My thoughts on writing tips found online and in published works (with some random thoughts thrown into the mix).

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year!


Before all of the festivities get started, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Do you have any goals or resolutions for 2014? Have you made resolutions in the past? If so, have you stuck with them? Let me know what you think!

If you are like me and don't have cable, here is a link to a live feed to watch the ball drop in New York City. The live feed will begin at 5:55PM Eastern Time, so tune in to enjoy the celebration!

Sunday, December 22, 2013

A Good Christmas Read

Are you looking for a new Christmas story to read this season? A Gitmo Nation Christmas Carol, inspired by Charles Dickens' classic and based on the No Agenda series, is a thrilling tale of the mistake-filled life of President Ebenezer Scrooge. This twist on the traditional holiday story will keep you on your toes!

The best part? It is FREE for the next 5 days in the Kindle store!
In the US, get your copy at 
http://www.amazon.com/Gitmo-Nation-Christmas-Carol-ebook/dp/B00A8Z3OH8.
In the UK, get your copy at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gitmo-Nation-Christmas-Carol-ebook/dp/B00A8Z3OH8/.

Oh, and it also happens to be edited by me!

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

A Christmas Message



If you are alive and well on social media, you have probably seen this cartoon floating about. With the holidays quickly approaching, I think it is a good time to remember that books can be a great Christmas gift! Don't forget that giving someone, child or adult, the gift of a good book can open new worlds, let them learn something new, and expand their universe. Happy holidays, everyone!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Developing our Language


Have you heard and/or seen this speech by Stephen Fry? If not, you need to watch and listen to this video. In it, Stephen Fry talks about the "correct" use of language and how, if you will excuse the term, "grammar Nazis" need to reevaluate their motives.

As an editor, I find this video very interesting. I started to contemplate the difference between cleaning up a manuscript and squashing an author's creativity. It seems that we have entered an era where people are fighting the development of language. Any slip of a comma or misuse of a word is immediately attacked by the mass of the Internet. Everyone is enforcing the idea that the English language needs to be static, that the rules are the rules and that's just the way it is. What if, however, we allowed people to start making up words? I don't mean "YOLO" and "swag", but more along the lines of what many people have done in our past. What if we allowed our language to keep moving forward and develop? Our language is vastly different from the German language it is said to have come from. It has added and subtracted words, meanings, spellings, usages, and other rules as time has gone on. We have stolen from other languages and we have allowed our own words to shift to become other things. You just have to look at the differences between American and British English to see how things have been growing. Instead of fighting this evolution, I think we should try to embrace it and give new words and meanings a try. Who knows where we could end up?

What are your thoughts?