Fanatical Pupil

Make sure you get the “-” in there: http://www.grammar-monster.com/. Or you can just follow Grammar Monster on Twitter, like I do.

I point this out because Grammar Monster recently answered a question that has always bugged me: Where do the punctuation marks go in speech?. I’ve always thought that punctuation was supposed to go inside the quotation marks, and according to Grammar Monster, I’m right! At least, in US English, punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. But in addition, I learned that you don’t need to double-punctuate. I never have, but it’s just another one of those things that I’ve always kind of wondered about.

For example:

She looked in the oven and said: “Do you call that a Yorkshire
pudding?”
(This sentence could end in a full stop, but it would look unwieldy
after the question mark and the quotation mark. Therefore, it
is omitted.)

Thanks Grammar Monster!

So, Chris Roberson posted a video cover of Beyonce’s single ladies. It’s probably worth watching if you’ve ever had the song stuck in your head or have a child who’s danced maniacally in front of the TV while the video played. I’ll wait.

Since I had previous created the idea of a “cover poem” (one in which a modern song was modified with increased lyrical content expanding on themes which were usually presented in a simplistic or inadequate manner), I started to wonder if there was such thing as a “cover story.” Yes, I realize this name is the same as that used by newspapers and magazines to describe an article accompanying headlines on the front page or cover. That’s unfortunate.

But, semantics aside, is there such a thing? Has anyone rewritten a famous or popular story in a new and/or unique style? It’s obvious that such an endeavor is much more feasible for a song, which can be recorded much more quickly (especially when the lyrics and melody are, for the most part, already prepared for the cover artist). But, as the creator of the cover poem (as far as I know), I have to wonder if it isn’t possible in some form for prose as well. Of course, I think my poetry style was actually well developed enough that when I modified songs and poems, it made them more like an original poem I would write, where as my prose writing is still fairly basic and lacking a distinct style (at least it seems that way to me). So, it’s not like I’d be writing any “cover stories” right now anyway, but, like I said, it was just something I was wondering about. And if I can’t bare my smallest thoughts to the world, then what is the point of having a blog?

So, I was researching new music (it’s actually for a writing project, so don’t think I was vacuuming the dog or anything) on Lala, and through a fairly Six Degrees-like path, I came across this artist: Midnight Sun (Twilight Inspired Artist)

The Album on Lala

My immediate thought was: So, if I put “Twilight Inspired Author” after my name, will I automatically get me some extra readers? I mean, sure they’ll realize after not too long that my writing has nothing really to do with vampires, but maybe they’ll get to the almost-angsty character-driven parts and maybe think it’s okay. Or else the Meyerites (or whatever they’re called – Twilites?) will start a smear campaign against me. Or else they’ll just forget about me and move on.

Anyway, just a thought.

Also, I found it interesting that on the “unofficial” score for New Moon, Midnight Sun put “Sam Cushion” instead of Midnight Sun. Is he trying to get hired to do the score for the next one?

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I believe I had what I consider my first real experience of what life would be like (most days at least) as a writer over this Labor Day weekend. Although I sometimes do extra Work work on the weekends, this time I ignored Work for 3 days (except for some intermittent email checking), and instead tried to focus on writing in my free time.

The reasoning was in part – aside from getting more words written – to see if I could simulate what life would actually be like as a real (or perhaps professional) writer. Well, in summary, it was pretty awesome.

In more detail…

I got at least 300 words a day written without feeling a lot of pressure. As I’m sure just about every author [or writer] with a day job knows, it’s pretty easy to put pressure on yourself when you’ve got a WPD (Words Per Day) goal and have to spend 8 or more hours of the day putting in time at your real job.

This time I got to just do my normal weekend stuff, but for 3 days straight instead of just 2, which, again, relieved a lot of pressure in doing errands and house projects and the like.

I have added this one to my To Read list:

Not because I don’t enjoy my job – I love it. It’s just not the kind of job that will really ever lend itself to working less than full time. At some point in the future, I want to find a job that will still be as fun as the job I have now, but will be something I can do part time while I use the other part of that time to write.

Joe Konrath not only has a really cool marketing experiment going on, but he also puts forth some good ideas about marketing books.

The one that most caught my attention was this:

For years, I’ve been wondering why publishers waste money on full page ads in the New York Times, featuring a picture of the book cover and a bunch of blurbs, when a much more effective ad would be a full page excerpt from the novel.

It seems that even the back cover of a book would be more effective. Sure, it’s great that people give blurbs, but honestly, I often feel like these are reciprocal back-scratching sorts of moves rather than real opinions. And they don’t really tell you what the book is about. The first thing I read when looking at a book on Amazon is the description. Then, if it sounds good, I’ll check a review that rated it highly as well as a review that rated it low. Most of the books on Amazon don’t have an excerpt available yet, or I would consider going to that as a second option (or definitely as a third option if my quick review of the reviews kept me interested).

In terms of Konrath’s experiment of putting other people’s excerpts into his books, it sounds like something I’d be interested in. I usually don’t read the excerpts if their from the same author because either I liked the book enough that I plan to read the book from which the excerpt comes anyway, or I didn’t like it enough to feel like reading an excerpt would make me want to read the next book (or another book by the author).

If it was framed, however, as books “recommended” by the author I’d just read, and there were 3-5 excerpts available to read through, I would find it fascinating. It would probably be enough for me to check out a book, even without an excerpt, if it were simply in a list of books recommended by an author I liked. Getting to read excerpts of these new books for free would fit exactly in the movie preview metaphor that Konrath came up with.

And maybe the best part of this marketing effort is that it maintains it’s utility (and perhaps increases it) as the market continues to shift more towards eBooks and away from traditional paper books.