world of writing, The Elements of Style.

A recent article by Geoffrey Pullum in the Chronicle of Higher Education waxes, it has to be said, less than wildly enthusiastic about the book. “The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.”

Pullum is, in fact, just warming to his topic.

The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn.

“Put statements in positive form,” they stipulate, in a section that seeks to prevent “not” from being used as “a means of evasion.”

“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs,” they insist. (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to me.)

And then, in the very next sentence, comes a negative passive clause containing three adjectives: “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”

The reality is, as Pullum points out, that not only is The Elements of Style not in fact about style, its advice on things grammatical is pretty awful. He is neither the first nor the only person to point this out.

His is not the only opinion on the book; Michael Leddy has a different take on … well, on Pullum’s take.

Geoffrey K. Pullum’s recent piece on William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, is snarky and sensational enough to appeal to a reader suspicious of a dos-and-don’ts approach to writing. How refreshing to be told — by a grammarian no less — that Strunk and White are “grammatical incompetents,” “idiosyncratic bumblers,” purveyors of “uninformed bossiness” and “misbegotten rules.”

“My evidence,” Leddy says, “is anecdotal, but I have never had a student mention Strunk and White as a significant part of her or his writing education. The Elements of Style now seems far more popular outside the world of English instruction (particularly among tech types, whose work writing code would foster respect for clarity and concision).”

And yet the book lies anchored in our consciousness in the same way our mothers’ voices replay in our heads, with rules and admonitions half-learned, helf-rejected, and still able to instill guilt. Its slender size gives students the illusion that matters of style and grammar can be encapsulated in a few chapters, and at least one of its authors can be connected to real-life literature (E.B. White’s wonderful Charlotte’s Web and The Once and Future King), both of which considerations could contribute to its long life.

So … if it’s not a style guide and it’s a dreadful grammar book, what is the point? For those of us who make our livings with words, it is, perhaps, part of our history. Uncle Ernie may have been the black sheep of the family and Grandmother’s teeth may have been crooked; but we embrace them as part of who we are. In the same way, perhaps, The Elements of Style might be part of who we are, as well. Not consulted with any frequency, but reassuring to have on our library shelves. And anyone would have to admit that the illustrated version is a lot of fun!

For now, both versions are staying on my shelf. Much of my own academic work was in history, so there is a part of me that believes in seeing where we came from … as long as we keep looking to the future. And that will keep us … beyond the elements of style!

POSTSCRIPT: My own favorite style manual? Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Not Ready For Prime Time: E-Prime

Or maybe it is, and it’s me who’s not ready for prime time. In any case, I’ve been struggling a bit with the concept of E-Prime ever since a colleague on one of my subscription lists called my attention to it.

E-Prime is English for people who want to be extraordinarily clear in terms of meaning, and really don’t care what the content sounds like (or, possibly more importantly, reads like).

From the Wikipedia article, always a good place to start (but never to end) research:

By eliminating most uses of the passive voice, E-Prime encourages writers and speakers to make explicit the agent of a statement, possibly making the written text easier to read and understand.
E-Prime is used as a mental discipline to filter speech and translate the speech of others. For example, the sentence “the movie was good”, translated into E-Prime, could become “I liked the movie”. The translation communicates the speaker’s subjective experience of the movie rather than the speaker’s judgment of the movie. In this example, using E-Prime makes it harder for the writer or reader to confuse a statement of opinion with a statement of fact.

Frankly, some of it sounds like a fad diet. There are “allowed” words and words that are “not allowed.” One may never, ever, ever use the high-fat verb “to be.” Presumably one should also experience the same guilt when slipping back into saying the forbidden “is” word that one does when snagging that piece of forbidden chocolate cake.

Robert Anton Wilson in Toward Uniderstanding E-Prime notes:

Korzybski felt that all humans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on, as “semantic hygiene” against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emotional distortion, and “demonological thinking.” E-Prime provides a straightforward training technique for acquiring such semantic hygiene.

Indeed, those interested in semantics have long been discussing the problem of the verb “to be,” inviting along the way some wordplay (To Be In Their Bonnets) and inspiring a new way of editing (E-Prime As A Revision Strategy).

I’m already hearing the voices of some of my writing students and clients, who have experienced (ad infinitum, ad nauseaum) my calls to tighten their writing. “Isn’t this what you’re talking about?”

Well, no.

There’s a difference between tightened, good writing and writing that removes the ability to make it sing. Or, as one of my correspondents would have it, “If is was good enough for the Bard, it’s good enough for me.” Ambiguity is often the very stuff of great literature, and that requires access to all of our vocabulary and myriad ways of using it.

Perhaps here, as elsewhere in life, context is everything. I don’t want flowery writing in the manual that accompanied my new DVD player (where, due perhaps to the writer’s lack of command of any English—E-Prime or otherwise—the directions are far from clear); but I just finished reading the superb novel Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, and was overwhelmed not only by her ability to tell a wondrous story, but by the language with which she told it. And I like that feeling. I want it again, the next time I open a book and take the time to revel in the sheer sensuality of words.

Perhaps the best last word on E-Prime is by the witty and wonderful Elisha Webster Emerson, who gives a lively history of the E-Prime movement and her own take on it in A Review in E-Prime. While you’re there, stay for a few minutes and read other articles on the blog: they are truly well worth your attention. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!