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Word-Count Budgeting

10/14/2018

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Picture(C) Brian Martin
Imagine you’re on a tight budget and you’re shopping for words. Every word you place in your manuscript-shopping-cart costs one dollar. To be fiscally responsible, you'd be judicious about what words you'd purchase. And if you inadvertently purchased an expired or defective word--you'd return it or exchange it , right?

Viewing words as a valuable commodity will help us eliminate word-clutter, word-fill. It will create tight, lean writing.  

What words are always worth the buck? Precise verbs and nouns. To quote Mervin Block: “Nouns are the bones that give a sentence body. But verbs are the muscles that make it go.”

On the other hand, fluff and filler words--phrases that add little to the meaning--are unwise purchases. William Strunk, Jr.’s The Elements of Style, warns: “Rather, very, little--these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.” Or as one of my writing instructors explained it: Popcorn-kernel writing discards the white fluffy stuff. 

Why not go through your work and delete that, which, when, the, like, but, well, totally, of, absolutely, just, a, thing, and, so, on wherever the meaning would not be compromised? Don't write stood up when stood will do. Don't have your character speak very softly. Let her whisper. Don't explain the color of her dress is pink when her pink dress makes the point. And please, don’t spin yourself around in circles,  just spin that manuscript into a mean, lean thing! 

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Writing Quotes

9/23/2013

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PicturePhoto by Lauren Mann
As my writing journey has progressed through time, I have collected quotes from books about the craft, from editor and author interviews, from newsletters for writers, and the like. Some have caused me to pause and re-think the writing process. Others have encouraged me to persevere when the rejections come. While yet others are just plain fun. So, I've decided to share them here with you. 


          What say you about these quotes? What writing quotes have you enjoyed?

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
              Samuel Johnson

Only paper flowers are afraid of the rain. We are not afraid of the noble rain of criticism because with it will flourish the magnificent garden of music.
       Konstantin Dankevich

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. 
       William Wordsworth

Tight writing makes its point... It is the difference between hitting with a pillow and hitting with a baseball bat.
           William Brohaugh 

A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.
                    Franz Kafka

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
             F. Scott Fitzgerald

“And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?”
        Lewis Carroll, Alice in         Wonderland

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the sky. 
                 Carl Sandburg

I believe character and plot and setting and language—on a slant—is what readers thirst for. They are intrigued with what is odd, aberrant, offbeat, strange…
            Patricia Lee Gauch

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech
               Clifton Fadiman

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.  
        Henry Ward Beecher

Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end.
                  Peter DeVries

Rejections are stones that pave the road to sales.
                      Mel Boring

Nouns are the bones that give a sentence body. But verbs are the muscles that make it go. 
                   Mervin Block

Writing for children is like a perfect dive off the high platform—lean, neat, an arrow piercing the water.
                Heather Sellers

It's hard to be in this business long without getting some serious ouch moments—but…when the pain comes, don't let it whisper to you that you're a loser. Yell at the rejection letters.  Kick the couch.  Don't give up.
                       Jan Fields

A plot is the web we weave to snare the reader and lead him exactly where we want him to go—to the heart of the story and out again.
            Marileta Robinson

Great books come alive. They breathe. They lament. They stand up and cheer…The heart of a really good book beats.
           Patricia Lee Gauch 

Your work is only as good as your concentra… Hey look! A cloud shaped like Snoopy! 
                 Martell Stroup


Good prose is like a windowpane. 
                 George Orwell

Tell us the details…Pay tribute to all the everyday & extraordinary things…
              Natalie Goldberg

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    Author

    Dionna is a spinner of children's yarns, a weaver of nonfiction articles, and a forever-learner enrolled in the Institute of Imaginative Thinking.  She is the author of ORCAS, a photo-supported book for 3rd to 5th graders that can be found in the award-winning Nature's Children series published by Scholastic Press. You'll also find her kidlit work in Cricket, Ladybug, and soon in Highlights for Children. As a freelance journalist, Dionna writes for  Charlottesville Family's Bloom, a Parent's Choice winner. She's been an SCBWI Mid-Atlantic member since 2005, and the content editor of her region's SCBWI newsletter, the Highlighter, since 2017. Dionna lives in Virginia with her husband.


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