December 29, 2019 · 2:05 am

Why Do We Gesture When We Talk?

We all know people who talk with their hands. Turns out there’s quite a bit of research around the relationship between language and gestures.

Source: Why Do We Gesture When We Talk?

In the early 1970s, David McNeill, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, was giving a talk in a Paris lecture hall when something odd caught his eye. There was a woman in the back of the room moving her arms in a way that seemed to convey exactly what he was saying. It took him a moment to realize that she was speaking, too, and another to realize that she was an interpreter, translating his words into French. For McNeill, that moment of confusion sparked an insight that would lead to a lifetime of research: Gesture and speech are not as separate as they seem.

Gesture researchers have spent the past 40+ years uncovering how movements (like a cupped hand rotating in space or a finger tracing a path through the air) are intimately tied to speech. Regardless of their spoken language or culture, humans gesture when they talk. They gesture even if they have never seen gestures before—people who have been blind since birth do it—and they gesture even if they’re talking to someone on the phone and know no one can see them. When speech is disrupted—by stuttering, for example—so is gesture.

In fact, gesture is so tightly bound to language that differences between languages show up as subtle differences in gesture. Whether a language puts information on the verb (“He flies out” in English), or on a particle outside the verb (“He exits flying,” in Spanish) will affect where the gesture for “flying” appears. In English, it will last only for the duration of the spoken verb: flies. But in Spanish, it will spread over the whole sentence, or even multiple sentences. In other words, the way you package your thoughts into speech is also how you package them into movement.

Researchers are especially interested in the times when gestures don’t match speech. The mismatch can be a valuable window to what’s going on in the mind. Susan Goldin-Meadow, another University of Chicago psychologist, has led a decades-long investigation of so-called speech-gesture mismatches. For example, until about 7 years of age, children don’t understand that if you pour a tall glass of water into a shorter, wider glass, the amount of water stays the same. They think the shorter glass contains less water. When asked to explain their reasoning, some children will say, “This one is shorter,” while gesturing that the glass is wider. That discrepancy shows they subconsciously grasp that both dimensions are important. Teachers who can spot these mismatches can tell when a student is ready to understand the relationship between height, width, and volume.

When we speak, we put our thoughts into words, and when we gesture, we put our thoughts into our hands. But gestures don’t just show what we’re thinking—they actually help us think. Toddlers who are encouraged to gesture tend to start producing more words. Adults involved in various problem-solving tasks do better when they are encouraged to gesture. There is something about putting ideas into motions that brings us closer to grasping what we need to grasp. In a way, what really caught McNeill’s attention in that Paris auditorium was a sideways glimpse, filtered through another language and another mind, of his very own thoughts.

Arika Okrent is a linguist, and author of In the Land of Invented Languages. She is living in Chicago, doing her part to fight off the cot-caught merger and keep “gym shoes” alive.

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December 25, 2019 · 1:43 am

Wynton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Practice: For Musicians, Athletes, or Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New | Open Culture

Practicing for countless hours before we can be good at something seems burdensome and boring. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to stories of instant achievement.

Source: Wynton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Practice: For Musicians, Athletes, or Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New | Open Culture

Practicing for countless hours before we can be good at something seems burdensome and boring. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to stories of instant achievement. The monk realizes satori (and Neo learns kung fu); the superhero acquires great power out of the blue; Robert Johnson trades for genius at the crossroads. At the same time, we teach children they can’t master a skill without discipline and diligence. We repeat pop psych theories that specify the exact number hours required for excellence. The number may be arbitrary, but it comforts us to believe that practice might, eventually, make perfect. Because in truth we know there is no way around it. As Wynton Marsalis writes in “Wynton’s Twelve Ways to Practice: From Music to Schoolwork,” “practice is essential to learning music—and anything else, for that matter.”

For jazz musicians, the time spent learning theory and refining technique finds eloquent expression in the concept of woodshedding, a “humbling but necessary chore,” writes Paul Klemperer at Big Apple Jazz, “like chopping wood before you can start the fire.”

Yet retiring to the woodshed “means more than just practicing…. You have to dig deep into yourself, discipline yourself, become focused on the music and your instrument.” As beginners, we tend to look at practice only as a chore. The best jazz musicians know there’s also “something philosophical, almost religious” about it. John Coltrane, for example, practiced ceaselessly, consciously defining his music as a spiritual and contemplative discipline.

Marsalis also implies a religious aspect in his short article: “when you practice, it means you are willing to sacrifice to sound good… I like to say that the time spent practicing is the true sign of virtue in a musician.” Maybe this piety is intended to dispel the myth of quick and easy deals with infernal entities. But most of Marsalis’ “twelve ways to practice” are as pragmatic as they come, and “will work,” he promises “for almost every activity—from music to schoolwork to sports.” Find his abridged list below, and read his full commentary at “the trumpeter’s bible,” Arban’s Method.

  1. Seek out instruction: A good teacher will help you understand the purpose of practicing and can teach you ways to make practicing easier and more productive.
  2. Write out a schedule: A schedule helps you organize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fundamentals because they are the foundation of all the complicated things that come later.
  3. Set goals: Like a schedule, goals help you organize your time and chart your progress…. If a certain task turns out to be really difficult, relax your goals: practice doesnʼt have to be painful to achieve results.
  4. Concentrate: You can do more in 10 minutes of focused practice than in an hour of sighing and moaning. This means no video games, no television, no radio, just sitting still and working…. Concentrated effort takes practice too, especially for young people.
  5. Relax and practice slowly: Take your time; donʼt rush through things. Whenever you set out to learn something new – practicing scales, multiplication tables, verb tenses in Spanish – you need to start slowly and build up speed.
  6. Practice hard things longer: Donʼt be afraid of confronting your inadequacies; spend more time practicing what you canʼt do…. Successful practice means coming face to face with your shortcomings. Donʼt be discouraged; youʼll get it eventually.
  7. Practice with expression: Every day you walk around making yourself into “you,” so do everything with the proper attitude…. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.
  8. Learn from your mistakes: None of us are perfect, but donʼt be too hard on yourself. If you drop a touchdown pass, or strike out to end the game, itʼs not the end of the world. Pick yourself up, analyze what went wrong and keep going….
  9. Donʼt show off: Itʼs hard to resist showing off when you can do something well…. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, thatʼs all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, youʼre just cheating yourself and your audience.
  10. Think for yourself: Your success or failure at anything ultimately depends on your ability to solve problems, so donʼt become a robot…. Thinking for yourself helps develop your powers of judgment.
  11. Be optimistic: Optimism helps you get over your mistakes and go on to do better. It also gives you endurance because having a positive attitude makes you feel that something great is always about to happen.
  12. Look for connections: If you develop the discipline it takes to become good at something, that discipline will help you in whatever else you do…. The more you discover the relationships between things that at first seem different, the larger your world becomes. In other words, the woodshed can open up a whole world of possibilities.

You’ll note in even a cursory scan of Marsalis’ prescriptions that they begin with the imminently practical—the “chores” we can find tedious—and move further into the intangibles: developing creativity, humility, optimism, and, eventually, maybe, a gradual kind of enlightenment. You’ll notice on a closer read that the consciousness-raising and the mundane daily tasks go hand-in-hand.

While this may be all well and good for jazz musicians, students, athletes, or chess players, we may have reason for skepticism about success through practice more generally. Researchers at Princeton have found, for example, that the effectiveness of practice is “domain dependent.” In games, music, and sports, practice accounts for a good deal of improvement. In certain other “less stable” fields driven by celebrity and networking, for example, success can seem more dependent on personality or privileged access.

But it’s probably safe to assume that if you’re reading this post, you’re interested in mastering a skill, not cultivating a brand. Whether you want to play Carnegie Hall or “learn a language, cook good meals or get along well with people,” practice is essential, Marsalis argues, and practicing well is just as important as practicing often. For a look at how practice changes our brains, creating what we colloquially call “muscle memory,” see the TED-Ed video just above.

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December 24, 2019 · 1:32 am

cARtOONdAY: “vARIATIONS ON A tHEME”

cartoon: wenceslas variations
Writing can be about taking an old story and giving it a new twist. Call it a variation. It all depends on what you want your story to be about.

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December 22, 2019 · 11:44 pm

These 13 Books Will Make You a Better Writer in 2019 | Inc.com

One of the best ways to improve your writing is to read about the craft.

Source: These 13 Books Will Make You a Better Writer in 2019 | Inc.com

  1. Ernest Hemingway on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips

Ernest Hemingway never codified his insights on writing into a book, but he did share his thinking on the topic in commissioned articles; letters to his agents, publishers, and friends; and through his novels. Ernest Hemingway on Writing is a collection of his insights on the craft of writing, and includes several practical and inspiring tips.

  1. Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury

The prolific science-fiction author Ray Bradbury collected the lessons he had learned about the craft during his long and successful career in Zen in the Art of Writing.

  1. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is and What You Can Do About It, by Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield recently returned to writing about writing with a brand-new book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. It’s a no-nonsense guide to writing stories that people will want to read. While the bulk of the book addresses how to write fiction, Pressfield shows how the same principles of writing good stories can apply to writing nonfiction.

  1. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity is the classic book by author and creativity coach Julia Cameron in which she introduces what she calls “morning pages.” Morning pages is a powerful stream of consciousness writing exercise that is not intended to yield publishable material, but which can help you get your pen moving and your thoughts flowing–even if you never intend to share them with the rest of the world.

  1. Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work, by Steven Pressfield

Ever since reading his classic book, The War of Art, I’ve read every book about writing by Steven Pressfield (and I will continue to read every one he writes, including the one he’s publishing soon, which he’s generously serializing on his blog). In that book he gave a name to what every writer grapples with. He called it Resistance.

To fight the Resistance, writers (and other artists, for he was addressing artists broadly in that book) need to give up their amateur mindsets and habits and “turn pro.” In Turning Pro, his follow-up to The War of Art, Pressfield fleshes out what he means exactly when he tells writers to “turn pro.”

  1. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, by William Zinsser

William Zinsser was a journalist, author, and writing instructor at Yale. His book On Writing Well is a classic among writers and has sold nearly 1.5 million copies in the 40 years since it was published. It’s one of the first books I recommend to anyone seeking to improve their writing.

  1. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King

Fifteen years ago, mega-best-selling author Stephen King wrote a book about the craft of writing that became an instant bestseller: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. After telling the story of how he became the writer he is today, King devotes the second half of the book to sharing his writing strategies, like his suggestion that you should write for your “Ideal Reader.”

  1. Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, by Sarah Stodola

This book looks at the techniques, inspirations, and daily routines of 18 iconic authors of the 20th century, including Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood.

After profiling so many successful authors, what did Stodola learn about their writing process? “Genius, I have concluded, is the presence of not one ability but several that work together in tandem. Genius is far more tedious, far less romantic, far more rote, far less effortless, than we imagine it.”

  1. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield, edited by Shawn Coyne

All writers struggle with writer’s block in one form or another, but Steven Pressfield named the enemy and outlined a strategy for conquering it in The War of Art, the perennially best-selling guide for writers and other creative professionals. In the first part of the book he introduces what he calls Resistance – the force within us that conspires to prevent us from fulfilling our creative pursuits – and then spends the next two sections sharing his solutions for overcoming it.

  1. The Art of Nonfiction, by Ayn Rand

As the late novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand describes in The Art of Nonfiction, an edited collection of lectures she gave on the craft of writing, part of the reason why it took so long to finish her second novel is because she often suffered from severe bouts of writer’s block.

  1. Lifelong Writing Habit: The Secret to Writing Every Day, by Chris Fox.

In Lifelong Writing Habit: The Secret to Writing Every Day, Chris Fox describes the 12-step process he created that has allowed him to make the transition from part-time writer to full-time author of several best-selling thriller novels and nonfiction writing guides.

At the beginning of the book, Chris describes what a habit is, and explains how you can reprogram your brain just like a computer to install new habits. Habits live in a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, and they consist of three parts: The trigger, the routine, and the reward. The key to changing your habits is to identify which ones are good for you, which ones are bad, and then “flip” the bad ones to good ones.

  1. 8-Minute Writing Habit: Create a Consistent Writing Habit That Works With Your Busy Lifestyle, by Monica Leonelle

Monica Leonelle, a novelist and author of several books about writing, has written a book that speaks directly to those of us who struggle to get our writing done while balancing other commitments at work and home.

In the first part of The 8 Minute Writing Habit: Create a Consistent Writing Habit that Works With Your Busy Lifestyle, Leonelle describes several “blockers” that get in the way of our writing, thoughts like “writing might not pay off,” “I’m not good enough to be a writer,” and “I’m stuck in the planning/writing/editing phase.” For each blocker, she offers several practical tips for overcoming them. In the second part of the book, she shares nine strategies the pros use to write consistently.

  1. Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Verlyn Klinkenborg is an author and creative writing instructor at Yale. In the preface to Several Short Sentences About Writing, he argues that “most of the received wisdom about how writing works is not only wrong but harmful,” and then devotes the rest of the book to smashing assumptions and correcting misconceptions about the craft.

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December 21, 2019 · 12:26 pm

The Lost Books of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas review – how Austen’s reputation has been warped | Books | The Guardian

A deliciously original study of the cheap editions of Pride and Prejudice and other novels – ignored by literary scholars – casts new light on Austen’s readership

Source: The Lost Books of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas review – how Austen’s reputation has been warped | Books | The Guardian

Jane Austen aficionados think that they know the story of their favourite author’s posthumous dis-appearance and then re-emergence. For half a century after she died in 1817, her books were little known or read. A few discriminating admirers such as George Henry Lewes and Lord Macaulay kept the flame of her reputation burning, but most novelists and novel readers were oblivious to her. Then, in 1869, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published a memoir about her and the public got interested. Her novels started being republished and widely read. She has never looked back.

Janine Barchas’s The Lost Books of Jane Austen puts us right. Her book about books is a beautifully illustrated exploration, indeed compendium, of the popular editions of Austen’s novels that have appeared over the last two centuries. This includes those decades when Austen was supposedly lost from sight. The first chapter is a “vignette” on a copy of Sense and Sensibility, published in 1851 for George Routledge’s Railway Library (books suitable for reading on the train). It cost one shilling and was bought for the 13-year-old Gertrude Wallace, the youngest daughter of a Plymouth naval officer. It is the first of many examples of cheap and popular editions of Austen’s work that kept it alive for ordinary readers and that literary scholars have largely ignored.

After Austen’s death, the copyrights to her novels were bought by the publisher Richard Bentley, who issued them in his Standard Novels series in 1833, in single volumes at six shillings each – much cheaper than the triple decker editions selling for a guinea and a half, but still out of reach of all but the affluent. He cut his prices in the 1840s, but already there were alternatives. By the late 1840s, there were what we would call paperback editions of her novels cheaply available and aimed at train travellers. Pioneering publishers such as Simms & M’Intyre produced Austen novels for a shilling a shot, and then for sixpence each in their Books for the People series. (They paid no attention to the fact that Bentley officially still owned the copyright to some of these.)

“Cheap books make authors canonical,” proclaims Barchas’s first sentence. Thousands of mid-century readers consumed “yellowback” versions of Austen’s novels, so-called because of the yellow paper stuck to the back of them on which advertisements were printed. The sheer proliferation of cheaply produced editions of Austen’s fiction has been invisible because very few of these books have survived. Paradoxically, the expensive first editions of Austen’s novels are now easier to find than the mass-market editions of the Victorian age. Barchas has clearly relished her detective work (and apparently amassed quite a collection herself). She not only describes them, she shows us what they looked like.

Photographs are essential to this book. There in front of you is the 1851 Parlour Library reprint of Mansfield Park, with its red design and lettering on a startling acid green cover, in waxed paper boards. It retailed at WH Smith at British railway stations for two shillings. The willingness of publishers to spice up Austen’s novels is caught in the 1870 Chapman & Hall edition of Pride and Prejudice, whose cover depicts Lydia Bennet flirting with officers at their camp in Brighton, or the 1887 sixpenny Sense and Sensibility, featuring Colonel Brandon and Willoughby pointing their duelling pistols at each other (neither scene was actually included in either novel).

Tracking down these endlessly repackaged reprints, Barchas is in terra incognita. Scholarly bibliographers have minutely recorded the various respectable editions of Austen’s fiction, but most of these cheap popular products, never having made it on to the library shelf, remained unknown to bibliographers. These are volumes that scarcely feature in the catalogues of the great research libraries of Britain and North America. The existing record is, as Barchas characteristically says, “gobsmackingly incomplete”. Her style is sometimes informal, but her attention to print history is painstaking.

She explains the importance of stereotyping processes, whereby printers could mould and then cast in metal the expensively assembled type of a new edition. The resultant stereotyple plates could be used over and over again. Routledge would go on to use his same stereotype plates to produce seven more editions of Sense and Sensibility over the next three decades. (Barchas gives us a photograph of all of them in their very various liveries.) Austen stereotype plates would be sold on from one publisher to another, the resultant type becoming more and more faded as one printing succeeded another.

There clearly was a new enthusiasm for the novels after 1870. Barchas shows us the flurry of colourfully jacketed Austen volumes that began appearing, some evidently intended for the juvenile reader. In America, where publishers treated Austen’s texts with greater literary respect, the market for her work was much quieter in the mid-19th century, but appears to have taken off in the 1870s. Her novels became available for a dime or 15 cents each. In Britain, the sixpenny novel became standard. Soon Austen was being serialised.

In the 1890s, radical publishers produced a library of “famous books” for working-class readers at a penny per volume, which included Sense and Sensibility. At the same time Pride and Prejudice was being boiled down by two thirds for William Stead’s Penny Prose Classic series for young readers. In the 1890s the soap manufacturers Lever Brothers published their own editions of the two novels as prizes for teenage consumers who sent in the largest number of soap wrappers. Barchas dedicates a whole chapter to her researches into the Sunlight Library, calculating that the company gave away some 1.5m books over the course of seven years (though perhaps more by Sir Walter Scott than Jane Austen).

Another chapter chronicles the surprising religious and morally improving uses of her fiction. In the 1840s her novels were included in a multi-volume library of nonconformist tomes aimed at right-minded female readers. Often, they were given as prizes in Sunday schools (despite the creepy vicars she depicts). In the 1890s, editions of Austen were commissioned by a Christian temperance society for distribution to labourers in the West Midlands: Mansfield Park was presented as an alternative to another visit to the pub.

Barchas follows popular editions of Austen well into the 20th century, looking at how publishers began to take images from Hollywood films such as the 1940 MGM Pride and Prejudice to lend excitement to new editions.

A final chapter charts “The Turn to ‘Chick Lit’”, with Barchas arguing that it was only really in the 1960s that “gendered marketing strategies” created the false sense that Austen was a women’s novelist. Among the dizzying variety of 1960s paperback covers that she displays – from austerely antiquarian to lividly psychedelic – are examples of “pinked” editions, deploying the colour wherever possible as a “consumer signal to women”. Sales seem to have risen even further.

Barchas enjoys quoting such writers as Mark Twain and Henry James, as they huff and puff about Austen’s mere popularity. The lesson of this delicious book is that she was even more popular for even longer with an even greater variety of readers than we ever thought. When you look at all the uses to which she was put, you think of Frank Kermode’s definition of a literary classic as a work that “sub-sists in change, by being patient of interpretation”. Austen’s novels have long been very patient.

• John Mullan’s What Matters in Jane Austen? is published by Bloomsbury.

 

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December 20, 2019 · 5:28 am

Photo finish Friday: “Night ride”

Ride into the night. /

Blur of color pedals by. /

Tour of lights and life.

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December 19, 2019 · 3:56 am

Haiku to you Thursday: “Thunder”

Thunder bangs the glass, /

a beggar at the window /

demanding tribute.

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December 18, 2019 · 2:31 am

The Absolute Best Books On Writing | BookBaby Blog

The list of favorite books on writing can be very different from one author to another. I’ve scoured 10 “top” lists to see which titles spanned the gamut.

Source: The Absolute Best Books On Writing | BookBaby Blog

By Dawn Field

What are your favorite books on writing? Do you have a large collection? How do you expand your corpus when you feel like reading another? Which would you recommend?

There are a huge number of books on writing and if you want to pick the absolute “best,” you have two choices. The first is to pick books that the most people have read and enjoyed. The second is to admit that the best books for each writer will be different. If you are a poet, nonfiction writer, or romance aspirant, you might want specialist advice and information.

Popularity contest

To find the books that are most popular, I looked at the intersection of lists of favorites — and I found an interesting pattern. If you combine the top books on Amazon and the picks found in a range of “top book” articles (Steven Spatz‘ 5 favorites, Shaunta Grimes‘ top 10, Jerry Jenkins’ “12 best,” Jeff Goin‘s “best books,” SmartBlogger‘s “9 Essentials,” The Write Life‘s “9 of the best,” Barnes & Noble‘s “6 best,” and Paste‘s “10 best”) we see some perennial favorites, but overall, surprisingly little overlap.

A few classics appear repeatedly, but most of the recommended books on writing only appear once. This is because excellent, but specialist, books fall down the ranks. The perfect book for you might never rank a “top 10” list of general writing books.

So, who are the winners? Two books stand head and shoulders above the rest in the tally of appearances. The winning category is “writers writing on writing” and the two top books are Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Other books often in the top lists are Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and two on creativity: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

Most at the rarefied top of the normative lists have some good years on them. Remember the classics now “too old” to rank on such modern lists. This includes Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces which describes the hero’s journey that inspired Star Wars, Aristotle’s Poetics (which comes in various translations and interpretations from modern authors), and John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers.

New books continuously appear. Harvard linguist Stephen Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century already ranks as a modern classic update to the Elements of Style and writer and teacher John McPhee’s Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process is just out for nonfiction.

If you want to hear the advice of an expert editor and you are interested in nonfiction, go for Sol Stein’s On Writing. Blake Synder’s Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need is a textbook in screenwriting.

And the lists go on and on.

Just look at this list by Booker prize-winning author DBC Pierre in The Guardian to see how different and unique a personal choice list can be. It includes The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli to “discover what villains are born knowing.”

The best books to add to your collection fill the biggest gaps in your knowledge or provide the most inspiration. This could mean getting a tip from a colleague or mentor or scrolling curated lists to seek out something that matches your interests. Book Riot has a list of “100 Must-read, Best Books On Writing And The Writer’s Life.”

The choices might seem overwhelming, but it helps that you can download opening chapters for free on Kindle to have a look at style and content.

How many have you read? Which should you read next? In the end, pick to match your tastes and needs. The absolute best are the ones that help you most.

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December 15, 2019 · 3:37 pm

The 8 Best Books for Writers in 2019

Read reviews and buy the best books for writers from top authors including Randy Ingermanson, Susan Thurman, Zachary Petit and more.

Source: The 8 Best Books for Writers in 2019

Become a better author in no time

By Emily Delbridge

Updated November 21, 2019

 

https://www.thebalance.com/best-books-for-writers-1360649

 

We are committed to researching, testing, and recommending the best products. We may receive commissions from purchases made after visiting links within our content. Learn more about our review process.

Making money as a writer is not an easy task. Depending on your goals it can feel downright impossible. Being a successful writer has nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with hard work, dedication and perseverance. Overcoming challenges like writer’s block and finding a publisher can be excruciating. The best thing you can do is continue self-education. Most people know reading more can make you a better writer. Reading the proper book at the right time can make all the difference. If you are looking to make things easier on yourself and make the best of your writing, you are in the right place. Take a look at the best books for writers beginning with tools for becoming a better writer and ending with getting your writing out to the masses.

Best for Fiction Writers: How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method

Buy on Amazon

There are many different ways to approach writing a fiction novel. The Snowflake Method is a popular method of writing and the author, Randy Ingermanson, lays it out in a unique book where the technique is explained in a story. He uses the fairy tale characters, Goldilocks and the Three Bears with a murder mystery theme, and walks you through the process of using the Snowflake method. It makes it fun and easy to understand. If you have never heard of the Snowflake Method, it begins with a simple idea then develops and adds more intricate details along the way. It is a little different than laying out a rigid outline or just making it up as you go along. It is most helpful for writers who prefer to write as they go but often get stuck somewhere in the middle. The Snowflake method can help even a seasoned writer complete a novel with excitement.

Best for Improving Your Writing Skills: The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need

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One skill that can not be overlooked as a writer is grammar. Having a resource you can depend on and refer to as needed is an absolute must. The Only Grammar Book You Will Ever Need is the one stop shop for your grammar needs. It is less than 200 pages and has a quick reference guide. Proper grammar is not always intuitive. Common misspelled words can leave a reader running or clicking away from your content in a heartbeat. Get expert tips for writing clearly and directly. Learn the parts of speech and elements of a sentence. Figure out how to avoid the most common grammar and punctuation mistakes, and finally get the right punctuation in every sentence. This is an excellent book for helping writers create professional documents, writing A+ school papers or writing effective personal letters. It is very likely your writing will improve rapidly after reading this book. Even though there is a lot of software available to correct writing errors, it is great to learn the why behind grammar errors. You will write more efficiently and will have a more cohesive end product.

Best for Freelance Writers: The Essential Guide to Freelance Writing

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The life of a freelance writer has its perks, but it has its challenges, too! If you have been looking to earn extra income, or if you are ready to kick the 9- to-5 day job completely, freelance writing is ripe with opportunities. It is a great way to enter the writing world and hone your writing skills. Freelance writing can help you gain experience, so you are more skilled and confident to write more elaborate pieces such as a novel. The Essential Guide to Freelance Writing will help you reach your goals, whatever they may be, faster. Learn how to write and structure different styles of articles. Get tips on how to dream up the perfect article idea. Explore various aspects of being a freelance writer you may never have considered before. The author Zachary Petit has a lot of expertise in the writing, which includes being the longtime managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. He sprinkles in humorous antidotes and makes this an easy read. If you are serious about becoming a freelance writer, this is the book that can help you make it happen.

Best for Self Publishing: Write. Publish. Repeat.

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There is one common goal nearly every writer works towards in their writing career, to write content your readers will love and come back to again and again. The publishing world has changed dramatically in recent years. Publishing options have exploded. However, it can be overwhelming to learn about all the different options and how to be successful in reaching your ideal reader. Write. Publish. Repeat. is written by a collaboration of successful Indie authors and is written in a conversation style. They make it clear it takes hard work to be successful at self-publishing; however, they provide invaluable insight on how to make it work without relying on luck. Expect to learn a little bit about everything, including building a story, understanding your market, tips for creating book covers, titles, formatting, pricing, getting your content on multiple platforms and more. Aspiring writers will learn a lot from this book. You will be motivated to continue and know there is proven success.

Best for Getting Published: Get a Literary Agent

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Securing a deal with a traditional publisher might be the most laborious task of any new writer. Some publishers are willing to take on the work of a writer without an agent, so check Writer’s Market books that contain publishers of all kinds. It is in the Writer’s Market books that you will find the majority of prominent publishers that want you to have an agent. The book Get a Literary Agent will help you figure out how to research agents and target the best ones for your work. It will teach you the ins and outs of the submission process. It delivers fantastic pointers on writing the perfect query letter and pitch. It also provides pro tips on assembling a book proposal, and how to form a healthy relationship with your agent. If you are still not sure an agent is needed, this book also dives into what a literary agent does and how they can benefit you. Getting your book on the Best Seller’s list is not an easy task. You will be happy you learned what to expect when getting a literary agent before spending tons of time trying to figure it out on your own.

Best Children’s Book Writing Resource: Children’s Writer’s Word Book

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Writing for children is a little different than writing for adults. If you are used to freelance writing for adults readers, there are a few things you need to consider when you change gears. The Children’s Writer’s Word Book written by Alijandra Mogilner will help you recognize some of the differences and make writing more natural for this target reader. You will need to pay attention to the reading level of the words you use. This book provides a list of specific words ranked by grades kindergarten through sixth. It also includes a thesaurus of those words and guidelines for sentence length. It has a useful introduction to each grade level and provides an overview of what the age group traditionally studies. Every children’s book writer will find this to be an essential handbook.

Best Writing Strategies Book: The Element of Style

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Do you want to learn how to write well? The Element of Style written by William Strunk is considered being one of the most concise yet all-inclusive writer’s handbooks despite being nearly 100 years old. It has almost every grammatical concept you might need to know. It is easy to find what you are looking for and can be used as a quick reference. The best part is its size. It is small enough to fit in your back pocket or backpack. Most writing guides are enormous textbooks nobody wants to read. This one answers most style questions in around 100 pages.

Best for Writer’s Block: The Miracle Morning for Writers

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Writer’s block can happen to anyone. Words are not flowing, and you are not sure what to do next. Creating good habits in your morning routine might be what you need. The Miracle Morning for Writers written initially by Hal Elrod has been described as the most life-altering book ever written. It has sold over 750,000 copies and has several different variations available. This edition, co-written by Steve Scott, pinpoints the specific habits you need to work into your morning routine to become a better writer than you ever thought imaginable. Learn how to overcome limiting beliefs and how to enter the “flow state” ending writer’s block once and for all.

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December 14, 2019 · 7:13 pm

The Commas That Cost Companies Millions

For most people, a stray comma isn’t the end of the world. But in some cases, the exact placement of a punctuation mark can cost huge sums of money.

Source: The Commas That Cost Companies Millions

How much can a misplaced comma cost you?

If you’re texting a loved one or dashing off an email to a colleague, the cost of misplacing a piece of punctuation will be – at worst – a red face and a minor mix-up.

But for some, contentious commas can be a path to the poor house.

In 2018, a dairy company in the US city of Portland, Maine settled a court case for $5m because of a missing comma.

Three lorry drivers for Oakhurst Dairy claimed that they were owed years of unpaid overtime wages, all because of the way commas were used in legislation governing overtime payments.

The state’s laws declared that overtime wasn’t due for workers involved in “the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: 1) agricultural produce; 2) meat and fish products; and 3) perishable foods”.

The drivers managed to successfully argue that because there was no comma after “shipment” and before “or distribution”, they were owed overtime pay. If a comma had been there, the law would have explicitly ruled out those who distribute perishable foods.

Workers load milk onto trucks at the Oakhurst dairy plant in 2013. Credit: Getty Images.

Because there was confusion, the US Court of Appeals ruled in their favour, benefiting around 120 of the firm’s drivers. David Webbert, the lawyer who helped bring the case against the company, told reporters at the time that the inclusion of a comma in the clause “would have sunk our ship”. (He didn’t respond to interview requests from the BBC.)

The slip-up shows that the slightest misstep in punctuating a clause in a contract can have massive unintended consequences.

“Punctuation matters,” says Ken Adams, author of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. But not all punctuation is made equal: contractual minefields are not seeded with semicolons or em-dashes (here’s one: – ) waiting to explode when tripped over.

“It boils down to commas,” says Adams. “They matter, and exactly how depends on the context.”

Delivering Definition

Commas in contracts link separate clauses in a non-definitive way, leaving their reading open to interpretation. While a full stop is literally that – a full and complete stop to one thought or sentence, and the signal of the start of another – commas occupy a linguistic middle ground, and one that’s often muddled. “Commas are a proxy for confusion as to what part of a sentence relates to what,” Adams explains.

The English language is fluid, evolving and highly subjective. Arguments have been fought over the value of so-called Oxford commas (an optional comma before the word “and” or “or” at the end of a list). There might be good arguments on either side of the debate, but this doesn’t work for the law because there needs to be a definitive answer: yes or no. In high-stakes legal agreements, how commas are deployed is crucial to their meaning. And in the case of Oakhurst Dairy against its delivery drivers, the Oxford comma is judged to have favoured the latter’s meaning.

But just because you mean to say something, it doesn’t mean that a court will agree with you, says Jeff Nobles, a Texas-based appellate lawyer who was involved in an insurance case that hinged, in part, on the punctuation of a contract.

According to Nobles, most US courts will say it doesn’t really matter what the parties subjectively intended; it’s the objective intent in the written terms of their contract. “Punctuation sometimes will change the meaning of a sentence,” he says.

Nobles represented an insurance company in a Texas Supreme Court case concerning insurance coverage for a worker who died on the job.

Nobles argued successfully that punctuation mattered for a contractual indemnity provision, when the company tried to trigger coverage under its umbrella insurance policy after a subcontracted employee died on the job. It set a precedent in the state’s legal system, he believes.

He says US courts have become increasingly textual – “they’ve looked more and more at the words on the paper rather than the testimony of the people who used those words on the paper.”

Yet arguments over commas have been raging for more than a century.

‘An Expensive Comma’

In 1872, an American tariff law including an unwanted comma cost taxpayers nearly $2m (the equivalent of $40m today). The United States Tariff Act, as originally drafted in 1870, allowed “fruit plants, tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation” to be exempt from import tariffs.

For an unknown reason, when revised two years later, a stray comma sneaked in between “fruit” and “plants”. Suddenly all tropical and semi-tropical fruits could be imported without any charge.

An 1872 tiff over tariffs and tropical fruit cost taxpayers $40m – all caused by a comma. Credit: Getty Images.

Members of the US Congress debated the issue and the problem was fixed – but not before the New York Times bemoaned the use of “An Expensive Comma.” It wouldn’t be the last such error.

“Contract language is limited and stylised,” says Adams. He compares it to software code: do it right and everything works smoothly. But make a typo and the whole thing falls apart.

When errors are introduced into legal documents, they’re likely to be noticed far more than in any other form of writing, he says. “People are more prone to fighting over instances of syntactic ambiguity than in other kinds of writing.”

Muddying the Waters

Of course, in some circumstances, those drafting contracts may want to introduce ambiguities. Getting different countries to sign up to the same principles can be challenging, particularly for climate change agreements.

Early climate change conventions included this line:

“The Parties have a right to, and should, promote sustainable development.”

The sentence ensures those signing the agreement have the ability to promote sustainable development – and should do so.

But in its original draft, the second comma was placed after “promote”, not before it:

“The Parties have a right to, and should promote, sustainable development.”

Some countries weren’t happy with the original wording because they didn’t necessarily want to be locked into promoting sustainable development. Moving the comma kept the naysayers happy while placating those who wanted stronger action.

“By being slightly creative with punctuation, countries can feel like their interests have been addressed,” explains Stephen Cornelius, chief advisor on climate change with the WWF, who has represented the UK and EU at UN climate change negotiations. “You’re trying to get an agreement that people can substantially agree with.”

Most people try to make contract language as clear as possible – but sometimes leaving a bit of ambiguity can help both sides negotiate better. Credit: Getty Images.

Tricks of the Trade

Such linguistic flexibility happens more often than you’d think.

“In diplomacy, even though you try to have a single agreement, it’s very common to change the meaning for different parties,” says climate change negotiator Laura Hanning Scarborough. “You can use terms like ‘inter alia’, or ‘this includes, amongst other things’ to blur the lines to include anything. You can use commas as part of that, too. There are so many language tricks you use to appease people.”

For most people, however, making sure that contracts are unambiguous is important. For that reason, it’s crucial to test contract language to breaking point by giving it to someone who will test its limits – someone who will read it in the most awkward, unhelpful way, says Tiffany Kemp, a commercial contracting trainer for the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management.

One of the biggest cases battled over a comma was a dispute between two Canadian telecommunications companies. Rogers Communications and Bell Aliant fought a legal battle worth CAD$1m ($760,000) over a contract to replace utility poles across the country.

The argument stemmed from a single sentence:

“This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

The two sides argued that the comma after “five (5) year terms” meant something different: Bell Aliant said that the single year’s notice of termination applied at any time, Rogers that it only applied after the first five-year term ended.

This was important as Rogers had struck a great deal under their reading of the contract: when they signed a contract to lease the poles from Bell Aliant in 2002, they were paying just CAD$9.60 per pole. By 2004, the cost had nearly doubled. Bell Aliant, understandably, wanted to terminate the contract and renegotiate at the new, higher price. Rogers didn’t.

Successive courts were equally uncertain about the agreement: Canada’s Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission first declared in favour of Bell Aliant in 2006; a year later, it changed its mind after consulting the French language version of the contract, which didn’t include the same ambiguity.

This dispute wasn’t brought about by wilful ignorance, reckons Kemp. “Sometimes there are genuinely different understandings,” she explains. “That little comma was put in a place that you would put in a place for a breath if you’re reading it out loud.”

Deadly Punctuation

How do these misplaced or misused commas make their way into complicated contracts that have been drafted by professionals? Part of the problem, says Adams, is technology. “Drafting contracts has long been a function of copying and pasting from precedent contracts, and that results in a kind of heedlessness, a detachment from the nitty gritty of how you’ve expressed what you want to express in a contract,” he says. “It’s easy to miss this sort of problem.”

In one extreme example, a misplaced comma was at the heart of a death-penalty trial.

Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist, was hanged in 1916 under the 1351 Treason Act. He had incited Irish prisoners of war being held in Germany to band together to fight against the British. The debate over whether Casement was guilty hinged on the wording of the 14th Century Treason Act and the use of a comma: with it, Casement’s actions in Germany were illegal; without it, he would get away with it.

Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist, was hanged in 1916. Credit: Getty Images.

Despite Casement’s lead counsel’s assertion that “crimes should not depend on the significance of breaks or of commas”, and “if a crime depended on a comma, the matter should be determined in favour of the accused, and not of the Crown”, the court ruled that the comma mattered. Casement was found guilty and executed.

Though today life and death doesn’t hinge on the use of commas – but big money, insurance policies and environmental agreements certainly do.

For that reason, it’s important to carefully check any contracts we sign, the experts say – and that means not just dotting the Is and crossing the Ts but also making sure every comma is in the correct place.

People sign contracts not because they’ve negotiated their meanings, but based on their own understanding of what they’re agreeing to, explains Nobles. Contracts written by lawyers on behalf of a business might have a different meaning than what the lay person understands.

So it pays to pay attention. If a piece of punctuation seems out of place or introduces ambiguity, speak up.

“The purpose of a contract is to help people get the outcomes they both expected, and to know what they’re supposed to do and get from the other side,” says Kemp.

“If there’s a misunderstanding, you owe it to both of you to get it sorted out. Have the argument today, rather than tomorrow.”

It could prevent a lot of pain in the future.

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