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Bonus: you'll learn to count with kanji in the paperback edition of KITSUNE-MOCHI.

Manuscript Formatting: How To Keep From Making Your Layout Person Cry

manuscript formatting: image of chapter title with kanji, chapter number, small caps first word and opening sentences.

Today I’m going to talk about manuscript formatting and how you can use it to become a favorite writer among editors and their layout minions.

I’m kind of breaking one of my rules here, which is that I don’t generally advertise that I do layout. My time is limited and I am rarely looking for additional work. However, it occurs to me that explaining how to provide cleaner files for layout might actually save me time and effort, and it can certainly save other people time and effort, designers and editors and writers, and that’s good all around.

Note: I am writing this specifically for files I receive for anthology layout, but this manuscript formatting advice is good for market submissions, too. Sending a clean file to an editor makes a better impression than one that looks messy, even if the writing is the same.

So here are some simple guidelines to making your editor and layout designer like you a lot!Manuscript Formatting: How To Keep From Making Your Layout Person Cry

"I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives." Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

The Disproportionate View of the Negative

Two days ago I got the notification that the NYC Midnight Short Story contest final results were up. I delayed opening the email, because I knew my third round story had not been as strong as my first two and I didn’t expect to do well. I finally clicked through, scanned just enough to confirm that there had not been a miracle, and I closed the page. Another email came with my feedback — every story in the contest gets feedback from multiple judges — and I didn’t even open it. I was busy, it wasn’t going anywhere, and I already knew there were problems with my story.

Yesterday morning, I opened the feedback email. Their feedback format is to collate the positive notes first, followed by the collated critical notes. I read the first couple of sentences on what the judges liked, then read down — and I realized that I was barely skimming, skipping over all the nice compliments to look for the coming negatives on what the judges felt needed work.The Disproportionate View of the Negative

Being a writer is easy. It's like riding a bike. Except the bike is on fire. You're on fire. Everything is on fire and you're in hell.

Writing Algorithm: Will Software Put Writers Out of a Job?

Being a writer is easy. It's like riding a bike. Except the bike is on fire. You're on fire. Everything is on fire and you're in hell.By now you’ve probably seen the predictive text Harry Potter, but here’s a slightly different take, using a writing algorithm for structural and editorial guidance.

No argument, making the words can be hard. Since we have computer-assisted everything these days, algorithms helping me to research, to navigate heavy traffic, to drive safely, why not computer-assisted writing to write efficiently and beautifully? It’s a reasonable question.

Fifty notable classic and modern science-fiction stories were fed into the computer, which analyzed them for common elements of subject, theme, and style. Then it produced a set of rules for producing a new great story, and parameters for writing it.Writing Algorithm: Will Software Put Writers Out of a Job?

Drawing a sword from the book, not stabbing the book. In case it was unclear.

What is up with #Inktober?

Drawing a sword from the book, not stabbing the book. In case it was unclear.
Drawing a sword from the book, not stabbing the book. In case it was unclear.

If you follow my social media, you might have noticed that I’ve been posting ink drawings for #Inktober, and that they’re generally awful. You might have asked yourself why I would do that. Do I know how bad they are, or do I see my work through a blissfully ignorant filter? Is it some sort of prank?

So here’s what’s up with Inktober.

First, in case you aren’t familiar with it, #Inktober is a month for doing one drawing — in ink — and sharing it per day. You can find the brief background and this year’s optional prompt list from the creator Jake Parker. It’s something like National Novel Writing Month, but for visual artists.

Now, let’s recognize that I’m bad at drawing. No, I’m really bad at drawing. The local catchphrase for referring to truly hideous visual design is, “It looks like Laura drew it.” (Don’t feel bad. I’m often the one saying it. It’s not wrong to acknowledge my skills are in other sets.) So why on earth would I do Inktober, which unlike NaNoWriMo specifically requires publicly sharing one’s work?

I’m doing Inktober for several reasons:What is up with #Inktober?

poster for The Giant of Marathon, 1959

A Marathon Legend

I posted this on my Facebook page and got more reaction than I expected. So here’s an expanded version for your reading pleasure.

For most of my life, I’ve believed the story in my 5th grade schoolbook about Pheidippides running 25 miles from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to declare “We won!” before promptly dropping dead, and that’s the origin of the marathon.

Today I learned that’s not at all true.

A Marathon Legend
Jodie Whittaker in 13th Doctor announcement photo

Doctor Who, Writing Female Characters, and Equality.

Jodie Whittaker in 13th Doctor announcement photo
Jodie Whittaker in 13th Doctor announcement photo

On the one hand, I can’t believe we need to have this discussion of how to write female protagonists and balance. On the other, since clearly we do need it, let’s have it.

With the announcement of the 13th Doctor as a female regeneration, the internet slightly exploded. I was actually at a fandom convention during the announcement and heard not only discussion of the announcement itself, but of reactions to the announcement.

We’re going to ignore those who were horrified to discover their Doctor now has girl cooties. They’re easy to ignore — or just borrow for humor, where they’re most useful. Anyway, the haters are vocal but seem to be a minority, or maybe I just have a better-curated network, and I don’t intend to waste blog space on that sort of thing.

But one repeated protest I heard repeatedly in several less-hysterical discussions was, now that the Doctor is a female, the male companions will be written down to idiocy so that she looks clever, and so everything will be less cool and the storytelling will suffer. I found myself saying or typing the same thing repeatedly, so let me just save time and put it here.

This is indeed a huge problem, only the problem is not the Doctor’s personal plumbing.Doctor Who, Writing Female Characters, and Equality.

"Male author" and "male doctor" are not offensive terms. It's simply a way to differentiate them from normal authors and doctors.

A Little Feminist Check Re Discrimination

I botched it tonight.

Someone asked our panel about writing in a traditionally male-dominated (both as authors and heroes) genre, as a woman. And several women writers were invited to answer, but with the clock ticking on the last moments of our chat time.

I was discombobulated by trying to formulate both a comprehensive and brief answer under the countdown, and even more so by another panelist’s previous assertion that white males were the cause of the downfall of society — a statement I found untrue as well as unfair to the white male panelists sitting on either side of me at the time, not freaking out about being outnumbered on the panel.A Little Feminist Check Re Discrimination

THREE disposable diapers abandoned in beautiful green forest. THREE.

Gross! Parents, Seriously.

Okay, warning, today is a rant.

I’ve had a few people think it was “dirty” that I have dogs in my house, or that I touch them regularly in my job as an animal trainer. Okay, not everyone likes dogs, that’s fine, and I guess if you’re seriously weirded out about them you can imagine airborne cooties flying through the room or something. (Though the service dog under the table is not a risk to your food and isn’t going away.) But the weird thing is, the people who voice such protests say nothing to or about parents doing actual gross stuff with their kids in eating areas.

I have long been disgusted by parents who change diapers on restaurant tables. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, how is that okay, and it’s not like there aren’t legally-mandated changing tables in the restrooms just a few steps away. But I guess they figure they’re busy and special, and anyway no one should be stupid enough to eat off a restaurant table or have their eyes open while eating. If I didn’t want to see exactly how much nastier strained peas are post-processing, I shouldn’t have chosen a restaurant which serves families. And anyway, breast-fed babies’ diapers are so much better than formula-fed babies’ diapers, see the difference? so they don’t know how I could be upset.

Gross! Parents, Seriously.
PALACE PUPPIES as KITSUNE-MOCHI

Seems Legit.

There is a phenomenon in which some skeevy lowlife steals a title and often a manuscript from a published book and re-publishes them on Amazon in his own account, trying to fool readers into buying his “edition” of the story and stealing royalties from the author.

Most of the time, though, they do a better job of matching a more plausible cover.Seems Legit.