MY NEW PUBLISHED WORDS

Even though my "official" launch date will not be until November 24th when I'll be physically selling, signing, and reading from Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters at an event for Midwest Writing Center at Southpark Mall in Moline, Illinois, I'm excited to announce the book is now for sale at Amazon.com. As everything gets uploaded, it will be for sale at other online sites as well. And as I pound the pavement, hopefully, it will be for sale at more and more stores in the Quad Cities USA area.

I started thinking about this book about four years ago when Biljana came to work at the same law firm where I was then-employed. I began researching and outlining about a year later. The rough draft was completed about a year and a half ago. And then rounds and rounds and rounds of revisions and editing before starting publication late last spring.

MissingEmily: Croatian Life Letters is the story about how two teenage girls living on opposite sides of the world, one in the United States and one in Croatia, who are dealing with their own turmoil, one of deep depression and one of civil war, find comfort and solace by writing letters to each other in the early 1990s.

The format of the book combining narrative with letters is different from many books and I am not aware of any book which links someone from the United States with someone from Croatia. It is historical in that it covers historical events, namely Croatia’s civil war, but it is was only 20 plus years ago which is part of the point of the story – civil wars or historical events are occurring right now. The book is also different in that it doesn’t neatly fit into its young adult genre; one of the characters is approximately fifteen to sixteen during the story and one thirteen to fourteen which put them into the traditional category of young adult and middle grade, respectively. The subject matter, however, would be categorized more as older young adult by traditional publishers. This is also part of the point of the story – death, depression, and war don’t fit into neat little packages, either. They are messy and sometimes ambiguous. Thus, part of the target market for the book is other adults, like me, who enjoy reading YA books.

To read an excerpt, click here to access the Look Inside feature on Amazon. If you review books for a blog, magazine, e-zine, newspaper (print or web), or other online or print publication and would like a free review copy, please send an email to me at jodie@wordsywoman.com with your name, publication name and URL (if any), physical address, email address and phone number and indicate if you want a paperback or e-book.

Thanks and happy reading!

The Wordsy Woman

MY STATIONERY IS STATIONARY

One little letter that does so much! Here, switch E for A or vice-versa, and you've got two totally different things. The one with an E, stationery, is the paper or other materials used to write letters including not only the paper but envelopes, pencil, and pens. (See Dictionary.com's definition by clicking here.)

On the other hand, stationary, means something quite different and unrelated to letter-writing. Stationary refers more to a speed or spatial position. According to Dictionary.com, to be stationary means to not be moving, to be standing still, unmovable, or remaining in the same condition. (Click here for Dictionary.com definition.)

There is really no easy way - that I can think of anyway - to keep the two straight other than to remember the writing tools are spelled with an E and the others with an A. If you can't remember, just flip-flop them and you'll get half of them right.

Just kidding ... don't do that. Get a dictionary or go to Dictionary.com and look it up to be sure.

Happy "grammaring" from the Wordsy Woman

MY INSPIRATIONAL WORDS

I think music inspires almost everyone in some way at some point. Some people are inspired by religious songs, some classical music, and some hard rock. My top inspiring words come in a variety of songs. I play them to give me that push to get through a tough day or they comfort me by letting me know someone understands. In a way, like my mission as The Wordsy Woman to help people say what they want to say, my inspirational songs help put into words what I feel but do not know how to say.

Here are my top ten musical inspirational words. Maybe some of yours are the same?

The Calling by Mary Chapin Carpenter

Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac

Follow Your Dreams by Poco

I’m Gonna Be Somebody by Travis Tritt

I Got A Name by Jim Croce

The River by Garth Brooks

Something More by Sugarland

St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion) by John Parr

Stand Back Up by Sugarland

Untasted Honey by Kathy Mattea

LIES, LIES, ALL LIES -- OR IS IT LAYS?

Preliminary Draft Cover

I'm in the middle of doing my final proof of Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters and had the hardest time with the words lie, lay, and all of their counterparts. To address this problem, I avoided using the word wherever possible such as in "curled on the floor" or "she was perpendicular on the bed." But sometimes, I just couldn't avoid it. So I got out my handy A Pocket Style Manual, 5th Ed., by Diana Hacker.

Every time I came across some derivative of lie or lay, I had to think critically about what I was trying to say. Was I trying to say to "recline or rest on a surface" as defined by Hacker in A Pocket Style Manual in which case a form of lie was appropriate (p.26)? Or was I trying to put something or someone in a place in which case lay would be correct?

And it gets even more confusing. After I figured out which of lie or lay was appropriate, I had to figure out which word was correct for the tense I was using. If the correct word was a form of lie, then the correct past tense word was lay (yes, the same as the root word for place/put something) and the present participle was lying as in "is lying down" which is the same as if someone is being untruthful. The past participle of lie is lain which I avoided totally. For lay, past tense and past participle is laid while the present participle is laying as in "she is laying the book in the trash."

Even after all of the studying I did comparing my lays or lies to the guidelines in A Pocket Style Manual, all of these lies, lays, laids, lains, lyings, and layings are swimming around in my head. So it doesn't look like I'll be able to turn my page away from this section any time soon. I just hope I made the right choices in my proof.

by The Wordsy Woman

Source: Hacker, Diane (2009). A Pocket Style Manual (5th ed.). Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.

COMMA SUTRA – POSITION ONE

The comma so perplexes me in writing that I think a whole book could be written on the topic. It is used in so many different ways and its usage is different depending on what you are writing and what you intend to say. I’ve gone from being a comma-abuser to a comma-avoider to everywhere in between.

Because of the complexity, I will concentrate on comma usage in a particular minute instance, and maybe one day, I’ll have it mastered. This week – the list.

I grew up hearing you always use a comma between the second to last item in a list with three or more items and the conjunction (“and” or “or”) appearing before the last item in the list (unless, of course, a semi-colon is appropriate which is a whole other topic). Then when I became a paralegal, I was told this was wrong – you should leave out that comma. And then I read somewhere you should use the comma when writing lists in fiction but you should leave them out when writing non-fiction. Even last week when reading a Harvard Business School case for a class, I noticed there were no commas between the last two items in lists in the text - "proving" the fiction vs. non-fiction distinction.

To solve this confusion, I turn to the “experts.” According to A Pocket Style Manual, Fifth Edition, on page 58, by Diana Hacker, you should follow the advice I received in grade school of “use a comma between all items in a series of at least three, including the last two.” Hacker acknowledges the paralegal no-last-comma camp but indicates “most experts advise using [the comma] because its omission can result in ambiguity or misreading.”

According to The Associated Press AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, 2009 Edition, you “do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series” which appears to consist of three similar items (p. 355). The Essentials of English, 6^th Edition, by Vincent F. Hopper, Cedric Gale, Ronald C. Foote, and Benjamin W. Griffith appear to agree with Diana Hacker though it does admit it is “not absolutely essential” (p. 114). The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, also agrees with the comma-always mantra (p. 88).

So what will the Wordsy Woman do? Well, unless someone asks me specifically to leave it out, I will insert a comma between the second-to-last item and the “and” or “or” in my list of three items or more.