A CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

A United States history of the past sixty years is now in the works. In it, I hope to include short articles (two paragraphs to two pages) from a variety of writers of their memories of some of the most historic moments, and how those events affected them.

During the past sixty years we’ve witnessed the end of World War II and survived the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf War and now we’re embroiled in the Iraq War. All of those conflicts had an impact on every one of our lives whether we were alive then, heard about them from older siblings and parents, or lost a loved one as a result of one of the wars.

Many of us lived through and were affected by the assassination of President Kennedy plus his brother, Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. We’ve also lived through the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights struggle and the anti-war and free-love movement during the late sixties and early seventies. We’ve witnessed the introduction of computer technology and time- and labor-saving machines that make our lives easier. A few of us even remember life before television and cell phones when we gathered in the kitchen or living room to listen to the radio, and talked to friends and family members on party-line telephones with rotary dials!

Those whose contribution is used in the book will receive a free copy after it is published as well as a short biography in the book to help promote your own writing projects. I have some guidelines as well as a list of memory joggers for anyone who is interested in contributing. If you would like to contribute, send an email that requests guidelines to: portable.writer@yahoo.com.

MEETING WORD COUNT RESTRICTIONS - part II

Recently I was asked to write an article for an online ezine. While I wasn’t given a maximum word count, I have written enough online articles to know that they should be short. Readers are not patient enough to read long, wordy articles online. I wrote about the topic as succinctly as I could and was appalled when I did a word count and found that the article held more than 1500 words!

After doing some selective butchering, I finally got it down to 900 words. How did I do it? First of all, I had included more details than were necessary for the article. The piece was meant to be an overview of the subject, not a detailed manuscript. I whittled it down until it held only the amount of information that would get the message across. Even that was too long, so the article was broken into two parts for the ezine.

Try shortening some of the articles you’ve written, whether they’ve been published or not. The more practice you have at cutting manuscripts down to size, the better your writing will become. And who knows, some of those manuscripts you’ve written but never been brave enough to send to a publisher might suddenly look a lot more sales worthy.

Stephen King, well-known horror fiction author, cuts up to ten percent of his manuscript by removing extraneous words and has been quoted as saying, “Only God gets things right the first time.”

So remember, it only makes your manuscript better when you learn to eliminate unnecessary portions and tighten up the remaining words and sentences.