As Yet Untitled

With Valentine’s Day behind us, along with the controversial release of the 50 Shades of Grey movie (though we may not have recovered from either one emotionally), discussions about the quality of the source material for the salacious film have abounded. The 50 Shades series has been widely panned as poorly written tripe, unworthy of consideration from “real” readers. But is this fair? Certainly  it seems fine to denigrate what is literally ( literally ) sado-sexual Twilight fan fiction , but from a purely grammatical standpoint, this might not be totally deserved.(Although from a storytelling/character development standpoint, well, again, it's Twilight fan fiction .) This cat is horrified at your taste in literature. But in the interest of fair play, the good folks at Grammarly have once again performed amazingly thorough research into the subject, and have provided this handy infographic to make all the stats easy for us to see. And the verdict is thi...

I don’t know if you know this, but the American Dream is changing. Instead of climbing the corporate ladder and waiting years for the authority and freedom that comes with a head honcho position at the firm, millions (seriously, millions) of Americans are choosing to skip the headache and just work for themselves. God bless technology! Freelancing is so hot right now. What many entrepreneurial-minded individuals often don’t realize, however, is that every company relies on its reputation to do business. And that when you work for yourself, your individual reputation is the reputation of the company. And when that is the case, particularly in a world where most communication is done through email, text, and social media, one’s ability to present a professional, grammatically correct face is vital to making a living. Which is why I’m frequently shocked (and appalled!) by the number of professionals out there who are so savvy in their trade and so incompetent in their phras...

It was pointed out to me recently that for writers, the editing process is not always a delight. As an editor, I experience my own periods of dire frustration at the narrow-mindedness of my authors as regards my suggestions for their books. I know now that this is not always one-sided, but to my authors, I offer these few tips that might help in approaching editing with a more peaceful mentality. 1.                                1.Embrace the difference between yourself and your book Writing is a personal process. Ernest Hemingway said that “there is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” But while being emotionally invested in your work is on one hand vital to creating something organic and authentic, being too emotionally intertwined with your story can be debilitating to the editing process. It is im...