A TEACHER WHO INFLUENCED MY WRITINGWritten by Irvin L. Rozier
Mine was Mrs. Martha Harrison, my eighth grade English teacher. She made us write, and write, and write. She would put a sentence on blackboard (I used to be one to clean it..remember that), like "If A Pencil Sharpener Could Talk" and make us write a 200 word story about subject. She also made us create a poem book. Not only did we have to write poems (they were famous poems like "Fog", "The Raggedy Man", "The Highwayman", and my favorite "If") but we also had to illustrate them. I had got a chemistry set for Christmas, so I mixed up some chemicals and made water colors for mine. My art work wasn't pretty but colors were!
| | How New Authors Can Keep Their Manuscript CoherentWritten by Marvin D. Cloud
In large publishing houses, many manuscripts penned by first-time authors, never make it past "first reader" who for all practical purposes is a gatekeeper of sorts. This person's job is to weed out manuscripts that do not fit certain established submission criteria. However, many never make it to editor's desk, simply because they are badly disorganized and downright incoherent.But even if you are self-publishing, you owe it to yourself as well as your readers to develop a theme. Not only will a theme tell what your book is about, it also serves to hold your book together. Every other element — your chapters, for example — should support your theme. It is what keeps you from rambling all over place, and if you should stray, it is what can bring you back — if you keep it in front of you. That’s literally, as well as figuratively. I wouldn’t begin to write or give a talk without having a developed theme. Have you ever been to a banquet or meeting where speaker went on and on with a speech that was all over place, talking about everything under sun, except topic audience was waiting to hear about? Most likely it wasn’t because speaker didn’t have a topic, but rather it was because speaker didn’t have or didn’t take time to develop a theme. If you want your story to be just as disjointed —then don’t develop a theme for it. Unlike a working title that may change to something else entirely different or even several times before a manuscript is finished, a theme shouldn’t change during course of your writing. It may become more obvious during writing process, but I advise writers to spend serious time developing their theme so that they are clear about message they are trying to convey. If it is not clear to you, how can you write it in such a way that it is clear to your readers?
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