#advice

Jun 26, 2020
3 min

The Worst Writing Advice

In last week’s post, we considered some of the most helpful advice about writing. But, as I mentioned in that post, everyone is a critic, ready and more than willing to offer advice. Some of it is helpful, but much of it is anything but that. And much of that counsel is offered by people who are not writers, and some of it comes from those who are still working at the craft but have not yet been published. So how do they know what works? They only know what hasn’t worked for

Dennis L. Peterson

Jun 18, 2020
2 min

Advice that Helped My Writing

Someone once asked what pieces of advice have helped me most with my writing. After contemplating the question for a while, I think I’d have to give the following answer. “Make Every Word Count.” Use a thesaurus to help with this task. It will show you that even broad synonyms have various shades of meaning. Choose the exact word. 2. “When In Doubt, Cut It Out.” But be forewarned: writing tight is hard work. The shorter the text must be, the harder it is to write. But your wr

Dennis L. Peterson

May 22, 2020
3 min

What’s That Smell?!

It’s funny how smells can trigger various emotions and thoughts. You detect a certain odor, and your mind immediately flies to a memory of a person, an event, or a substance. A former teacher’s perfume. A steamy apple pie fresh from the oven. A smelly, stale, sweat-saturated locker room. An old elementary school classroom. Fresh cut pine lumber. A skunk that is now roadkill. My mind turned to thinking about odors while I was shampooing my hair during my shower. I began to thi

Dennis L. Peterson

May 12, 2020
2 min

Remembering William Zinsser

Zinsser was born October 7, 1922. Following service in the Army in North Africa and Italy during World War II, he returned to the United States and fulfilled a life-long dream by being hired as a writer for the New York Herald Tribune as a theater reviewer. When that stopped being fun for him, he quit and became a freelance writer. He also taught writing courses at Yale and later became executive editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club. In addition to numerous articles and revie

Dennis L. Peterson

May 8, 2020
3 min

The Virtue of Silence

My week started off with a measure of excitement for me. I was able to meet (in a virtual sort of way) an author whose works I’ve long admired. The meeting occurred during a Zoom meeting (a technology that I’ve come to appreciated during this time of enforced isolation) of the “scribes” for the Coolidge Foundation with its board chairman, historian Amity Shlaes. I logged in early to ensure that nothing went wrong with the new (to me) technology and in the hope that I might be

Dennis L. Peterson

Jan 31, 2020
2 min

Jack or Master?

No doubt, you’ve heard the adage “a jack of all trades, a master of none,” referring to someone who can do a lot of different things but no single thing well. Benjamin Franklin reputedly corrected that misquotation of the adage, saying that it originally was “a jack of all trades, a master of one.” I had read an earlier work by Raynor, Called to Create, a book written primarily for writers, artists, musicians, and other creative types. I enjoyed that book, so when I learned t

Dennis L. Peterson

Jan 10, 2020
2 min

An Old Farmer’s Words of Wisdom

One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting on the couch beside my grandfather (we called him Pappaw) in his house while he silently read his Bible. I watched his hands as he read, tracking his progress along the lines of text with his calloused and arthritis-gnarled index finger. But Pappaw’s wisdom was not the erudite wisdom of philosophers, articulated in esoteric and academic terms that too often confuse rather than enlighten. His was a common-sense wisdom that wa

Dennis L. Peterson

Dec 13, 2019
2 min

The Tasks We Dread

To paraphrase a familiar adage, “A writer’s gotta do what a writer’s gotta do.” So I’m doing it. Because it has to be done sometime. No matter how much I hate doing it, and no matter how long I procrastinate, it still must be done. And there’s no time like the present, so. . . . Indexing is a task that I never enjoyed. I was introduced to the torture, er task, when I was an author of history curricula for a major textbook publisher. I knew immediately that it did not fit into

“Little” Errors in Writing Are Potential Problems

Dennis L. Peterson

Nov 15, 2019
2 min

“Little” Errors in Writing Are Potential Problems

That said, I was reading for pleasure a few nights ago (an historical novel, no less!) when my editorial alarm went off like an air-raid siren, forcing me to pause my journey through the narrative and reread not just the previous sentence but several pages of text. One character was a female named Miss Collins. The male counterpoint character was Mr. Curran. As I breezed along in my reading of the dialogue, I suddenly read something like this: “Well, Miss Curran, what do you

Dennis L. Peterson

Nov 8, 2019
2 min

The Fourth Quarter: A Review

Mathis, Jim. The Fourth Quarter (Overland Park, Kan.: Mathis Books, 2018). Paper, 102 pages. Available https://jim-mathis-writerjimmathisphotonet913-269-6709.square.site/ Jim Mathis ably addresses this topic in his book The Fourth Quarter. At a mere 102 pages, his book is a quick and easy read (I read it in one sitting), but does it ever pack a lot into a small space! It certainly gives readers a lot of food for thought. In the first quarter of life, we’re “navigating . . . t

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 18, 2019
3 min

Writing Lessons, Courtesy DMV

To fully appreciate what I’m saying, one must understand the backstory, realizing the change that took place in DMV over the years. Simply put, any dealings one had with DMV were once a nightmare. Such an experience today, however, is the exception rather than the rule. When my wife and I relocated to the state 15 years ago, helpful friends and coworkers offered valuable advice on a variety of things we would have to do, many of them in a limited amount of time. Two of those

Dennis L. Peterson

Jul 12, 2019
4 min

Our Persistent Peach Puzzle

When my wife and I moved to our current residence, one of the first things that went on our “we-want-to-do-this-to-the-property-some-day” list was to plant peach trees. After all, we do live in the state that produces the most fresh peaches in the nation (Georgia’s fake news nickname notwithstanding). Shortly thereafter, we marked that item off the list, having planted two four-foot peach trees in the back yard. Knowing that the trees would not bear fruit for a couple of year

Dennis L. Peterson

May 31, 2019
2 min

Mixing Work and Play

A writer’s work is never done, even during vacations. If a writer is not looking for ideas, then he or she is doing research, people watching for character types, eavesdropping for speech patterns, or conjuring plots. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction writers. And it was definitely true for me the past ten or twelve days. A highlight of the trip for me was reconstructing an event from my first trip West as a kid. During that trip, we stopped at the Petrified Forest

Dennis L. Peterson

May 17, 2019
2 min

Reflections on a Winslow Homer Painting

But that painting, “Snap the Whip,” was more than a sanity-maintainer for me. It reminded me of three special people: my grandfather, my father, and teacher-author Jesse Stuart. Finally, the painting reminds me of Jesse Stuart, who began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in which he struggled to teach his students not only the daily lessons of the curriculum but also, and more importantly, the life lesson that learning is critical to success in any and all life endeavors. On

Dennis L. Peterson

May 10, 2019
2 min

Writers Said It

Sometimes great writers have some interesting advice and insights about the craft of writing (and many other topics). Here are a few examples of what some famous writers had to say. Lewis Carroll: “Begin at the beginning . . . and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” (Turtle Soup, Alice in Wonderland) Herman Melville: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” (Moby Dick) Mark Twain: “Classic. A book which people praise and don’t read.” (Pudd’nhead Wil

Dennis L. Peterson

May 7, 2019
3 min

Navigating versus Drifting

A number of years ago, my wife and I were returning from a trip up north and were cruising along somewhere down I-75 in Ohio. We had a dinner appointment in Tennessee, but we were making good time and would have plenty of time to get there in time to freshen up first. We exited, followed the truckers (they always know the shortcuts, don’t they?) through a little town, and then came to a red light. On the other side of the light the road split at a Y. The truckers were all goi

Dennis L. Peterson

May 3, 2019
2 min

Books I Recommend to Writer Friends

I recently completed an eight-part series answering the question “How does one go about getting a book published?” Some of my writer friends are now asking, “What books would you recommend to get us started, and keep us moving, toward that goal of book publication?” I’m glad someone asked, expressing their confidence in my opinion about this question. I often find myself drawn to other writers’ lists of what books they have found helpful. Perhaps the books they found helped t

Dennis L. Peterson

Apr 30, 2019
3 min

8. You Have a Publisher–Now What?

(Eighth and final in a series) Having gotten a workable idea, done the necessary research, outlined the manuscript, written the first draft, edited and revised it several times, researched the potential markets, and pitched the book to those publishers, you’ve finally won a contract for your book! Now what? You begin what is, to me anyway, the hardest part of the whole process. It’s harder for me than coming up with ideas, researching, writing, editing and revising, and pitch

Dennis L. Peterson

Apr 26, 2019
3 min

7. Pitching Your Book

(Seventh in a series) Once you’ve found several potential publishers for your book, it’s time to “pitch” it to them. By “pitch,” I mean submit it to see if any of them are interested in publishing it. But how? I have found that with my own books, this process involved three ingredients: a query letter (or e-mail), a proposal package, and a completed manuscript. But before you send any of those things to any publisher, study the publisher’s preferred method of approaching them

Dennis L. Peterson

Apr 23, 2019
3 min

6. Researching the Markets

(Sixth in a series) In the preceding five installments of this series, I’ve been answering the question of how one goes about getting a book published. So far, we’ve covered getting the idea, doing the research, outlining the manuscript, writing the first draft, and editing and revising that draft. Today, we deal with researching the possible markets for the book. Even before I have completed my research and writing of my draft manuscript, I have been thinking about which pub