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On Not Being a Hypocrite: The Rewards of Jet Lag

November 13, 2015 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

Hi, everyone! I’m back home and happy to be on solid ground again.

I’ve made a commitment to send out a post every two weeks, and today’s the day. I wanted very badly to cop out and pull the covers over my head and barf out some excuse as to why you won’t get a blog today…

But then it was 3:00 a.m. and I couldn’t get back to sleep. And I remembered my last blog, which discussed writing even when you don’t feel like it. So instead of cursing my jet lag, I decided to use it to my advantage and get this blog out! How smug is that?

But first I had to have coffee, and then I had to skim (not scan, which means to read thoroughly) just the most important emails I’ve been ignoring for the past two weeks while I was on the West Coast. And write a few emails. And read that 99-cent short story I bought on Amazon for my new Kindle toy. And look something up for my daughter-in-law on BedBathandBeyond.com.

In short, my excitement with the rewards of jet lag dissolved when I suddenly realized that it was 6:30 and I was passing out from exhaustion.

Oops.

But it’s still Thursday all over the world (except in Australia; sorry, guys), and I can still make it. As I said in a guest post that will be published later this month, never, ever give up. As long as the candle is still burning (or in this case, the sun is still shining), you can correct your course.

How does this apply to us writers?

It is normal to fail sometimes. You will feel as if you cannot write another word, much less sentence. Perhaps you will even miss a deadline – which, by the way, I do not recommend. But write as if your life depended on it, and you will succeed and meet your commitments whether they are personal or dictated by a publisher.

One suggestion: give yourself an internal deadline. For instance, I must finish this blog and hit “Publish” in thirty-five minutes. You’d be surprised how well you can focus when the pressure is on.

Another positive outcome of today’s publish-on-Thursday-by-the-seat-of-my-pants commitment: I’ve decided to move my blogs up to Tuesday! I’d much rather you see my bi-weekly posts earlier in the week, so from now on I am committing to Tuesdays instead of Thursdays. You have it in black and white, folks.

In the next few weeks I’m going to be experimenting with creating and adhering to a daily and/or weekly schedule, and I’ll report my findings on the blog. And I’d love to hear from you! Do you have a schedule?
Do you stick to it? How did you figure it all out? Is it daily or weekly? Is it only a writing schedule or is it a life schedule?

If I hear from you by Tuesday I’ll print some of the replies on my Writer’s Clinic page.

And stay tuned for this Tuesday’s Comedy Grammar installment: The Apostrophe Catastrophe.

Happy writing,

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com[/fusion_text]

Glue Your Tush to the Chair, and Other Ways to “Stick” with the Writing Habit

October 30, 2015 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

Hi, everyone! Right now I’m in L.A. for my father’s 90th birthday. I don’t “feel” like writing, nor am I “inspired” to spend my first morning here writing a blog post. Have you ever felt like this?

Like most editors, I’ve been asked for writing advice more times than I can count: “What does it take to be a writer?” “What should I do to improve to improve my writing skills?” “What tools do I need to write?”

Here are the three things I tell them:

Glue your tush to the chair

To be a writer you have to write. And you must write on a schedule. Choose either a daily word quota or a daily time quota, and stick with it.

“If the sun rises today, I will write.” (Judy Walnoha)

Have nothing to say? Write down what’s going through your head. Remember Dumbledore’s Pensieve?

Think process, not product.

Does this sound impossible, or just weird? Let me ask you something: Do you have to be inspired in order to brush your teeth? Do you have to be in the mood to breathe? Same with writing. I personally don’t believe in all that passion stuff. Get into the trenches and write!

Read

This is the second most important element of being a writer. You must read, and you must read good books. If you read my blogs regularly, you will begin to understand what makes good books good. Divide your reading time between

The classics: Dickens, Hardy, Austen, Dreiser, James, Conrad, Bronte, O. Henry…the list is endless, and there’s something for everyone; I promise. I myself am not a big fan of Hardy, and I generally dislike the Americans except for Dreiser and O. Henry. Check out the library (pun intended), or go explore a used bookstore, and commit to reading one classic every six weeks. It could even be your bathroom reading. Study writing techniques, and examples of superlative writing will pop out at you from the pages of the books you read.
Outstanding modern literature: For starters, try one of Kate Atkinson’s novels, Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, or anything by Sue Monk Kidd, Anna Quindlen, or William Brodrick. And since you’re so nice, I’ll let you in on a little secret: John Grisham has a great novel called A Painted House, which is one of the best modern books I’ve ever read. It’s not one of his lawyer books which, while fun, are in the category of “good trash.” And I say that with love, as I’ve read all of them. As above, you will not like all of these authors, but you will find some either on this list or elsewhere whose books are to your taste, well-written, and worthy of your time. Try to read one or two of these a month.
Books on writing: My picks? The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White of Stuart Little fame, On Writing Well by William Zinsser (it’s ostensibly for nonfiction writing but in my opinion it’s invaluable for fiction as well), and On Writing by His Majesty of Horror himself, Stephen King.

Take grammar seriously

Seriously, folks. You can’t be a good writer unless and until you have the tools. Grammar is so important to good writing that I will be dedicating almost half of my blogs to it. (See my first grammar post here.) It’s so embarrassing to read prose that’s riddled with mistakes, and it’s well nigh impossible to get a book contract if you write like 90 percent of the “writers” in the world.

I hope this post has given you food for thought. I’d like to hear from you now: do you agree with what I wrote here? If not, why not? What other things do you think are essential to becoming a writer? Which other authors exemplify great writing? What kind of a writing schedule do you have or are you going to create?

Let me know what you think in the Comments section below.

Until next time, happy reading and writing!

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Didn’t Show-and-Tell End in Kindergarten?

October 14, 2015 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

Let me guess.

You are new or not so new to writing, and you keep hearing about this mysterious “Show, don’t tell” rule. Everyone’s talking about it: bloggers, authors, writing instructors. Doesn’t it seem like the be-all and end-all of writing?

But do you have any idea what it means?

Neither did I.

A caveat: “Show, don’t tell” has nothing to do with Ramona Quimby bringing her doll Chevrolet (named after her aunt’s car) to kindergarten.

Crime and Punishment

If you ever saw The Untouchables (back when Kevin Costner was at his most gorgeous), no doubt you remember the scene where Robert De Niro, as Al Capone, is striding up and down the boardroom lecturing about loyalty when he suddenly stops, takes a mallet, and bashes a man’s head in.

That’s how I used to imagine writers will be punished for not obeying the “Show, don’t tell” rule. Imagine a room full of senior editors and gravelly voiced literary agents sitting around a long, rectangular table deciding which writer’s head to bash in (or whose book to reject) for the crime of telling and not showing.

How can you tell the difference between showing and telling? Aren’t they the same thing, only different? And who’s checking to see if it’s being done right?

The Show-and-Tell Mystique

Although showing rather than telling is indeed the foundation of descriptive prose for both fiction and non-fiction (and even for content writing, I might add), the key to unlocking its mystery is to realize that it’s not mysterious at all. Basically, it’s just a fancy way to say “Use active voice, interesting verbs, and all five senses.”

There; that wasn’t so bad, was it?

I think the best way to explain “Show, don’t tell” is to show you through great prose instead of tell you with useless platitudes. Here are three basic techniques to enliven your writing:

1. Make it sensual. Close your eyes and imagine your characters or your subjects. What are they doing, physically feeling, seeing, hearing? Where is the scene taking place? For fiction, how can you use these resources to move the plot along? Ditto for non-fiction: avail yourself of the five senses to describe your subject, to paint a historical or scenic background, or to deliver information. Warning: this doesn’t mean to be overly verbose or flowery (see number 3, below).

Listen to this account of a slave being whipped in Sue Monk Kidd’s wonderful novel, The Invention of Wings. Pay attention to the senses she uses in these five sentences:

The first strike came straight from the fire, a burning poker under my skin. I heard the cotton on my dress rip and felt the skin split. It knocked the legs from me. I cried out cause I couldn’t help it, cause my body was small without padding. I cried out to wake God from His slumber.

Is that good writing or what? What would it have sounded like had the whipping been merely “told”? Probably something like this:

The first lash hurt like the dickens. The whip ripped my dress and opened my skin. I fell down. A scream escaped me; I knew my body couldn’t handle too many more lashes. I prayed to God that He would answer me.

Which passage would you rather read? Which evokes a perfect picture of the scene? Which evokes more powerful emotions in you?

2. Show the effect, not the cause. Credit for this one goes to Tom Farr, who is a storyteller, blogger, freelance writer, and high school English teacher. In his blog post, he suggests that causes are described by “to be” verbs, whereas effects naturally tend toward action verbs. He’s also an advocate of using the five senses to describe an effect.

Here’s another beautiful paragraph from The Invention of Wings. This time, the slave’s dying owner is being fed soup by his daughter. Pay attention to the diversity and vividness of the verbs Kidd uses here:

I brought cod soup to Father’s room. When he tried to eat it, his hand quivered so violently, spoonfuls splattered onto the bed sheets. He lay back against the bedstead and let me feed him. I chattered about the squalling ocean, about the serpentine steps that led from the hotel down to the shore, almost frantic to divert us from what was happening. His mouth opening and closing like a baby bird’s. Ladling in the colorless broth. The helplessness of it.

What caused all this beautiful prose to happen?

The father was too sick to eat in the dining room.
His hand was shaking.
He was too weak to sit up straight in bed and to eat on his own.
He was dying.
He was unable to feed himself.
The soup was unappetizing.
He was helpless.

Look at all the “to be” words in this list! Can you imagine reading a paragraph composed of these sentences? It’s enough to make even me want to bash someone’s head in.

Use action verbs, new verbs, exciting verbs, evocative verbs. (But don’t go overboard and don’t get weird.)

3. Make your words earn their keep. Consider Alvin Toffler’s description of modern life in his classic non-fiction work, Future Shock:

As we rush toward super-industrialism…we find people adopting and discarding lifestyles at a rate that would have staggered the members of any previous generation. For the lifestyle itself has become a throwaway item.

Or would you have preferred to read: “As our progress toward super-industrialism gets faster, we find people changing lifestyles much faster than people did in earlier times. For the lifestyle itself has become disposable.”

Not bad, but isn’t “we rush” more concise and descriptive than “our progress…gets faster”? Isn’t “at a rate that would have staggered the…previous generation” much more nuanced than “faster than people did in earlier times”? Doesn’t the power of “a throwaway item” evoke more emotion than “disposable” does? It’s like the difference between color and grey scale.

A Voice of Dissent

I recently read a thought-provoking post by Joshua Henkin, who is both a prolific writer and the director of the MFA program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College. He brings up four important points, some of which I have quoted verbatim:

The phrase “Show, don’t tell” is an implicit compact between a lazy teacher and a lazy student when the writer needs to dig deeper to figure out what isn’t working in his story.
It’s much easier to write “the big brown torn vinyl couch” than it is to describe internal emotional states without resorting to canned and sentimental language.
The phrase “Show, don’t tell” provides cover for writers who don’t want to do what’s hardest but most crucial in fiction (i.e., describing internal emotional states).
The “Show, don’t tell” rule doesn’t mean that a writer should never say a character is handsome or happy, i.e., that he or she should never “tell.”

I like what Henkin says because we can easily get enmeshed in the net of writers’ bromides and well-worn hacks, and our writing will reflect the stiff, overly self-conscious style that comes from constantly looking over our shoulder and rigidly following a set of rules. Our writing would be like shooting an arrow and then drawing the bull’s-eye.

My recommendation? Maintain an uneven balance between Show and Tell in your prose.

Here’s a challenge: take a well-written paragraph from any book you have in your house, and rewrite it as a “tell” paragraph. Then write your own “tell” paragraph and turn it into a “show” one. I’ll publish a few of the results on my Writer’s Clinic page for the next post.

Maybe the phrase “Show, don’t tell” just needs a new name. What do you think? What would you call it? Let me know in the comments below, or shoot me an email. I’ll publish also these answers in the next post.

Happy writing,
Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

i want Only to learn how to Both write properly And have good grammar

October 1, 2015 by Deena Nataf 2 Comments

Hi, everyone!

This post is the first installment of Comedy Grammar – yay!

But first, I promised to publish the three best telephone conversations from readers of my previous post, so I’ve created a special page on my website called Writer’s Clinic. Whenever I invite readers to submit their writing it will be on this page, along with my comments. Click here and enjoy the first installment.

Thanks to everyone who wrote phone conversations. You all caught on to this device very quickly – congratulations! Those of you whose conversations I was unable to publish on the Writer’s Clinic page have received an email response from me.

And now for the post…

i want Only to Both learn how to write properly And have good grammar (and Either you’ll get it Or you won’t)

Here’s a pet peeve of mine: writers not knowing exactly where to put “only,” “both…and,” and “either…or.” Although most of us get what the writer is trying to say, it’s bad business to plop these words into your sentences and have them splatter like mud pies, wreaking grammar havoc all over your manuscript.

How can you tell where to put these pesky words? It’s a snap, because there is only one rule you need to know for all of them:

The words “only,” “both…and,” and “either…or” qualify or modify the word or phrase that comes immediately AFTER them.

Yes, it’s a mouthful, but it’s only one mouthful. When we get to “both…and” and “either…or,” I’ll let you in on an extra little secret. But we’ll start with the singleton.

The Lonely Only

This tricky little word trips up even the most experienced writers, but remember the new rule and you’ll be an expert at once. Let’s have some fun with this one:

Only it qualifies the word that comes after it.

This means that nothing else except “it” is allowed to qualify the word that comes after it.

It only qualifies the word that comes after it.

It qualifies the word that comes after it, but it certainly doesn’t do anything else to it; it doesn’t eat the word, spell the word, or get rid of the word.

It qualifies only the word that comes after it.

It qualifies one, single word – the one that comes immediately after it; it does not qualify the sentence that comes after it, the paragraph that comes after it, or the preposition that comes after it (unless, of course, that preposition is the word that comes after it).

It qualifies the word that only comes after it.

It does not qualify the word that sings after it, or the word that yells after it, or even the one that jumps after it.

It qualifies the word that comes only after it.

But it doesn’t qualify the word that comes before it or above it or below it.

Both…and

This is the big sister of “only.” Sentences that contain this combination have two entities you need to deal with. We still use the framework of the above rule, but: 1) both “both” and “and” qualify the word or phrase that comes immediately AFTER EACH of them, and 2) Whichever part of speech comes immediately after “both” must be the same part of speech that comes immediately after “and.”

(A word to the wise: the combination “both…or” does not exist. Just writing it gives me the chills.)

Here we go:

He both bit and slapped me.

He did two things to me. (“Bit” and “slapped” are both verbs.)

He bit both me and my mother.

He bit two people. (Both “me” and “my mother” function as direct objects here.)

He is both a biter and a slapper.

I don’t like this guy.

Both he and his wife are biters and slappers.

Just goes to show you that every pot has a lid.

I am going both to Philly and to Boston.

Here I needed to use the word “to” twice because it was placed after the word “both” and thus needed to be repeated after the word “and.” Many writers forget to add this second “to.”

I am going to both Philly and Boston.

Since I placed the word “to” before “both” in this example, I didn’t need it after “and” – and it would have been incorrect had I placed it there. This is one of the most common “both…and” mistakes.

Abraham Lincoln had both a lanky body and a beard.

Ol’ Abe had two, uh, distinctive physical characteristics.

Abraham Lincoln both wrote the Gettysburg Address and delivered it.

Because there is a verb after “both” there needs to be a verb after “and,” and thus Abe must to do two things with the Gettysburg Address.

Abraham Lincoln wrote both the Gettysburg Address and his inauguration speech. Lincoln must write two speeches; the verb “wrote” comes before the word “both” and therefore applies to both entities.

Both Abraham Lincoln and his wife were sitting in Ford’s Theater on that fateful evening.

By the way, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Either…or

Okay, now it’s getting even trickier, which is why I have saved this one for last. But you’re getting to be such an expert that I have full confidence you will learn this one quickly and easily. (BTW, it’s perfectly fine to begin a sentence with “But.” In fact, this is the sixth time I’ve done it in this post.)

Although the “both…and” rule applies to “either…or” as well, somehow writers get all weird with this one and start tossing their “eithers” and “ors” all around the place like a boxer throwing wild punches.

Either we go to Vegas or your parents go to Vegas.

That town ain’t big enough for the four of us. I can’t stand your parents, and therefore if they go to Vegas we stay in Bakersfield. (The pronoun “we” follows “either,” so the noun “your parents” follows “or.”)

Either we go to Vegas or we jump off the roof.

Both of us will do only one of two things: go to Vegas or jump off the roof; your parents, on the other hand, have decided to stay in Barstow, where they belong. (The pronoun “we” and the verb “go” followed “either.” Therefore, we need a second (pro)noun-verb combination to follow the word “or,” i.e., “we jump.”)

We either go to Vegas or jump off the roof.

This is a slight modification of the previous example. Because the pronoun “we” comes before the word “either,” we don’t have to repeat it on the other side of “or.” Writers who do not subscribe to Bulletproof Writing frequently get this wrong.

We go either to Vegas or to Jump off the roof. In this example we have two choices of vacation venues: one is Vegas and the other is a new city called “Jump off the roof.” I think I’d rather go to Vegas.

We go to either Vegas or Jump off the roof. Also a slight modification of the previous example. We might go to that oddly named city (never, EVER put a hyphen between an adverb and an adjective), or we just might go to Vegas after all. I hope your parents won’t be there.

Put On Your Editorial Hat
I challenge you to find a violation of the only–both…and–either…or rule in a newspaper article, a book, or a blog. Send me the paragraph in which it occurs, along with your correction. I’ll publish a few of them on my next blog.

Good luck with your writing, and all the best,

Deena 🙂
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Say What? The Telephone Conversation as a Plot and Characterization Device

September 17, 2015 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

Hi, everyone, and happy Thursday!

You’re going to be hearing a lot from me about the all-important “Show, don’t tell” rule for writers. It’s pretty difficult to merely tell you what “Show, don’t tell” means, so I’m going to show you with one of the most powerful and effective ways to do it. Keep reading…

Dialogue: A Classic “Show” Device

Dialogue is one of the foundations of effective prose. Skillfully and subtly written dialogue engenders a feeling of trust in your writing ability. If not done well, however, it can light up a red “amateur” button in editors’ and agents’ heads.

One of the handiest dialogue techniques found in novels, autobiographies, and even self-help books is the telephone conversation. An effective one is not merely fluff; it’s a tool to serve your writing objectives. It can move the plot along quickly and smoothly, reveal a character’s personality, or illustrate the relationship between two characters.

Extremely Good and Incredibly Seamless

Here’s an example of a beautifully constructed phone conversation from Jonathan Safran Foer’s fantastic and unusual Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Penguin, 2005). Nine-year-old Oskar fakes being sick and his widowed mother calls from work to see how he’s feeling:

Schell residence…Hi, Mom…A little bit, I guess, but still pretty sick…No…Uh-huh…Uh-huh…I guess…I think I’ll order Indian…But still…OK. Uh-huh. I will…I know…I know…Bye.

Look how easy Foer has made it for us to figure out what Oskar’s mother is saying on the other end of the line. We know she asked how he’s feeling and what he’s going to have for lunch. We also notice that she probably told him Indian food isn’t so good for someone who doesn’t feel well (“But still”), and made him promise not to order it (“OK”). Oskar gets impatient with his mother’s questions (“I know”) and doesn’t seem to be too interested in communicating with her. What do you learn by the fact that such a young child is ordering lunch out?

In less than 40 words, Foer has communicated personality, relationship, information, and emotion.

Extremely Problematic and Incredibly Fixable

The conversation below is based on one that appeared in a manuscript I recently evaluated. See if you can find both the obvious and the not-so-obvious areas in which this paragraph can be improved:

“Helloooooo.” Mary Smith’s voice was abnormally high pitched as she tried to hide her excitement. “Yes, this is Mary Smith!…You want to come for Thanksgiving because you live on campus and no meals will be served that day? Yes, of course you can come; we’d love to have you…What’s our address? Twenty-three Oak Road …You don’t know where that is? No problem; I’ll give you directions…And you want to bring two friends? That’s fine! Of course we have room for all of you. We eat at 4, and we’re really looking forward to meeting you…Oh, you don’t need to thank me…You want to bring something? That’s sweet of you, but we’re okay. Now, let me give you directions to our house…”

Step 1: Make it Real

Unless this is a young children’s book, it’s better to make a phone conversation sound as close to real life as possible. Eavesdrop on the people you live with, or sidle up to strangers on cellphones (it’s all in the name of getting your book published). With very few exceptions, real people don’t repeat what the other person says on the other side of a telephone line. Therefore it would also sound clunky and artificial in both young adult and adult fiction.

Step 2: Make it Subtle

Let the reader figure out what the person on the other side of the line is saying via the responses of your character. We don’t need to know everything the invisible person is saying, just the important things and the gist of the rest.

Look again at the Extremely Loud example. Do we know exactly what Oskar’s mom is saying to him toward the end of the conversation? No we don’t, but via Oskar’s responses and their length, as well as the repetition and emphasis of certain words, we know that she’s a worrier and that he’s getting impatient. Once Foer communicates the main points, all we need for the rest is the big picture.

Step 3: Go through it Line by Line

After you have written your initial phone conversation, read each chunk of dialogue (even aloud) and ask yourself: Am I hitting readers over the head with information? Does it sound real? Is my character repeating him- or herself? Am I communicating to the reader what I wanted to communicate? Does this conversation have a function such as moving the plot along or revealing another facet of one or more of my characters?

Let’s deconstruct the above conversation. The blue is edited text; the red is my commentary:

“Helloooooo.” Mary Smith’s voice was abnormally high pitched as she tried to hide her excitement. “Yes it is!… (The other person obviously said: “Is this Mary Smith?” Most people wouldn’t answer by repeating the question and giving their name again.)

“Yes, of course; we’d love to have you. I remember when I was in college far from home. It was so lonely that first Thanksgiving. And I was starving!” (We now know that the caller is in college, is far away from home, is asking to come for Thanksgiving, and will have no food if she stays on campus.)

“Twenty-three Oak Road…No, not too far, and it’s easy to find; I’ll give you directions… (The starving student obviously asked where Oak Road is and/or if it’s far from campus. Or maybe she told Mary that she has no idea where anything is in this town. It doesn’t matter, unless it’s important to the plot that we know exactly what the student asked – in which case we would have to tweak Mary’s answer.)

“Yeah, no problem; they’re both welcome. In fact, the more the merrier!…Yes, I’m very sure, don’t worry…” (This is a seamless way to show that the student not only wants to bring two friends but that she was a little embarrassed to ask.)

“Let’s say four o’clock, and we’re really looking forward to meeting you…Oh, really, it’s a pleasure… (These were pretty subtle, and didn’t necessarily have to be changed. Nevertheless it’s smoother, because “We eat at 4” and “You don’t need to thank me” give a hint of spoon-feeding the reader.)

“No, just bring yourselves, but thank you for offering. Now, let me give you directions to our house…” (By now you’re an expert, and know exactly why the original needed to be changed. Notice that the unusual use of the word “bring” in this sentence shows us that the student asked if she could bring anything.)

Step 4: Put it All Together: A Conversation Reclaimed

“Helloooooo.” Mary Smith’s voice was abnormally high pitched as she tried to hide her excitement. “Yes it is!…Yes, of course; we’d love to have you. I remember when I was in college far from home. It was so lonely that first Thanksgiving. And I was starving!…Twenty-three Oak Road…No, not too far, and it’s easy to find; I’ll give you directions…Yeah, no problem; they’re both welcome. In fact, the more the merrier!…Yes, I’m very sure, don’t worry…Let’s say four o’clock, and we’re really looking forward to meeting you…Oh, really, it’s a pleasure…No, just bring yourselves, but thank you for offering. Now, let me give you directions to our house…”

Now it’s Your Turn

Set a timer for fifteen minutes and write a 2:00 am conversation between a clerk at the police station and the mother of a teenager who has just been rudely awakened by her phone ringing. Who will be featured in the dialogue, and who will be on the other side of the line? Through this one-sided conversation would we be able to figure out the back story and the teenager’s basic personality, or even what type of relationship he or she has with the mother? How would this scene move the plot along if it were a short story or a full-length novel?

When you finish, be sure to hit Reply and send it to me, or paste it in the Comments section. I will publish the three best pieces in my next blog, along with my comments.

Good luck, and have fun!

Deena 🙂

Deena Nataf

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Write. Polish. Publish.

Welcome to Bulletproof Writing!

August 31, 2015 by Deena Nataf 4 Comments

The sun is hot
I love the sun
The sun is warm
Because the sun is warm.
Merry Christmas.

The above is my first masterpiece, written at the age of six. I am not making this up. I think my mother still has the original, signed copy somewhere, but I managed to memorize it so I didn’t have to ask her to dictate it to me over the phone.

I’ve come a long way since my poem; I don’t need to write on lined paper anymore, and I can also do cursive.

More important than that, however, is that I know how to write and I know how to help others reach their writing potential, and then some.

The Unfortunate Truth about Writing Quality

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: In the blogging and online magazine world today, writing quality doesn’t matter much. Most of the writing you will see both there and in the self-publishing world is pretty average, if that. In fact, even content isn’t the be-all and end-all these days. Why?

Online gatekeepers (and even some in the print sector) have become so used to mediocrity that many of them don’t know the difference between good enough and remarkable anymore. This means you could probably publish online, and for sure you could self-publish. All you need is a bit of luck and some savvy marketing hacks. You don’t need me.

If your only goal is getting a byline and you have no interest in in the writing craft, this website is not for you. Instead, look into some of the top blogging, marketing, and self-publishing websites. I myself read them and I respect them, and I am confident they will help you meet your goals. Send me a message at the very bottom of this page, or shoot me an email, and I’ll give you a list of great websites.

Why You Care about Bulletproofing Your Writing

If you’re still with me, it means that you want to create something lasting with your writing: for yourself, for your family, for your little corner of the universe, or for posterity.

But desire is not enough. Average will not get you a contract with a major publishing house or periodical. If you want to create something artisanal, you must add certain ingredients to the mix: Knowledge of the writing craft. Commitment to the writing life. The nuts and bolts of basic grammar.

We’ll work together to make sure you write, polish, and publish beyond your wildest dreams. You’ll go beyond mediocre, and into that heady place where the winning few stand.

You have what it takes to go the distance.

A Bit about Me

I love words, and I love to read. And it kills me when sincere, intelligent people who want so badly to get words on paper and ultimately publish them end up shooting themselves in the foot because of reparable bloopers that cause professional editors and agents to grind their teeth, write them a rejection letter, push the Delete button, or all of the above.

That’s why I started Bulletproof Writing; I want to help you make your own personal mark on the world with your writing. I come with thirty years of experience as a book and journal editor. I’ve edited just about all types of fiction and non-fiction. And I have an active freelance editing business, so I’m in the trenches daily.

Here at Bulletproof Writing, I take your writing goals seriously because you take your writing goals seriously. You want people to read what you write — and like what they read. You yearn to be thought of as a professional. You dream about being published.

You need an edge that will raise your writing to the top of an agent’s or editor’s inbox. You want your pitches, cover letters, query letters, and actual prose to stand out and be noticed. I get that.

I look forward to helping you reach your goals, and I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you struggle with most in your writing. I want to style my blogs around your needs. You can send me a message in the box below, or you can leave a comment in the Comments section at the very bottom of this page.

I look forward to working with you!