CuteWriting

[Post dedicated to Yann Martel; see History Today below] Here is the third part of the series, Guide to Getting Published . Once your fiction book is complete (you have prepared for publication) and you have chosen your literary agent , your most daunting task after writing comes to play— preparing your query letter . A query letter is a simple one-page pitch letter that tells the literary agent or editor about your novel and seeks representation or publication. It is a simple one-page affair, but a daunting task for writers. Simple tasks daunt us more than complex ones; I take hours to prepare a 20-word Meta description and 5-word caption for my blog, and never get satisfied; I know the difficulty. In this guide, I will discuss the ways to prepare good query letters for fiction; for non-fiction submissions, query preparation is slightly different, and we will consider it as a separate post [Update: Here is the newspaper freelancing query guidelines ] What is a Query Letter ...

I have apologies for you today, dear readers. I am in a tighter schedule and cannot post a regular, more useful post today. So, I have come up with an English classic for you. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. Maybe you read last time when I had such an issue; I had posted Sherlock Holmes’s The Adventure of the Empty House . Please read this classic, if you haven’t already, and voice your comments. Also, I would very much like your opinions on other classics you may want posted. These classics are not copyrighted anymore, and you have the full freedom of redistributing them electronically. Lenin The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the mela...

Forming plurals may seem a minor thing to most writers, however there are certain deciding factors, which may or may not make you look professional in this. Making plurals correctly in your writing may not be as easy as you think. I have here, some guidelines for you to select an appropriate style in forming the plurals . General Rules First, as introduction, let's consider the general rules for forming plurals. Almost all of you already know and follow these rules. The most common way is adding 's' or 'es' to the word. 'Es' forms the plural in case of words ending with 'x', 's', 'ch', or with a similar sound ; and 'ies' forms the plural in case of words ending with 'y' or a similar sound . Boy–boys Girl–girls Dog–dogs Box–boxes Stitch–stitches Flash–flashes Toss–tosses Sky–skies Fly–flies Certain words ending in 'o' form plurals this way: Hero–heroes Domino–dominoes Exceptions: Memo–m...

Contact Form Added! Dear friends, this is a blog notification. Now, you can contact me through the newly added contact form in CuteWriting. Blogger doesn’t quite support a way to contact the blogger. Only a commenting option is available. How, then, would a reader contact the writer? One way for this is placing an email link to the blog owner’s email address. But this is more of a trouble, since the email spam bots will scan the link and spam the writer. To avoid this problem, I have now put up a new service within my blog, with the help of EmailMeForm website . They have a dedicated hosting page within which my contact form is hosted. Here is the contact me link , using which you can send me an email. Among other paid services, EmailMeForm maintains a very good free service. If you check out my contact form, you will find that it is complete with fields for your name, email address, website, and even a captcha to check spams. I have included some special fi...

Many people confuse brackets ( [] ) with parentheses ( () ) and braces ( {} ) . This post is for them. I will explain where to use each, and where not to. 1. Parentheses Parentheses are an important construction in written language. They are encountered almost everywhere, and of course appears more often than the others of the family. All know the most important use of parentheses: to include what is really not part of a sentence, though you nonetheless want to. In this way, do neither start it with a capital nor end it with a period: I will meet John (who went to school with me). As seen above, the period should be part of the sentence and not the parenthesized element . However, if you are parenthesizing a whole sentence, the period also gets parenthesized just as any other punctuation to end the sentence. I will meet John. (I remember how great buddies we were in school.) The children were thrilled. (Bravo! We won!) Dashes find almost similar use as parentheses ; ...

I hope you read my previous post of this series of articles in the Guide to Getting Published . In the last article, I had told you about preparations to be done before sending query letter . Now, we will look at how the literary agents work and how you can get in touch with one. Also, we will look at how to avoid the scam agencies like New York Literary out there. What is a literary agency or agent? A literary agent is a business front for you, the writer. The agent carries out all your business transactions with the publisher; guides in legal aspects ; selects and manages publication contracts and sale of rights for you; and most importantly, markets and promotes your work . An agent is your best friend, working for you in publication of your work. Since the agent manages your business of publishing, you can relax and need only write . For their services, the agents take a minor cut (usually 10% and some charge 15%) from your royalties . The publisher sends the checks directly to t...