This year some people will leave holiday messages on their blogs. Others will create a holiday newsletter in the form of a YouTube video. But there will always be traditional diehards who insist on getting in touch with family and friends the old-fashioned way: a holiday newsletter filled with fun, interesting information about you and your family. How can you do this without making people gag or fall asleep? It’s very simple, really. You need to jazz it up, give folks something they can really sink their teeth into, and leave out all that boring (but true) stuff.

Length. Make your letter long—really long—as in several pages. And single-spaced so that Great-Grandma needs a magnifying glass to read it. You might want to make copies of your child’s artwork, reproduce your pets’ paw prints, or just draw pictures on napkins and include those. Scan in photos of your backyard, your new car, the bruise on your shin. Your relatives will get a kick out of the large and unwieldy packet of information you send, and it will be well worth the postage.

Decorate it. Use lots of clip art and borders. If it’s hard to choose from all the holiday clips, use them all. People love to look at pictures of trees and little Santa Clauses, and no, it won’t detract from your message. (Did you really think people would read it anyway?)

Keep it generic. If you personalize your letter, some relatives or friends may get jealous. You don’t want Uncle George to know that Uncle Felix dropped by last month, or a Hatfield/McCoy conflict is sure to develop. Be sure not to mention any other family members’ names throughout the letter or include news from outside your own household. Remember: impersonal equals safe. (If you’re not fond of a certain family member, you can also address their letter to <insert name here> but conveniently forget to insert a name. Very impersonal. Very insulting.)

Brag. This is your once-a-year permit to lay it all out there and say, I did great this year, and you should be jealous! Even if your year was less than stellar, you can still use creative license to make Aunt Tilly sigh and compare you to her own deadbeat son. Here are some ways to beef up your holiday bragfest.

If you got a 25-cent raise at Joe’s Drugstore, say, “This year I was pleased to be promoted in the pharmaceutical industry.”

A social worker visited your house last month: “We were blessed by a visit from an important government official last month

Little Suzie was arrested for shoplifting: “Our hardworking daughter even received a full police escort downtown!”

One more note: Write your letter as if you were a high school English teacher, and try to use as many big words as possible, even if you have to make some of them up. Your vocabulary will intimidate your relatives and make you feel good about yourself.

“This year it was good to be a Jones. As neighbors tried to emulate our personality traits and lifestyle, we formulated a plan to elevate our standards to an even higher level by utilizing our superior gene pool and intellectual motivation to create a nearly impossible plateau of greatness.”

People are gonna love it.

Want to giggle over grammar? Check out the link below to a Web page posted by the University of North Texas. It’s a tongue-in-cheek guide to grammar/composition rules that will crack you up! Below is a short excerpt.

Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

Don’t use no double negatives. Don't never use no triple negatives.

No sentence fragments.

Corollary: Complete sentences: important.

Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.

Avoid clichés like the plague.

All generalizations are bad.

Click here to see more: http://www.paulhensel.org/teachgram.html.

There are weird words in every industry, and the literary world is no exception. We’ve listed some of the stranger-sounding industry-specific jargon common to writers, editors, and agents that may need some clarification.

Anaphora. Too many sentences in a row that begin the same way. Sometimes this is deliberate and effective. Sometimes this is sloppy. Sometimes it is simply irritating.

Avant-garde. Usually associated with artwork, this term can also be applied to literature that is considered new or experimental. If your work has been labeled avant-garde, you can be proud of your innovation. Much better than “same ol’, same ol’.”

Backstory. The history of your characters before the book's present action.

Blurb. This sounds like a bodily function, but, in actuality, it refers to the synopsis on the back cover of the book. Its function is to “hook” the reader like a fish.

Dead metaphor. This is a poor little metaphor that is no longer relevant (“long in the tooth”) and has been overused.

Head-hopping. Jumping from one person’s thoughts to another's or switching back and forth between points of view. This is just another way to give your audience a headache.

Hook. Whether it’s the first line of a query, a novel, or part of the blurb, a hook is designed to capture the reader’s attention. We know that readers aren’t fish. But it paints a cool mental picture.

Novella. Sounds like something vaguely racy. In actuality it is a short novel (approximately half the size).

Round file. A nice word for trash can. A not-so-nice place for your manuscript to end up.

Slush pile. If you live in northern climes, the slush pile usually refers to the pile of slushy snow that threatens to grab your tires or fill up your boots. In writer’s lingo the slush pile is where the hundreds upon hundreds of unsolicited or misdirected manuscripts go—usually a dusty pile in the corner of an editor’s office.

Widows and orphans. A “widow” is the last line of the paragraph floating alone and lonely at the top of the next page. An “orphan” is the first line of a paragraph that languishes at the bottom of the page, all alone.

YA. Young adult. Or “Yikes! Anaphora!”

Feedback from critiques, editors, and agents can also contain some confusing notations we should clarify. Your MS is voicey and organic but switches POV indiscriminately. What the heck? Translation: Your manuscript has a strong, well-defined voice and rings true and authentic, but your point of view switches back and forth. Comments like “Boring and too long” or “I hated this” are fairly self-explanatory. Others are not quite as clear.

No legs. Can your idea or novel stand on its own in the big, scary market? If not, your work may suffer from “no legs.” (You see the metaphor.)

Organic. No, not vegetables. This is writing that is authentic, uncontrived. If your character is organic, it means he comes across as real, not as an artificial, unrealistic protagonist with zero faults and great, big muscles.

Quiet. This work has been labeled as more literary than commercial and, therefore, harder to sell.

Stale. Again, a food reference. If your story has been labeled stale, it’s time to take a “fresh” approach.

Tight. Good job! You’ve eliminated all the unnecessary filler and made it nice and concise and really tried to be spare with your words and things like that, which makes your writing not too padded and fluffy, and you have taken out all the nonessentials.

Could you write your memoir in six words?

Check out the the six-word memoirs written by writers in all stages of their careers at http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/. Some are evocative and mysterious, others are side-splitting fun.

Here's ours: Writer's Relief helps you, write on. 

 
Graphic created by E. Jessie Monaco

We asked the Writer's Relief staff what their favorite costumes and candies are. Tell us your favorites by posting a reply! 

Dan
Costume: Ninja. Low maintenance, high recognizability. Plus black works well on Halloween.

Candy: Milky Way. I could make up some fake answer about the galaxy, endless possibilities, or something equally ridiculous, but really it’s just chocolate + nougat + caramel = win.

Frank
Costume: Years ago I had a clown suit with tan and red stripes. The big, red nose wasn’t necessary.

Candy: Dark chocolate.

Hermine (Guess who she is related to!)
Costume: Black French Poodle—all handmade, very creative.

Candy: Chocolate-covered marshmallow ghosts by Russell Stover.

Joi
Costume: I love Roseanne, and that show had the best Halloween episodes. One, in particular, that sticks out is when Roseanne and Dan dressed up as a dead ventriloquist and his dummy. They performed onstage for their friends, and when the song ended, Dan drank water and it came pouring out of the holes in the dummy's (Roseanne's) body. LOL…

Candy: That's easy. Candy corn. It's awesome, heavenly, and oh, so bad for you, but it makes me happy. So, please, everyone…LOTS OF CANDY CORN.

Jon
Costume: Honestly, I love ghost costumes, the real simple ones with just the two holes for eyes and a giant sheet over your body. It’s so simple yet it freaks me out! It reminds me of the original Halloween movie.

Candy: I love pumpkin spice chocolate…it’s just perfect for the season, and it makes me feel cozy.

Kriste
Costume: Little Orphan Annie—I dressed up as Annie when I was in grade school, and everyone loved it because I had the dress and big, curly wig. I should totally have my mom see if she can’t dig out one of those pictures. It was a hoot!

Candy: Candy corn—Pure sugary goodness!

Lisa
Costume: One year my dad made these hot-pink earrings that attached to a battery pack and blinked on and off. Unfortunately, they kept short-circuiting and shocking my earlobes. But I was determined to keep them on—it’s all about aesthetics!

Candy: Snickers.

Liz
Costume: Hmm… I like it when people dress as inanimate objects, like, say, a box of crayons. And homemade costumes are, by far, superior. I think it shows off creativity and dedication to the sport of dressing up.

Candy: Happy Apples by Laurie’s Candies (local homemade candy). Happy Apples are apples dipped in caramel, enrobed in chocolate, and decorated with a candy face (like M&M’s for eyes and candy corn for a nose, licorice whip for a mouth). You may not find them by going door to door, but Laurie’s Candies has made these treats for the past 15 years—or, at least, that is as long as I can remember! When I see those smiling treats in local markets, I know October has come and my favorite holiday, Halloween, is around the corner. When I lived in Boston, my parents would send me Happy Apples in care packages to remind me of home. I look forward to their arrival every year as a gentle reminder that some things don’t change!

Margaret
Costume: Ghost.

Candy: 3 Musketeers.

Maria
Costume: (This is hard because I like more than one) Elvis.

Candy: (Ditto) Snickers bites (dark chocolate).

Marissa
Costume: My favorite Halloween costume was one my mom made. She teaches elementary school and, therefore, dresses up for her kids each year. A few years ago my mother poked two holes into the bottom of a trash bag for her legs, stepped inside, filled it with fallen leaves, and tied it loosely at her waist. She made a sign that she wore around her neck that read "Tuesday's Pick Up" since that's when the yard waste was picked up…

Candy: My favorite Halloween candy is ANYTHING that involves peanut butter.

Matt
Costume: Undead Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln as a zombie), Robin Hood, Ghostbuster.

Candy: Chocolate Peanut Butter Marshmallowed Candied Apple.

Meg
Costume: Witch (I love the hair).

Candy: Candy corn.

Pamela
Costume: For Halloween when I was in seventh grade I dressed up as a “Widow’s Web.” It was basically a long, black dress and had a black, sheer shawllike piece with pointed edges, a high collar, and white silk screen print (made to look like a spiderweb) that went over it. Included in my ensemble was makeup (black lipstick/nail polish and white face paint) and a hair clip that had a big, creepy-looking spider on it. I wore my hair half up in a bun, with the spider clip over the bun. I loved that costume and so did my fellow classmates! From the back it really looked like a creepy spider perched high in its web, waiting to attack!

Candy: Snickers fun-size bars are my favorite Halloween candy. Snickers bars are my favorite everyday candy, so getting them on Halloween is always a plus! There’s just something about getting the fun-size bars on Halloween that makes them taste better than the regular size on an average day (kind of like how turkey on Thanksgiving tastes better than a turkey dinner on any other day of the year), not to mention they are a perfect-size chocolatey snack for any time of the day.

Ronnie
Costume: The black Poodle costume my mother made for me when I was a child. It was passed around to many children over the years and won lots of prizes! Must have made an impact on me. I continue to love Poodles, and two of our office mascots are proof (Bella, a standard apricot, and Teddy, a rescued mini apricot). They’re scary smart!

Candy: Anything with chocolate and NO peanuts. I also love homemade popcorn balls.

Shawn
Costume: My favorite Halloween costume would have to be Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz. I have a complex, what can I say? Oh, wait…am I supposed to be picking my favorite male costume?

Candy: I’m going to stand up for candy corn here as my favorite Halloween candy, simply because almost all other candy is available year-round. And because I happen to think it’s delicious (we’re a small, small army, we candy corn lovers).  

Simone
Costume: Ghost. It's invisible.

Candy: Werther's hard candy caramel drops. It sticks to the roof of my mouth and I love the buttery caramel flavor.

Steve
Costume: Mick Foley (Pro wrestler also known to be Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind); Superman (with Superdog); Ninja Turtle; Bob Dole.

Candy: Smarties (Nestlé Smarties), only sold in Canada and Europe, similar to M&M’s.

Wendy
Costume/Candy: My parents really rose to the occasion for Halloween—very creative types. Long, long ago, when I was a wee child, they totally knocked themselves out and constructed an unusual costume for me: a small tabletop complete with a Halloween tablecloth, party favors, etc., featuring a pumpkin centerpiece (my head in a pumpkin mask). The absolute BEST THING about this outfit was that the little paper party cups were filled with CANDY CORN, my favorite Halloween candy. Pure bliss!

Although you didn’t ask, my least favorite costume? Mom and Dad’s version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin: I was forever tripping over the fake rats attached by fishing line to my shoes!

Find out what your favorite candy says about you by taking this short survey: http://www.blogthings.com/whatdoesyourfavoritecandysayaboutyouquiz.

DON’T:

Be a stalker. It’s not okay to lurk around corners and “accidentally” run into the agent you’ve been trying to contact for a year. It’s not okay to follow them to their hotel room and pretend you’re delivering room service. Barging into their restroom stall might get you arrested, and kidnaping is illegal if you’re considering that route.                  

Wear dumb costumes. That bear suit probably won’t get you any attention—positive attention anyway. A bunny suit might if you can pull it off. It’s even possible that wearing a pirate getup and running around, saying “Aaargh” to promote your manuscript about the high seas will get you noticed, and clown costumes are always a hit. Everyone loves clowns…

Pass out huge tomes. Agents don’t get much exercise and can’t really lift heavy things, so don’t hand them your 300-page manuscript and expect them to lug it around all day. Have copies of your synopsis and sample chapters available, and leave the suitcase of paper at home.

Pass out. Drinking heavily may liven things up for a while, but you probably don’t want to be remembered as that guy or gal who took a little nap in the hallway—covered in vomit and clutching a bottle of whiskey.

Interrupt lectures. Turn off the cell phone, put out the cigarette, and refrain from telling jokes to the woman sitting next to you until after the lecture. It’s weird, but speakers don’t usually enjoy the sounds of your awesome new ringtone or your raucous laughter while they’re trying to make a serious point.

Be a suck-up. It’s good to be polite and even fake interest. It’s bad to fawn all over an editor or give him your firstborn son. (Passing out money might work.)

Be a rude slob. Take a shower, wear deodorant, and don’t drink coffee if you can’t manage to keep it in the cup. You probably shouldn’t make fun of other writers’ clothes, ideas, or genres. Or their religion. No, it’s not a popularity contest, but that great agent might remember the writer who ran around pointing fingers at people and saying, “Children’s lit isn’t REAL writing!”

Steal. Whoee! All those great freebies are definitely a bonus, but somebody might notice if you stuff your briefcase full of them. You’ve gotta save room for the sugar packets, napkins, and cute little soaps from the bathroom.

Dress inappropriately. Tuck in your shirt, zip up your fly, and leave the tube top/miniskirt combo at home.

Be overly aggressive. Don’t get us wrong—editors love aggressive, in-your-face writers looking for an “in.” Really, they do. But physically elbowing someone else aside so that they fall into the potted plant might get you kicked out of the conference. Save that kind of behavior for church.

According to Wikipedia and other Internet sources, fonts were originally created in the 1450s with lead alloys or sometimes wood for larger fonts. Technology advances have allowed many designers to create other fonts, for both the print and digital worlds. Here at Writer’s Relief we take our fonts pretty seriously. Here’s a list of our personal faves. (Please note: some browsers may not support all of these fonts, so you may not be able to see them all.)

We realize that Arial and Times New Roman are the accepted fonts for manuscripts, but feel free to comment with YOUR favorite font(s) below. Have fun with it! 

Dan: (Wingdings) Wingdings: amusing, arbitrary, utterly incomprehensible.

Frank: Calisto.

Hermine: Times New Roman (or Verdana, because the big print is easier on the eyes).

Dear Writer Friends,

We here at Writer's Relief had a good laugh recently over a video we found on YouTube, and we wanted to share! This three-minute video imagines a world where fonts are actually human beings. It's a riot!

Click this link to enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3k5oY9AHHM

Keep the creativity coming,

Writer's Relief Staff

People who work for a living know that being efficient and productive is not always easy. It can be even harder for those of us who attempt to work from home or write from home after work. It’s definitely hard to stay focused sometimes.
 
Sure, we start out with the best of intentions and with specific goals in mind—edit 20 pages of a novel, revise an old poem—but we soon find ourselves distracted by any number of things. Take organizing your desk, for example. It may start off as an innocent and sincere attempt to tidy up and possibly focus better, but it often leads to more interesting discoveries, such as that dental appointment postcard for, oops, last week, or a perfume sample, a clipped article, an overdue bill. Then, resolutely, it’s back to work! At least, that is, until the coffee needs refilling, the pencil needs sharpening, the bathroom needs visiting. Then the dryer buzzes, your neighbor calls, the dogs bark, your kids wail, and the door-to-door weirdos descend. 

But that’s not all. Most of us use computers for writing, researching, and corresponding with others. And since the Internet is an integral part of computer use, we are faced with yet one more terrible distraction. With rehab clinics sprouting up all over the place for those poor souls addicted to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and 4chan, it’s obvious there’s a serious problem. We can only hope that those of us who work with computers can be strong and resist the temptations. And distracting temptations there are! Such fabulous, time-wasting activities abound, and we can’t resist giving you a small sample.

There are plenty of ways to get distracted online, even aside from the usual time-wasters like obsessive e-mail checking, surfing celebrity gossip news, and trolling forums and chat groups. There’s www.ICanHasCheezburger.com if you like pictures of cats in funny poses and www.PetsInClothes.com, which is pretty self-explanatory. Avoid www.DoNotPress.net, or you may find yourself pressing the big, red button obsessively, and definitely stay away from www.SubservientChicken.com if you haven’t already become addicted.

You can write “articles” for Uncyclopedia.org and feel good about being “published.” Or post something unique for sale on Craigslist, like that two-foot wad of gum you’ve created by wandering Yankee Stadium. (It’s kind of fun to see who will stop by your house or call you about it, and you might even make a few bucks!) It’s also amusing to bid for strange items on eBay, increasing your bid by increments of 50 cents at a time and hoping that someone outbids you before you become the owner of a pink flamingo bouncy house for the backyard…unless you really like pink flamingo bouncy houses.

As writers you can disguise some of these distractions by calling it “higher education” or “research.” At www.lunchtimers.com you can play a game with a whiteboard and lots of colorful letters to move around and form words—see the writing connection? The problem is, there are also other people grabbing letters and moving things around at the same time, so it’s even more distracting than it should be.

On second thought, maybe there’s no getting away from online distractions. Maybe we should all devote an hour a day to worthless pursuits—pushing red buttons, bossing guys in chicken suits around, and laughing at pets in clothes—and just get it out of our systems so we can get down to business.

There are far too many blogs out there that follow a theme and bore their readers with so-called "valuable" information. If you're tired of tagging along behind other, more experienced bloggers, we say follow your own rules and see what happens. Who knows, it could make you popular, famous, and rich!

Avoid themes.

Make sure your blog can't be forced into a box. If you target a specific audience, say, literary types or computer aficionados, think of all the other people who won't read your blog. Don't let The Man give you a label, man.

Provide irrelevant and/or outdated information.

Your readers don't want statistics or helpful hints. They want trivia! Titillate your audience with daily minutia from your own life, such as the current temperature in your part of the world. What you had for lunch. Gossip about an uncle on your father's side. Good stuff like that. Or you can give hints on making your electric typewriter more efficient or how to clean an eight-track tape machine.

Post inactive and/or irrelevant links.

If it's too easy, it's no fun! What reader wants to click on a link and go directly to the site? Make your audience work a bit—do a little investigative clicking, as it were. It's fun to make up sites too—try hyping a fantastic new site called www.grasshopperlegsforfancytimes.com, and let the frustration and confusion begin! You can also post links that are unrelated to your topic du jour and leave your readers wondering what they're missing...

Get personal.

What better forum to air your grievances? If your best friend or significant other has offended you in some way, start typing. A long, personal, privacy-shattering rant will make you feel much better than an e-mail or a simple phone call would. Everyone else will surely be interested in your personal problems too.

Copy and paste.

It's sure a lot of work to come up with new material on a regular basis. Feel free to copy and paste from other people's blogs or Web sites. (It's okay, everybody does it.)

Don't waste your time editing.

This is the number one problem in blogging—overediting! If you continue to waste your time proofing for typos and checking for libelous statements, you'll never keep up with your blog. No one really minds wading through the meandering stream of your consciousness, and we know that you do know how to spell basic words and use punctuation. You just have better things to do—like trying to figure out whose blog to plagiarize next.

We're kidding!! We're kidding!!

Are you one of those guilty people who reads while you have a few minutes to spare in the bathroom? You're not the only one, and don't feel bad about it... Robert Philpot of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram will give you 20 reasons to keep doing what you're doing "in the loo." Take a look at this humorous and interesting article online here: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0108bathroombook0108.html

Have you ever wanted to change those signs with the incorrect punctuation? Kate McCulley, the grammar vandal, is doing just that! She’s taken action in Boston and has moved her locale to the Internet as well: http://www.thegrammarvandal.com. She’s received press from The Boston Globe and NPR (links below).

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/15/stop_sign_travesties/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12173654

So, I’m sitting here wondering why the query I sent out last week has yet to be answered. It took several months to compose that query, and another four weeks to track down a suitable agency to send it to. You could say that I have quite a lot invested in this query, and now I need answers as to why I’m being ignored.

Could it be something to do with the post office? I suppose it’s possible the neighborhood letter carrier ran into a shambling group of zombies. When he discovered he had only a banana and a toothpick with which to defend himself, my poor query probably fell to the wayside and became covered with banana goo. It’s also possible that a flock of great horned owls swooped down and mistook my query for nesting material—good taste on their part. Even supposing that the letter carrier avoided zombies, owls, and envelope-eating voodoo doctors, my query couldn’t have made it to the agency’s door, or I would have heard something by now.

Unlike the literary agency I queried, my writing group was lightning quick in responding to my complaint. They’re asking why it took so long to complete a single query and wondering why I only managed to send it to one agency. Are they negative or what? They don’t know what I’ve been facing this past year! For one thing, I had a disastrous accident on my scooter last December. Then my frontal lobotomy didn’t go quite as planned, and things started slipping my already slippery mind. Spent several unproductive months watching the Food Network and buying Hulk Hogan Ultimate Grills from the Home Shopping Network. Oh, and let’s not forget my tragic loss in the national 52-Card Pickup tournament in Vegas.

It’s been a rough year, but I hope to get more writing done, not to mention a few more queries submitted in the months ahead. It would be really cool to sell a story or two. If so, I could pay for a few of those Ultimate Grills sitting in my garage...if any literary agents are reading this, maybe we could work out a deal?

A hungry lion was roaming through the jungle looking for something to eat. He came across two men. One was sitting under a tree reading a book; the other was typing away on his typewriter. The lion quickly pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him. Even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp!

Americans have embraced many fads and phases over the years, and some have been fairly forgettable (pet rocks excluded, of course). These trends eventually fade into the woodwork until very few people actually remember them at all. Unfortunately, this is the case for the poor old interrobang.

What?!?! You've never heard of the interrobang?!?!

If we were to use this sad, maligned creature right now, it would merge the exclamation points and question marks of the previous sentences into one new, glorious punctuation mark and save us all some grief. Who needs to see such a confusing conglomeration of marks anyway?

Martin Speckter came up with this concept in the 1960s, when he headed up an advertising agency. He believed that a single mark would look better than a combination question mark/exclamation point in his copy, and, indeed, the interrobang, as he named it, became popular for most of that decade. It appeared in some dictionaries and in magazines and newspapers across the country. Some typewriters even featured an interrobang key, but, much like the typewriter itself would fare, its use ended in the early seventies.

It's possible that the interrobang died a natural death because of its irritation factor. It is irritating to read a sentence that contains more than one exclamation point or question mark; it is irritating when the sentence combines question marks and exclamation points; therefore, it must have been quite irritating to see this freakish combination mark in print. Could it be that the I-Bang never really had a chance?

Don't fret too much, though. You can still find this nearly extinct creature in Microsoft's Wingdings, as well as a few other fonts. But remember: just because you can still find platform shoes with goldfish swimming in the soles doesn't mean you should buy them. And you definitely shouldn't wear them out in public!

http://www.writersrelief.com/
Author’s Submission Service Since 1994

Here are but a few tips to help you on your way:

Get creative in your use of punctuation. Use it willy-nilly and at random, in places the reader would never expect to see it. Have fun with multiple exclamation points!!! Don’t worry about the proper use of "quotation" marks or hyphen-ated words. And don’t fret about not using punctuation to break up run-on sentences the reader will love to unravel the mysteries of your thoughts it makes it more fun this way.

You may feel it necessary to impress your readers with pedantic language, forcing them to make a dash for the dictionary to get through your first few paragraphs. Good plan! Every reader longs to learn ten new words per page. Erudite expositions will create admiration in your exalted readers, and all will be inspired by your flowery vocabulary…if they manage to hang on long enough.

In the same vein, you may score points by creating long, convoluted sentences with multiple clauses and wandering phrases that continue to entrance the reader with their convoluted paths taken along the strange and uncharted path that is the language of our modern world, which is far more exciting than plain, simple, and concise language, which is purely boring and doesn’t give the writer an opportunity to show off his or her mastery of the English language, therefore ignoring the admonition to avoid using too many unnecessary and inessential words, irregardless.

Use your dictionery to avoid mispellings, because its a good idea to check they’re version against your own. However, it can be fun to come up with knew and creative spellings for words, just as it can be fun to change the tents of certain verbs that have creeped into your work.

Some people will tell you that verbs should agree with its subject, and a pronoun should agree with their antecedent. This is entirely up to you, and they should be able to make sense of it.

Metaphors and similes can be very fun to use, especially if they’re a little off—or mixed-up like a salad with too many veggies. So take the bull by the hand and get cracking! Cloud your ideas in a sea of imagination, and create conflicting images for your valued readers. They’ll thank you for it.

http://www.writersrelief.com/
Author’s Submission Service Since 1994