Here's an unusual service, though a similar thought may have occurred to those of us accustomed to dealing with rejection letters. Lulu.com (a subsidy publisher) is offering something new: for $90, you can turn your rejection letters into... toilet paper!

Here's how Lulu introduces the service:

"JK Rowling, Agatha Christie, Hunter S. Thompson, James Joyce and George Orwell all received their share of publishers' rejection letters. Stephen King got so many that he used to nail them on a spike under a timber in his bedroom. Margaret Mitchell got rejection letters from 38 different publishers before finally finding one to publish her novel, Gone With The Wind. William Saroyan may now be rated a literary great, but he amassed a stack of rejection slips 30 inches high -- some seven thousand -- before he sold his first story."

Perhaps it's an idea whose time has come. Certainly I tell many of my clients and writing students that chances are good they'll accumulate enough rejection slips to paper at least one room of their houses; but certainly that's a depressing choice for wallpaper. Why not another kind of paper altogether?

Lulu goes on to say, "This groundbreaking new Lulu service recalls the remark attributed to (among others) the great Sir Winston Churchill, who is said to have written in reply to an unwelcome letter: Dear Sir, I am in the smallest room of the house. I have your letter before me. Soon it will be behind me."

Anyone want to try it out? Have the frustration level it takes to spend "from $90" to put it all behind you? Then go to Lulu's fabulous toilet paper offer -- and then come back and tell us all about it!

That will take you well... beyond the elements of style!


Jeannette Cézanne
Customline.com

Okay. I just have to start today with a rant.

If you're going to correct someone, be sure, first, that you are correct.

I've been out of town for two weeks, and happened to be at a wonderful Portuguese bakery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for breakfast one recent morning. A sign near the tables noted something to the effect that diners were asked to put the tray back in its place. Some cleverer-than-thou person had added an apostrophe between the "it" and the "s."

No, no, a thousand times no!

I would venture to say that the weapon of choice for those whose intent is to mangle the English language is, was, and shall probably always be the apostrophe.

Let's all take a quick refresher class on its use. Please also follow the link I have provided to the Apostrophe Protection Society: bookmark that link and go back and reference it any time you have any doubt as to whether or not an apostrophe is called for.

Contractions take apostrophes:

• It's going to rain today!
  
• I'm reading that book now.
  
• She's happy to be leaving at four.
  
• He can't finish the assignment.

All of these sentences involve contractions: A contraction is a device showing us that some letters have been omitted, and is used in speaking and in informal writing. It is becomes it's; I am becomes I'm; she is becomes she's; cannot becomes can't.

Noun possessives take apostrophes:

• Mary's car is in the repair shop.
  
• My mother-in-law's letter was short.
  
• We went to Clara and Tom's show. (Note that only the second name takes the apostrophe and the s.)
  
• James's music is still in the hall. (Note that even though James ends in an s, we still add an apostrophe and an additional s. James is still a singular, and the singular follows this rule.)
  
• It took five hours' walking to get there! (Note that a plural places the apostrophe AFTER the s.)
  

Pronoun possessives DO NOT take apostrophes:

• The book should be in its place.
  
• That raincoat is his.
  
• Those are ours!

Dates do not take apostrophes (The exception appears to be the unfortunate style guide employed by the New York Times):

• I haven't seen him since the 1990s.
  
• He was born in the 80s.
  

Master these few rules and you will not make the common mistakes we all see out "in the wild," to wit:

• Banana's are .49 a pound!
  
• Put it back in it's place!
  
• That book is her's!
  

By now, you should be able to tell why the three examples above are incorrect. Do that, and you'll be... beyond the elements of style!

THIS JUST IN: Amazingly enough, even people who should know better make errors. Check out the jacket copy on a recent Philip Roth novel here: http://tinyurl.com/j5t4g

Jeannette Cézanne
Customline.com

How long is a novel?

Well, of course that depends – on the genre, the author's experience, the publishing house. But if you're a first-time author and you're trying to catch the eye of a traditional publisher (okay, okay, a mixed metaphor at best), you need to be concerned about length.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but what it all boils down to is money. Longer books are more expensive to produce than shorter books. What you may be able to get away with ten years down the road in your career is not what you can get away with now.

In general, aiming for around 80,000 words will get you in the right ballpark. It's not getting to the 80,000 words that's difficult for most writers – it's cutting down to 80,000 words that's hard.

So you have a 200,000 word manuscript you want to sell to a publisher. What's an author to do?

Here are some suggestions:

• Eliminate non-essential words, phrases, sentences, characters, etc.
  
• Remove any clichés.
  
• Eliminate qualifiers such as nearly, a little, almost, sort of, along the lines of, etc.
  
• Don't make yourself crazy. Take it one page at a time and try to reduce just that page. And then the next. And then the next.
  
• Think about what you're saying. Why use ten words when four will do? Look at where you can be more spare, where you can tighten your language.
  
• A great suggestion from a screenwriter named David Hoag: "One thing I've learned is to come into a scene as late as possible and get out of it as quickly as possible. One easy thing to cut, for instance, are what I call the howdy-do elements. In real life, when you go into a shop, you have to go to the door, ask for Mr. or Ms. So-and-So, wait, then tell them what you want, blah blah blah blah, etc. We tend to write scenes like this, too. This applies to all sorts of business with arrivals and departures, getting to the place, finding that place, and so on. I've found bunches of paragraphs which can be reduced to a single sentence."
  

It's not easy, but it's not as difficult as you think it is. And along the way you'll probably find that you're able to tighten your writing in such a way that the end product is better than the longer one with which you started! Then you'll find yourself... beyond the elements of style!