Writing Tips

So, D4 emailed me and asked how to get short stories published. Here is what I told her, more or less.

Go to your local library and sit down with the latest Writer's Market. (You could look up Writer's Market on-line, but I think they require a membership subscription. There are other on-line lists of publications as well, but make sure the information is accurate before following it.) Look up the type of publication or magazine you want to publish in. Copy the information. Look at copies of the publication in the library and read some of the short stories in them to see if they fit with your writing style and if you want to be affiliated with that publication. Go home and look up your chosen publications' web sites to verify submission policies and editors' names. Write a short submission cover letter for your story and then follow the submission instructions for each publication to the letter. Write some more stories.

Writing Tips

My daughter, D3, wrote a terrific novel. She let me read the first draft and I couldn't put it down. Of course, there are problems. With a first draft there always are. But D3 did the right thing in asking people to read the manuscript and make comments. Sharing your work is the best thing you can do for your writing other than writing a lot, if you recognize that your readers will have different opinions and that some will be more skilled than others. However, if you are going for a particular age group or gender audience, it's always good to have people in that group read your manuscript, if you can. If you don't have someone you can ask to read your work, you can join one of the many on-line writers groups.

Here is the other photo

This one is from my porch to the north.

Just wanted to show how beautiful it is today.

Here are a couple of photographs from my front porch today, January 27, 2009. We have such gorgeous mountains that I pity people who don't live here.

A Blogger mentions my book

I googled my book and found that a blogger (Chasing Ray, actually Colleen Mondor, who is a reviewer for Booklist, Bookslut, Eclectica Magazine and the Voices of New Orleans.), checked out the Houghton Mifflin catalog on January 16 and chose my book as one of the books she is looking forward to. She says,

The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene Low, illus by Jen Corace. Okay, the tagline "a mysterious and lively romp through Edwardian England in 1903" caught my eye as well as the charmingly retro cover but this description - this description is one of the best I've seen ever: "You would think Petronella’s sixteenth birthday would be cause for celebration. After all, fashionable friends are arriving at her country estate near London, teas are being served, and her coming out party promises to be a resplendent affair. Everything is falling nicely into place, until, suddenly—it isn’t. For Petronella discovers that her guardian, Uncle Augustus T. Percival, has developed a most unVictorian compulsion: He must eat bugs. Worse still, because he is her guardian, Uncle Augustus is to attend her soiree and his current state will most definitely be an embarrassment.
During the festivities, when Petronella would much rather be sharing pleasantries with handsome Lord James Sinclair (swoon), important guests are disappearing, kidnapping notes are appearing, many of the clues are insects, and Uncle Augustus is surreptitiously devouring evidence. It’s more than one sixteen-year-old girl should have to deal with. But, truth be told, there is far more yet to come . . ."

That is not a description that can be resisted, no way, no how.


So you can see why I'm excited.

Further vindication

So, after I emailed the student back about giving her a better grade, she wrote back:

You have no idea how much this means to me. I appreciate it more than
you could possibly imagine and if you ever need anything done that I
could help you with, (books carried up a large staircase, someone
beaten up) I would be more than willing to help you out with it.
Thank you again, SO MUCH.

I wonder if she'll tell her mother. I laugh every time I think about it.

Vindication!!!

I just got an email from the student whose mother was so nasty and from the student's email, I don't think she knew what her mother had done. In the student's email, the student admitted she couldn't find the paper she said I never recorded and she couldn't actually remember doing the paper, so she was going to have to take the lower grade, and I mean pretty low, as in near failing. I was touched. I thought her admission took guts, so I thanked her for her honesty and said I would bump her grade up one full grade because she had admitted her mistake. I wonder if she'll tell her mother.

Another crazy parent commits fraud

University students have enough to deal with, without having their parents treat them like babies or interfering in their lives. The following email was intended to go to the scholarship committee of an organization I belonged to at the time. For one thing, I would never start "To Whom it May Concern" and that tipped me off right away, as absentminded as I am. It is a fraudulent letter of recommendation written by the student's mother using my name and email address, so of course the email message came to me rather than the scholarship committee. Silly mother.


To Whom it May Concern:

I would gladly recommend _________ for the ______ scholarship. _______ has been a student of mine and has shown his ability to commit to the tasks assigned and work hard as a member of group projects as well.

With the challenges of college courses, as well as both personal and school activities, it is refreshing to see students that are willing to work hard and stay focused. _________ has shown that he has interest in both learning and doing well at school.

I am sure that _________ will excel at whatever he does, and that he will take pride in his work as well as his achievements.

Sincerely,
_______________


As I was puzzling over the fact that I never wrote this email and how it came to be, I received another email message from the student's mother.

Prof _________ - I have just done something totally unacceptable and __________ is not even aware. I have to apologize and hope that you will not hold this against _______. This is ________________, ___________'s mom, and I have written the below message in the attempt to meet a deadline for a scholarship.

_______________ is not aware of this being done and I will call and explain it to him, as soon as I complete this e-mail message.

There is NO ACCEPTABLE EXCUSE for me doing this.

________ is writing the essay, to complete the scholarship requirement. He has one scholarship letter of recommendation, but I was reading the guidelines and it will require 2 from the University.

I will discuss with ___________ and we will not proceed with the application for scholarship!!

This is the worse offense, I admit, and I cannot say how sorry I am. This is not something I would do, nor ever want ___________ to do. I have raised _________ to be a very honest and hard working person. This is definitely something I am ashamed of, but will discuss with ___________ so he will understand the consequences of doing something dishonest.

I suppose it was a positive thing that I hit the send button and you received the e-mail; because it has prevented me from actually using something that you did not create.

I would like to explain some of the circumstances, that caused my lapse in honesty & integrity; however, I do not accept it as being a reason for doing something this bad. My father is terminally ill and I have been spending as much time as possible traveling between my family in __________ and my parents in __________. The deadline has crept upon us too fast, and I wanted ________ to be able to qualify for the scholarship.

Again, this is no excuse and I will not proceed with the scholarship application. Please understand this is not something ___________ had any hand in doing. Both he and I share the e-mail address and I am just sick that I was attempting to do something so bad.

I know ________ will be mortified. He will be upset that I have now humiliated him, in front of you; and be upset that I would do something so stupid. Facing _________ is another punishment that I deserve.

Please let me know if you would like me to call and talk to you. I would be more than willing to meet with you and if there is anything else you need me to do; I will do whatever necessary. I cannot believe that I would attempt to do something so horrible.

______________

My response to the mother:

I had a talk with __________ to determine his part. Hopefully both you and he realize the seriousness of writing something with the intent to mislead (also known as fraud), especially since the topic of our class last week was about ethics in writing. Because I can understand the desires of a mother to help her son, I have decided not to pursue any kind of action against you or ________, although I will alert the University Writing Program director that this happened. I do wish you and your son well.

--


_____________________

Her response back to me:

Thank you for responding to my e-mail. I have been very upset over this matter, and I do not think that anything has upset me more. I am upset at myself for doing such a thing and upset that I would put my son in such an uncomfortable position. _______ did mention that he spoke with you. __________ also mentioned that you had covered the topic of ethics in class. I know better than to do such a thing and please believe that I have never done such a thing and will never do it again.

Again I apologize and thank you for not taking further action against ____________. I would hate to see him penalized for an action that I committed.
Thanks
____________

Crazy Parents of Students

So, I just received an email from the disgruntled parent of one of my university students. The initial reason for her writing to me is absolutely my fault. I made not one, but two mistakes with her grade that gave her a failing grade in my class. After going over her grades as soon as school started again this semester and the student came back from vacation, we have determined that she actually got a C, so I am doing a change of grade form for her. Her mother was so frustrated, maybe because I wanted to see the actual assignments with the grades I wrote on them before doing the grade change, that she sent the following email to me and I have to admit, it made me laugh because it is so dripping with uninformed impotent ichor.

The mother wrote:
I was very disappointed to learn of the disorganized state of your records as they pertain to the above-referenced student. I can only assume that others have suffered at your hand, as well. I intend to report this to your superiors, as it is unacceptable, and certainly beneath ______ standards. I also intend to report comments I understand you have made in class related to people's political and sexual orientations. This is not in keeping with professional behavior expected of one in your position, and certainly not in keeping with ________ standards. I regret having been placed in this position, but in order to prevent another student being put in the position my daughter has been put in, I feel it is the right thing to do, and anything less would be dishonorable.

Even though I refuse to deal with parents, just the students (for legal privacy reasons as well as ethical reasons), I did answer with the following (as near as I can remember):

So sorry you feel the need to be so mean hearted. Sometimes parents get over-excited and say things they later regret. Unfortunately, email allows people to say things they would never dream of saying to a person's face. Your daughter is a grown-up and is handling this situation in a mature manner. We have come to an equitable solution. All it requires is a grade change form and each of us taking responsibility for our own mistakes.

I could have said, but did not, that a part of the reason she got the bad grades is that she didn't turn in all assignments and she wasn't in class all the time and another part is that the last week of school I was sick enough I should have stayed home, but I had to finish out the semester, so the mistakes probably occurred because of my illness. The combination was a bad one, but no lasting harm done once the change of grade form is turned in. I also didn't say that the daughter was behaving in a more mature manner than her mother and her mother's behavior bodes ill for her daughter's continuing maturity. I'm not terribly worried, because this is the first time in many years of teaching that anything like this has happened, but I will be interested to see if my department chair wants to talk with me. He probably gets way too many disgruntled parent emails.

The part of the email that made me laugh right out loud is the sentence on talking about politics and sexual orientation in class. Right. It was a literature class and we discussed formalism, structuralism, reader response theory, postmodernism, deconstructionism, culturalism, neo-historicism, and here's the kicker, Marxism, feminism, and gender theory. Since the last three are legitimate literary theories, it would have been remiss not to discuss them and I cannot imagine how we could not talk about politics or sexual orientation, although I was careful not to state a political position of my own.

This entry is getting too long, so I will post another crazy parent's email in another post.