A hare’s breath escape

• I just finished indexing Her Hidden Children, much helped by the fact that I could find search terms by letting Adobe Acrobat search PDF files of all chapters. But before you index a book, you need to strategize about the book’s purpose as well as the reader’s needs, something discussed at this site.

• “Hare’s breath escape” is just one of many “dreadful phrases” collected by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. As she says, most are more common in print than in speech, so why do poor writers mis-see them? See also Egg corns.

• M.J. Rose at Buzz, Balls, and Hype wonders if writers should also be bloggers.

When it comes to writing, the most important job we all have is to write our books. If we don’t put our best effort there we aren’t doing our jobs. No author should sacrifice writing time for blogging time or promotion time if it’s going to weaken the book.

Of course, she’s a novelist–and she blogs.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with having a blog geared to your peers. I read other authors’ blogs – and enjoy them – but of the dozen or so I frequent – not one has ever convinced me to try that authors’ fiction.

Those blogs aren’t talking to me the reader.

Read it all.

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