Via PublishersMarketplace’s PublishersLunch, here’s an interesting piece from the Chicago Sun Times about writers’ efforts to get on Oprah. Some have succeeded, most have failed, and quite a few have embarrassed themselves.
Anyway, let’s hope they’re embarrassed ;-)
[tags] writing, Oprah [/tags]
Here’s a fun read: Mark Peters in The Chronicle of Higher Education, writing about eggcorns.
So what’s an eggcorn? Originally, the word “eggcorn” was just an amusing misspelling of “acorn.” Linguists — especially those on the Language Log blog — noticed that “eggcorn” made a kind of intuitive sense and was an apt guess if you didn’t know the real spelling.
. . . All eggcorns makes sense on some level. For example, the eggcorn “girdle one’s loins” is far more understandable than the archaic “gird one’s loins.” “Free reign” — an extremely common misspelling — expresses a similar laxness to “free rein,” and there’s a kind of exclamatory kismet between “whoa is me!” and “woe is me!” Another eggcorn, “woeth me!” makes an old-fashioned-sounding word even more so. And since a rabble-rouser may eventually cause some rubble to exist, “rubble-rouser” is a nifty invention.
Lots more examples in the article, plus the delightful revelation that one Chris Waigl has an Eggcorn Database.
I know a fellow who used to coin them on purpose. Two of my favorites: “get to the crux of the biscuit” and “low dog on the scrotum pole” :-D
Jeffrey Trachtenberg wrote about an interesting publishing trend in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required): issuing new translations to boost sales of classics.
Many of these books are in the public domain, although in some cases the translators get royalties.
I’m in awe of people able to debate the merits of particular translations, i.e. in terms of how faithful they are to their originals; it’s beyond me, I’d never presume–translations are always approximations, how can you compare one approximation to another unless you’re fluent in the original language? I’d never presume. (I read Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch in the original in college, having learned enough Spanish to manage just that, and to acquire a bit of humility on the subject of foreign languages . . .)
So set that aside, and take a look at the sales data.
The Oprah Effect: since she picked Anna Karenina for her book club in 2004, the 2001 translation by Pevear and Volokhonksy has sold 635,000 copies.
Translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey by Robert Fagles, published by Viking Penguin in the 1990s, “were highly praised and have now sold an estimated 1.5 million copies.”
A 2006 edition of War and Peace (translated by Anthony Briggs) has already sold nearly 11,000 copies.
A successful translation can “generate sales for 30 years or more.”
Those are good numbers. Trachtenberg notes that fewer than 1000 of the 170K books published in the U.S. last year were “literary works in translation,” but it appears to be a solid little niche, doesn’t it. Solid little corner of the “neglected middle” ;-)
Okay, there’s something wrong with the tone of this piece in Psychology Today.
Here’s the lede:
Parents aren’t necessarily in the clear when their children walk across the stage to claim their high school diplomas, according to a study by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
About 20 percent of students who were doing well as high school seniors were not meeting their stated or expected goals at age 26, according to a study called Monitoring the Future.
“What’s scary is that it’s unpredictable,” says John Schulenberg, Ph.D., professor of developmental psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the study’s lead researcher. “We used to think that if things were going well in high school, they’d continue to go well.”
“Scary”??????
Give me a break.
“Not meeting their goals” is later defined as meaning one of two things. Either the kids have not yet become financially independent, or they’ve “strayed from previously stated educational goals.”
What bothers me is the idea behind all this: the idea that if you push your teenager in the right direction, get him to score well enough on his SATs, get him the help he needs with his college entrance essay, etc. etc. etc., all of his problems will be solved into the foreseeable future.
Since when?
Sorting out what you really want to do with your life is hard, and being bright doesn’t necessarily make it any easier.
The fact that 20 percent of high achievers aren’t there by age 26 is not “scary.” It’s reality.
I can still remember how awful it felt, as a teenager, to think that I needed to choose what I was going to be when I grew up, that I needed to incur debt (in the form of college tuition) based on that decision. It was too much. I knew I wasn’t ready. So after one half-hearted attempt to pretend I knew what I was doing, I transferred to a state school and became a Comparative Literature major. In a sense, I was slacking, but I knew I needed more time, so I decided to get a plain ol’ liberal arts education at a school that cost a hell of a lot less than the private college that had originally accepted me.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and I’m finally beginning to understand what I want to do when I grow up.
Do I wish I had known when I was 16? Of course. But since when can we serve up life in pre-measured packets? Doesn’t work that way, never has.
I haven’t been reading much nonfiction lately (although my dad has given a copy of Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan, which I’ll be looking at after work today, lol) but The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine sounds way too interesting to pass up:
“The Female Brain” weaves together more than 1,000 scientific studies from the fields of genetics, molecular neuroscience, fetal and pediatric endocrinology, and neurohormonal development. It is also significantly based on her own clinical work at the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic, which she founded at UCSF 12 years ago. It is the only psychiatric facility in the country with such a comprehensive focus.
Although I’m wary of over-intellectualizing my fiction writing, I have another motive besides straight curiosity for my interest in the book: in my current WIP I’ve moved to third person, so instead of a first-person female narrator observing men (something I’ve spent some time researching, ha ha) I’m going to have to hover a bit within a man’s head — oooh, scary!
(Or maybe not. According to the article on Brizendine’s book, “Thoughts about sex enter women’s brains once every couple of days; for men, thoughts about sex occur every minute.” So to make my guy authentic, all I need to do is have him think about sex all the time! How hard can that be? :-D)
You’ve probably also caught the AP story on the recent RWA conference by Kate Brumback, which reports that a growing percentage of romance readers are male (22 percent in 2004, up from from 7 percent in 2002).
That article includes a bit about Don’t Look Down, the “military romance” collaboration between Jennifer Crusie and former Green Beret Bob Mayer.
I read the book on Friday (staying up until waaaay past my bedtime to finish it btw — when will I learn?) If you want to write commercial fiction, this is a great book to mull over — the characters are so quickly drawn, the pacing triptrops along–and then there’s the link-up between Lucy & J.T., crafted with its built-in reality check:
Mayer and Crusie met at the Maui Writers Conference three years ago. Both were looking to do something different, and they decided to collaborate. Crusie writes the parts that come from a woman’s point of view, while Mayer weighs in with the male perspective.
“Usually, you have women writing the male point of view, too. I read some sometimes and go, ‘No, that’s not what the guy is really thinking,’ ” Mayer said.
“He’s actually thinking about sex.” ha ha ha Mayer didn’t really say that :-)
I plan to read the book a second time as a writer, just to pick apart the male female stuff. For example, when the narrative follows Lucy, that’s how she’s referenced — by her first name. When it follows J.T., he’s referenced by Wilder, his last name — the only time he’s called “J.T.” is in dialogue, or when Lucy is thinking about him. It’s a subtle thing but it alone really masculinizes his piece of the story. How cool is that?
Sugarloaf ear worm alert.
I got your name from a friend of a friend
Who said he used to work with you
Remember the all night creature from stereo ninety two
Yeah I said could you relate to our quarter track tape
You know the band performs in the nude
He said uh huh don’t call us child we’ll call you . . .Listen kid you paid for the call
You ain’t bad but I’ve heard it all before
Don’t call us, we’ll call you . . .
Happy background music for cross-checking the list of agents I’ve queried for WHEN LIBBY. It’s been five weeks now since I sent my first batch of queries, so I’ve been going back to the websites of agencies that haven’t answered to see what they estimate as their response times.
I was surprised, in reading the fine print, how many state they don’t respond to e-queries at all unless they are interested in seeing more. About a third of the agencies I’ve e-queried have that policy.
I’ve decided that for those agencies, three weeks of silence means a definite “no.” Since I’m trying to send out new queries at the same rate that I get back “no’s,” this helps ensure that I always have about 20 active queries in the queue (including the ones that have resulted in requests for partials or fulls — up to five of those, now . . .)
Something else I’ve noticed, too. “No answer means ‘no thanks'” is apparently acceptable for email, but it raises eyebrows when applied to snail mail queries, as per this note on Preditors & Editors referencing one of the agencies listed there:
A writer reports they “can no longer guarantee to respond to unsolicited queries. Include a SASE only if you have no phone or email address at which you may be contacted if we should wish to see more of your material.” P&E finds this disturbing.
Different standards for different media?
The funny thing is, it probably takes more time & effort to stuff a form rejection into an envelope & mail it than to paste a form rejection into an email and hit “send.”
Heck, you wouldn’t even need to cut & paste. Just have a default sig line that is actually a form reject note:
Dear author. Thank you for your query, but I regret to say I feel no stir of enthusiasm for your project, and therefore if I represented you your career would likely plunge over the nearest cliff of doom. And neither of us wants that, do we. Fortunately this note liberates you from that possibility. Best of luck as you forge ahead, still alone. Signed, top-notch agent.
Just hit “reply,” the email is populated with your sig line/reject, and you’re done.
Of course, if you forget to choose a different sig line when requesting partials, it could be a bit embarrassing :-)
Of course, these were short short short par 3’s, but still, it’s marvelous to at least be close :-)
On the longer holes, my scores were frightful — I’m just not hitting far enough, plus the more strokes it takes to get to the green, the more opportunities to muff.
I’m also not really working on distance. Today I used only four clubs besides my putter — my 3 wood for driving, my 5 iron for fairway shots, my 7 iron once in awhile for shorter fairway shots, and my pitching wedge for when I’m close to the green.
My reasoning on this is that I need to reduce the variables until my swing is a bit more grooved in & consistent.
I hope I have time to sneak another nine holes in again tomorrow :-)
Wordcraft’s theme this week is insult words. Hooray!
Yesterday’s was troglodyte, which I already knew — one can’t read too many political blogs without encountering that baby, sooner or later. Usually delivered as a left jab :-D
Today’s was new to me: “excerebrose” brainless; having no brain.”
(I expect that’s what Barney’s handler called him after he discovered the shredded teddy bears.)
Okay, I know this is tragic on some level, but it still made me laugh because this is EXACTLY what my dog would do!
A dobie guarding a stuffed bear collection went on a “rampage” (yeah, quite the choice of words there guys — try “exuberant spree”) and ripped the bears to shreds.
He chewed up “hundreds” of bears and “left fluffy stuffing and bears’ limbs and heads on the museum floor.”
The collection was valued at $900,000.
(I wonder if this was captured on surveillance video?)
Found this tonight via Booksquare: The New York Observer‘s got a feature by Sheelah Kolhatkar about literary agent William Clegg who, in 2005, “suddenly stopped coming in to his office or returning phone calls.”
Here’s how Kolhatkar describes Clegg:
[His] reputation in publishing circles is as an attentive agent who garners significant (sometimes inflated) advances for his authors, but who was perhaps less focused on the nuts and bolts of his writers’ careers. (“Sometimes they were better-known for the advances they got than for their sales,” joked one editor.) One of Mr. Clegg’s former authors described him as good at “holding your hand, calling you and telling you you’re fabulous and that no one’s more talented than you … he was almost like a personal manager. He was a cheerleader. I think that’s what a lot of people miss.”
He is described as a charmer who could be very aggressive in business dealings and who was, at one time, a fixture on the social circuit, known for hosting parties at the apartment he lived in on lower Fifth Avenue.
Okay, so imagine this. You have an agent. He’s brilliant. He tells you you’re fabulous. He’s gotten you an advance that would make other writers in your genre roll over & wet themselves.
You’re an active client, so maybe he’s got your latest book out with publishers, or maybe you have a contract that’s being negotiated.
And suddenly, with no warning, your agent just vanishes.
Would you want this type of agent?
If he reappeared months later and called you, would you go back to him?
:-)
