(R.H. Herron)
Eva V! She wins the copy of How to Sew a Button! Huzzah! In January, I'll have another goodie (I think it'll be another ARC of my book with a few extra goodies, so stick around).
But in the meantime, go see how Susan Gibberman, Librarian Extraordinaire does her research. (I love this. She's rad.)
THIS IS VERY EXCITING!
I have the coolest giveaway this month. Have you seen this book?
How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew
Erin is DARLING, and I love her site, and I think Erin's book and my book would be friends in the bookstore. How to Sew a Button and How to Knit a Love Song. Okay, so they're shelved pretty far apart, but I think at some point, they'll end up together. Maybe on an endcap in the bookstore called Really Great Titles We Think You'll Love.
Anyway, she's giving me one! To give to you! All you have to do is sign up to be on my mailing list! I haven't even sent one of those bad boys out yet, so you'll notice I don't spam (or share names, never fear). If you're already on the list, you're automatically in the drawing. (If you're not sure, you can double check by re-signing up — it'll let you know.)
I'll do the drawing on Thursday, so that if you sadly do not win, you can still order your copies in time to give them to friends for Christmas (because honestly, how great is this book?). And how cute is Erin?
(Disclaimer: I did not know Erin before Twitter. But I claim her as a Twitter-friend now, so I will pimp her book. God bless Twitter, amen.)
ALSO, in fun news:
My book has been picked as a Night Owl Top Pick, AND my release date has been moved up to March 2nd, which you would already know, if you had preordered my book at Amazon. Of course, you might be planning on supporting your local independent book retailer. Yay! (But preorder online sales can be very good for me. I'm just saying. And I'm available for preorder now. Or you can shop IndieBound for a local store near you! That is all.)
And now I'm going Christmas shopping online. I refuse to leave the house today if I can help it. Mwah!
I had to share an idea that I've completely stolen from my friend Theresa Stevens, an editor at Red Sage and co-writer of one of my favorite writing blogs, Edittorrent.
It's one of those obvious, light bulb-over-the-head ideas, and every writer probably already does this, but I certainly don't, so if I can suggest it to just one other… Oh, I'll get to the point.
Everyone has words they overuse. My particular favorite is "just." I can use it four times in a paragraph and never notice. It's ugly. But when writing, I let myself write any old way and edit later. On final drafts, I have a long list of my overused words, and I go through entire manuscripts, using the Find function, searching out each usage and deciding whether or not it's necessary at that point (it usually isn't).
Theresa, in this post, talks about software that can help with this, and then, in that light bulb moment, points out that WE ALREADY OWN IT. In Word, use Find and Replace All to turn that danger-word a different, eye-catching color, so when you're reading along, there it is, waiting for you to notice, to make that decision. You can do that with the suffix -ly, if you're trying to snuff out adverbs. You can do it with "just" and "rather" and all the other energy-sucking words that plague you most as a writer.
I love it. This is awesome. I can't wait to try it.
(But while we're thinking about this kind of thing, anyone have anything to say about Story Mill? I like how it flags your overused words FOR you, but I'm not sure about anything else. I'm a big Scrivener fan and use it for plotting, myself, although I compose in Word.)