Industry-Speak: The Meaning Behind the Vernacular

It's a good thing I've never been motivated to achieve executive stature in the business world. I'd fail miserably, not because I lack the smarts, but I am not a game player. You know, all those little hoops you have to jump through (which usually have nothing to do with your job) in order to get ahead: kissing up to unethical and unlikeable personnel who supposedly have influence over your advancement; doing something not kosher and definitely against your principles, but told by your boss it's "for the good of the company..."

And every business has a code, its own secret language of euphemisms designed to preclude any legal repercussions resulting from what amounts to unacceptable or downright illegal comments or actions. I can think of one shining example, but I'll save that for another day. Suffice it to say that I was instrumental in bringing down a self-styled Lord of the Realm (his affectations included pipe smoking and saying "shedule" instead of "schedule") who failed to intimidate me with threats of "disciplinary action" when I refused to disclose personal information.

Fortunately for me, freelance writers don't have to put up with the Lordly Ones on a daily basis, but we do have to become fluent in the lingo of the writing and publishing world. Terms like "SASE" (with which I was well acquainted from years of watching the kids' TV show "Zoom")and "slush pile" are learned easily enough, but it's the nuances that fly right over the head of a naive writer like me who is foolish enough to take industry comments at face value. For the sake of those poor newbies out there with insufficient time logged in the industry to become fluent by total immersion, I'd like to share a helpful glossary of all-important terms kindly provided by the owner of Constellation Books of Baltimore, Maryland. Enjoy!



www.cynthiapolansky.com

RULES FOR WRITERERS

With school back in session, I want to share a great article I found last year. Well, it's not really an article, more of a list of grammatical rules in which the rules themselves have cleverly been broken. I sometimes hand out copies to the midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy who come to the Writing Center for my help. They don't fully appreciate the irony in it because they have never heard of terms like "split infinitives" or "hyperbole." Seems that basic English grammar has been replaced in high school curricula by more applicable subjects like date rape prevention, Facebook indiscretions, and the impact of Nintendo on Asian-American relations.

So I present for your amusement the following 34 rules that all writers must obey in order to succeed commercially. My personal favorite is #34. If writers followed this rule faithfully, I would be hard up for Typos of the Week. Enjoy!

34 RULES FOR WRITERERS*

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.







*source: www.orfe.princeton.edu/~rvdb/RulesForWriterers.html

www.cynthiapolansky.com

IN THE BEGINNING...

So often I am asked if I have always known I would be a writer, or how I knew I wanted to be a working writer. The answers to such questions are always blurry, just as the art of writing is. There are no cut-and-dried, witness-stand answers. Yet I do have a very clear answer to a question nobody's asked me yet: who inspired me to start writing?

I owe my writing career to two people: good friend Cheryl Cohn and author/instructor Jim Gray. I had always enjoyed writing and had been told as a child that I "had a flair for it." But when I received my first magazine rejection at age 17, I naively misinterpreted this author's-rite-of-passage as a "you don't have what it takes, kid" stop sign. It wasn't until I was twice that age that I decided to revisit writing. After helping Cheryl compose a business letter, she had remarked, "Wow, you really missed your calling!" I realized at that moment that I didn't want to look back at my life someday and wonder "what if..."

I enrolled in an adult-education writing course taught by Memphis author Jim Grey. I began a short story that Jim believed should be written as a novel, instead." I could never write a novel," I protested. If only Jim knew the powerful impact of his reply! Just four little words -- "of course you can" -- changed my life.

That short story I was writing? "Far Above Rubies."

If anyone knows where Jim Gray is, please help me track him down! He is the author of suspense novel "Bring Back the Night" published by Colonial Press in the early 1990s. He taught an extension-course creative writing class through Memphis State University, now called the University of Memphis.

Jim Gray, if you're out there and happen to read this blog, please let me hear from you so I may say "thank you" more personally. I am one lucky writer to have had you in my destiny.