The Writing Life Too

Sullen skies again but the big rains that have been causing flooding in parts of the Northwest are supposed to be ending…or at least for awhile. Well yesterday my editor at Tarcher sent me a mock up of my cover—and it’s fabulous! If you read this blog you might know that we’ve been wrangling over the title because they didn’t want to use my title Dear Bad Writer….Anyway, the book is about all the ills that I’ve seen in my clients’ and student’s manuscripts over the years because I’d like to help people NOT get rejected. The book cover looks like a manuscript cover page and it has coffee rings in one corner as if the editor had placed a coffee cup on it and includes red ink. I cracked up and voted for adding more red ink because often when I return manuscripts they look like a bleeding corpse…And the new title is Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us which is a common line from a rejection letter, although we haven’t quite settled on the subtitle.

And speaking of editing. Awhile ago I was having dinner and listening to live music with friends at a local blues club/restaurant. That night there was one bartender working the entire room and waitressing/busing the tables, although there are usually two women working on a Saturday night. She was a maestro of efficiency—whisking around the room like a ballet dancer, but she forgot my friend’s order for crab cakes. When she returned with the order and her apology she mentioned that the previous night she’d had a waitressing nightmare where the orders were piled up and people were yelling “Miss!” and grabbing at her as she struggled to keep up with a huge crowd of hungry people. Which led us into a funny conversation about our stress/worry dreams. I used to be caterer and would dream that hundreds of people were showing up at the door for the event and I hadn’t yet begun to cook their food. Or sometimes these days, I need to speak before a large crowd or teach and I dream that the event is starting and I haven’t prepared my talk.

So this morning I woke up from a dream in which I was teaching or leading a writer’s critique group. There was an older writer in the class and her manuscript wasn’t coming together. In the dream I was struggling to explain to her how she might improve her plotting techniques and I suggested that she start working on complicated jigsaw puzzles, to try and slip into a more creative problem-solving mindset. Then I suggested that she copy my habit of using a notebook when she reads and make notes on metaphors and similes because her language was flat. In the dream I’m sort of stumped as to how to help her, but I don’t want her to give up….I want her to make a big leap in her writing…..

In case you haven’t heard about it, the good folks at the University of Oxford have assembled a list of the ten most annoying and overused buzzwords and phrases. The list appears in a new book, Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, by Jeremy Butterfield. Butterfield said: "We grow tired of anything that is repeated too often – an anecdote, a joke, a mannerism – and the same seems to happen with some language." (Drum roll please)
1. At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

Bless their hearts, although they left out my top irritations: very, synergy, strategy, utilize, think outside the box, needless to say, paradigm shift, quite literally, long story short, agree to disagree, hands-on, the bottom line, tongue in cheek, totally, absolutely, really, so called, sea change, wake-up call, no brainer, not an option, my friends and maverick (don’t get me started) Irregardless of whether you agree with them, it’s plain as day that compiling this list wasn’t rocket science. Happy writing and deleting those clichés.