Carefully Crafting Headlines and Barfing Up Titles

There’s a distinct difference between writing headlines for advertising or marketing copy and writing titles for fiction. Here is that difference:

Writing headlines is an interesting, challenging process where I get to try different techniques
to craft an engaging line to elicit a specific response.

–

Writing titles sucks.

Oh, I know they’re both in my job description. As a freelance copywriter, I often write multiple headlines in a day. (Here’s an old post on what it is a copywriter really does, just in case you’ve forgotten.) And as a fiction writer, every piece I write needs a title.

So why the big difference?

I Listen to Podcasts. Wanna Know 6 of ’Em?

We’re all friends here, so you can admit it:

You’ve always wondered what I’m listening to while I’m folding laundry.

Give Me Your Shorts and Win NGEP!

You WILL give me names.

You had such a great time with my last NGEP contest that I couldn’t in good conscience postpone this one another day.

(Yes. You did have lots of fun. Don’t argue with me.)

Last time, I pretty broadly asked you to recommend your favorite writers. I got everything from Richard Brautigan (whom I’ve since read) to Christopher McDougall (whom I’m reading right now) to Lev Grossman (whose The Magicians is sitting on my to-be-read shelf at home).

Good show, folks, but this time around, I’m looking for something more specific:

Recommend your favorite short stories to win more
Nathanael Green Endorsement Points!

Listening to Find Your Characters

I don’t generally attribute specific sources of inspiration to my writing, but occasionally, something grabs my attention and says, “Hey! You need me!”

That’s how I had a theme song for a novel before I even started writing.

Here’s what happened.

SUBMIT! How You Get a Short Story Published

Rawr.

I felt a twinge, something along the lines of angry defiance the first time I noticed the link on a literary journal’s website:

SUBMIT

Later, I figured out that this was the link I needed to click to get my fiction published. It had nothing to do with domination of any sort.

*shrug*

“How do you get a story published?”

I’ve been asked that a few times lately, and there are entire libraries written on craft and storytelling and selling your novel. So I’m going to skip all that for now. Instead, here’s a quick explanation the submission process and how writers’ creative brain-dribbling ends up on public display.

A Writer’s Obligation to Readers?

Summer is coming, and with it, Martin's new book.

The five-year wait is over.

I got an email from Tor.com today that gleefully announced (yes, it actually was gleeful) that George R.R. Martin’s next book, Dance of Dragons has a release date.

For those of you who aren’t wrapped up in the world of fantasy fiction, this comes five years after the release of the previous book in his Song of Ice and Fire series and it has been the subject of much, much discussion on its delay. More on that in a bit.

And those of you already involved in A Song of Ice and Fire, you may officially begin rubbing your grubby little gauntlets together in anticipation.

Did it take forever? Or are fans just whiny?

Absolutes: Some Very Unique Words

Can something be more than perfect? A little bit perfect? Or, if something’s one of a kind, can it be more one of a kind?

If you’re taking these ideas literally, the answer is no. Perfect, by definition, means there’s nothing better to be had. It’s as good as it can possibly be.

Perfect is what’s known as an absolute. Perfect is perfect; it doesn’t come in degrees of perfectness.

But what gets tricky, is that in everyday speech, absolutes like perfect get modified all the time. So, you may ask, is it ok to say “more perfect?”

Quick Thoughts on Rejections

Friend and fellow Rosemont writer Shawn Proctor posted a blog entry about the reality of rejections almost all writers must endure. Check out his blog here.

That got me thinking: I don’t imagine that many non-writers think about the heaps of rejections (usually pre-printed and written to politely say “get lost”) that most writers accumulate before finally seeing their work in print.

Writers will toil over a story for weeks, months, or years until we decide to abandon it (for it’s never really finished), then package it up and send it to a publisher, hoping that they’ll put our words in print for all to see.

And more often than not (much more often), we don’t hear anything for months. Then in the mail appears our self-addressed, stamped envelope with a rejection letter: “Thanks, but no thanks.” Like Shawn says, the supposed average is one publication of a story for every hundred times it’s submitted.

Set Your Commas Free!

I have a beef with the Oxford comma.

Just to give you the background, the Oxford comma, in addition to being the title of a Vampire Weekend song, is also called the serial comma. This is where you use a comma before the final item in a list.

For example: My desk is wooden, old, and cluttered.

Notice the comma after the word old. That, my friends, is the Oxford comma. It’s promoted in a lot of writing guides including The Chicago Manual of Style and one of my all-time favorite books – Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.

This comma is so important that many writers will harangue for hours about how it’s the single most important thing that makes English readable.

I think it sucks.

Are You Feeling Well, Good or Badly?

When someone asks you how you are, how do you answer?

Do you say you’re good? You feel well? Or maybe you feel badly for your friend who just lost her job?

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend you use one of the above constructions and you don’t just say, “Life sucks.”