Articles in the Reviews and Reviewing Category

“Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.” – Quote Garden – Joe Paterno

In my last post about reviewing (Becoming a Reviewer: Where to Begin), I shared 5 tips with you on how to get started.

Today, I’d like to share with you…

5 Strategies for Reviewing Success

1. Honesty is the best policy. Always, always tell the truth – even if you find a negative aspect (or several!) in the product or system you’re reviewing. This is most important, especially if you’re a blogger or the author of a review column, etc. Your audience needs to know they can trust your judgment. Your reputation is of value. Your readers’ experiences are of value. Don’t be the cause of them spending their hard-earned money on products you highly recommend, but aren’t in keeping with your rave review. Keep it real.
2. Be thorough. Highlight details and clue readers in on everything you can think of to share – including fun facts or solid information about the company’s history, team and/or owner(s). Saying something like “oh, I loved the product… it was great” is not enough to provide a solid foundation for someone who is truly interested in purchasing the item you’re mentioning.
3. Follow up with readers. If comments are allowed where you posted your review, try to answer readers’ questions or at least direct them to someone who can. Sometimes we forget to include something they may want to know. (We can’t think of everything!)
4. Don’t forget the pros and the cons. Readers want to know both the good and the bad. If it’s a food or beverage, be sure to include how it tastes and/or smells, how appetizing it may be, how much it costs, and even list a few ways they might introduce this product to their usual meals or snacks, etc.
5. Openly thank the company/individual who sent you the product(s) to review. They not only deserve the recognition for their generosity, they deserve a thank you for taking the time to acknowledge you as a reviewer and give you the opportunity to sample their product, free of cost.

And, yes, I absolutely try to adhere to these strategies when I write reviews. I’ve grown and learned along the way, so I have written reviews in the past that were short and sweet. Each time I’ve written a new review, though, I’ve built upon what I learned from writing the previous one. And, so writing reviews is not only becoming easier for me, they’ve become so much more enjoyable as I pass on to the reader not only my thoughts, but valuable, honest information, with integrity and a genuine heart.

Do you write reviews? Are you thorough? Will you try to be more thorough from now on? Do you think it’s wrong to be paid for reviews? Do you think it’s wrong to receive free products for review? And what do you think about the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling for bloggers? Has it kept you from writing reviews? Or, are you just more cautious? I’ve always been upfront and openly thanked the sponsoring company who sent me products to review – I’m glad!

And stay tuned… more tips are on the way! Is there anything in particular you’d like to know? Share in the comments!

Did you enjoy this article? Feel free to visit the other articles Michele has written for Writer’s Round-About–or contact her to write for you.

Image credit: lockstockb

This month, Writer’s Round-About welcomes Melissa Hart, a talented memoirist and freelance writer as she tours the Web with her new book, “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood“. You’ve already heard from Melissa with her fabulous guest post, “Writing, Romance, and Child-Rearing: A Critical Balance“, and Cindy Hudson reviewed Melissa’s book for us sharing the warmth and insight of the book and giving us an eye into Melissa’s world.

Melissa, thank you so much for joining us this month. It’s an pleasure to have you with us and I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me today. Lets get down to finding out your answers to some of my burning questions, then we can open up the floor to let others ask theirs.

1. In “Gringa“, you write about “a lesbian mother”, how do you think your relationship with your mother, and her inter-personal relationships, affected the way you develop characters as a writer?

My mother came out when I was a pre-teen, but I didn’t know what being a lesbian meant. For a few months, there was all this secrecy around her moving in with a woman; my father and his mother whispered about it and told me my mother was “ill.” He took us to a social worker who grilled us about where my mother and her partner slept and whether they hugged and kissed in front of us.

I learned to analyze people both for how they presented in public and for their hidden motivations. I don’t mean to sound paranoid; we all hide our motivations, and the emotions driving them, on occasion. I learned to develop multifaceted characters by studying both the public and private persona of my family members. Every other Friday and Sunday night when I traveled up the Pacific Coast Highway with my mother, we discussed how we’d been separated by the legal system and why. She was studying psychology at the time, and I remember talking about our family with respect to Freud and Jung and Rogers, and later–when I took psychology classes in college–to my social psychology professor Eliot Aronson.

In Gringa, I’m particularly proud of resisting the temptation to portray my father as simply a homophobic bully. Many reviewers have noted that I don’t place blame in the book. While I’d disagree that I don’t blame my father for some of the events in my childhood, I’ve tried hard to show his side of the story, as well.

2. The Latina culture is considered deeply sensual and erotic, how do you feel that culture and “a deep desire to be a Latina” influences your writing?

My perceived lack of culture shaped my writing for years. Growing up as a minority in multicultural schools, and visiting my mother who lived in a Latino neighborhood in Oxnard, I felt inadequate in terms of my skin color, food and music choices, lack of religion with its white dresses or Buddhist shrines. I didn’t perceive the Latina culture to be “deeply sensual and erotic” until college, however, when I was still figuring out who I was as a sexual person with an older, very sexually-secure Latino boyfriend. I’ve got a story coming out in The Los Angeles Review in a few months that illustrates my struggle to be erotic without really knowing what that meant.

3. You’ve had the opportunity to travel to other countries, each with a unique culture and people. What do you feel is the most significant lesson you’ve learned about the people and relationships in other countries that finds its way into your writing?

There’s a lot of hype about how people from other countries don’t like Americans. I’ve been traveling internationally for a couple of decades, and I haven’t found this to be true. I think when you approach a new country and its people with an open mind and an open heart, with humility and curiosity, people welcome this.

I went to Amsterdam a few years ago to present a paper on training a permanently-injured Snowy owl for the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators; here, touring the Artis Zoo and sharing our various bird-stories over meals, I felt so much mutual interest and respect. I work as a travel writer for newspapers and magazines on occasion, and I try to approach each new location and its inhabitants with this same interest and respect.

4. In a review of “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood“, Booklist writers, “LGBT families and immigrant kids will want it for honesty, humor, and love. Every lively chapter ends with a detailed recipe that mixes food and feelings.”

Food is such an integral part of life. How do you feel these things, honesty, humor, love, food, and feelings, come together when writing?

Cooking is just so much fun, and so meditative when you’re chopping vegetables or beating egg whites or shelling peas. I always remember Laura Esquivel’s novel “Like Water for Chocolate” and how whatever emotion the protagonist, Tita, was feeling while she cooked somehow made it into the meal she served. I’m careful to think kind, loving thoughts when I cook, just in case I’m imparting emotions along with my enchiladas and carrot cakes.

When you get to cook with people, creating a meal all together, opportunities for intimate dialogue abound. I grew up cooking with my mother and her partner, my grandmother and my sister, both in the kitchen and around campfires. We talked constantly during these hours, and since my family comes from show-business stock, we did plenty of dancing and singing and joke-telling, as well. Now, we tell stories about memorable holiday meals–the time Mom and Annie dropped the cooked Thanksgiving turkey on the kitchen floor, the first time the man who would become my husband dropped a beautiful unbaked pie on the floor–and just howl with laughter. One of my great pleasures in life is to visit my mothers in Southern California and help them cook a big meal. It’s very easy to recall the emotions inherent in cooking together when I need to write a scene involving food and/or cooking.

5. Conversation is vital when developing relationships. It is what makes dialogue such a key element in fiction. When writing memoir it is very rare that a writer has transcripts or recordings of actual conversations. What tips do you have for writers writing memoir dialogue?

This will strike some writers as shameless, but I make the point in the workshops I teach on memoir writing that we do not go through our lives carrying around a digital recorder and video camera, and so we sometimes need to create dialogue. If you can’t recall what your great-grandmother said word-for-word when you were six years old, does that mean you shouldn’t give her a voice in memoir? I believe there’s an understanding between the memoirist and most readers that dialogue has been created out of memories which stay true to the character. For Gringa, I relied on journals I’d kept since age 9, as well as photographs, conversations with my mother and sister, and in one case, a recording I’d actually made of my grandmother.

There are other ways to approach dialogue as a memoirist, of course. The writer might craft something speculative, such as “Although I can’t recall her actual words, my great-grandmother might have said, ‘Why, yes, honey, I had a Latino boyfriend in the circus.’” (That’s true of my great-grandmother, by the way, but I find such speculative sentences awkward, with the effect of pulling people out of a narrative story.

I’m interested in how David Sedaris refers to his work as “stories” rather than “memoir.” I think he saves himself a hell of a lot of trouble in making this distinction. To close on this controversial subject, I think it’s all right to recreate dialogue if you stay absolutely true to your characters and their situations, but I don’t admire those memoirists who make up entire pasts for themselves for the sake of sensationalism.

6. You teach a wonderful memoir writing course with U.C. Berkeley’s online extension program that is open to the public. Is there anything you learned while writing “Gringa” that you share with your students?

I share my views on dialogue, and I urge my students to experiment with a blend of narration and dialogue, plus vivid sensory description and subtle characterization. I encourage them to play with the form of memoir; one student eventually turned his memoir about being a boxer-turned-tap-dancer into a one-man show in San Francisco. Another student wrote her final memoir in stream-of-consciousness narration similar to Dorothy Parker’s short story “The Telephone Call.” I thoroughly enjoyed writing Gringa, even when the process felt painful, and I teach my memoir students to approach their memoir with the same levels of honesty, commitment to emotion, and humor.

7. One of the aspects of our upbringing which shapes the adults we become are our family. Family is also a defining factor in your memoir. What do you think makes family moments memorable for readers?

If they’re written well, family moments in memoir trigger the reader’s own notable family interactions. I hope readers of Gringa will relate to some of the absurd, whimsical family moments with my mother that made our situation bearable (I’m thinking of dressing up in Halloween costumes and driving in her VW bus to Sambo’s for nighttime pancakes). I know, too, that some people who read the accounts of my father’s volatile outbursts will recall similar instances in their childhood. I’ve received lots of fan mail which either commiserates with my position as his daughter, or celebrates the humor that provided salvation during the four days a month I got to spend with my mother.

8. Finally, you have a family of your own now, juggling the roles of mother and writer as many of WRA’s readers do, what do you think is the biggest benefit, and what the greatest pitfall, of being a mother-writer?

Before my husband and I adopted our young daughter, my writer-friend Jamie Passaro told me that becoming a mother would make me much more efficient as a writer. I didn’t believe her at the time, but now–a year and a half into being a mother–I see that she’s right. I carve out hours between caring for my daughter to write. Gone are those daylong stretches of free time during which I could just wander in and out of a chapter or essay at will, going for a long run in between, and maybe meeting a friend for lunch. Now, I have to write down and dirty during naps and preschool. Honestly, I don’t mind this at all; I think it’s made me a better writer.

The pitfall, most definitely, is having to be away from my daughter and husband while I’m on book tour or teaching workshops. I’ve done an awful lot of traveling since Gringa came out in October, and I’m scheduled to do much more in the form of writing conferences and classes. I adore teaching, and while I’m in the midst of interacting with students, I’m fine–but I hate telling my family goodbye before even an overnight trip. I guess I need to bring my laptop and Skype with them!

Thank you for sharing so much with me today, Melissa. It sounds like you live a full and busy life. I’m in awe of all you’re doing for yourself, your family, and the greater community. I’d like to take this opportunity to open the floor up for others if they have any questions.

When Melissa Hart’s mother left her father to live with another woman in the 1970s, the custody decision was no surprise for the times—lesbians would not be allowed to raise three young children. Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood is Hart’s account of her life after her forced separation from her mother and through her formative years into college.

The disparity between every-other-weekend days spent with her mother in a small home in a Southern California Latino neighborhood and the rest of her life spent in her father and stepmother’s middle-class home is stark. At first too young to understand anything but her own desire to spend more time with her mother, Hart grows into a teenager embarrassed by her mother’s living situation.

She questions her own sexuality, and she struggles to find a cultural identity in school. Dark-skinned students seem to have the most interesting lives, and Hart’s white skin is often the fodder for comments and jokes. She yearns for the ethnic food her classmates bring for lunch and for the cultural background that goes with it.

Each chapter of Gringa almost stands on its own as a snapshot of a different experience or a different time in Hart’s childhood. Taken together, the chapters form a fascinating account that shows not only Hart’s personal family experience, but the times she grew up in as well. As a child of the 70s myself, I recognized references to popular television shows and music, and I found it interesting to compare what was happening in my life at the same time.

Whimsical recipes close out each chapter. The recipes not only relate to food featured in the narrative, but also to the emotions that went along with the events of the food. For instance, for a chapter titled, “Ethiopia,” in which one of Hart’s classmates tells Ethiopian jokes (remember those?), the recipe is for White Girl Cookies. During the chapter Hart tells how bringing white cookies to an event ended up as part of a joke about her white skin. Her preparations for the event and her emotions about once again having her skin tone stand out are as much a part of the recipe as the ingredients. It’s an interesting technique that livens up both the narrative and the recipes.

At times Gringa is funny, contemplative and sad, although it doesn’t rely on emotion to carry the story along. Hart is not afraid to highlight her own flaws, her own anger and confusion, and her own role in some of the events that frustrate her as she grows. As I read it, I felt that Hart could have been any girl who sat next to me in school, quietly concealing a turbulent home life while appearing to be sure of who she was.

Although part of me longed for more details about Hart’s life with her father, her stepmother and her mother, I also recognized that having that detail would not have helped me to understand Hart’s experience. All in all, I feel I got just enough of what she was feeling to help me see the root of her choices. Recently I heard Hart give a speech in which she advised that memoirist write about various pieces of their lives and weave those pieces together to form a complete narrative. Gringa is a testament that her advice is sound.

Find out more about, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood and Melissa Hart.

Stay tuned this month for a guest post from, talented memoirist Melissa Hart, author of “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood”. And on Saturday, our own Rebecca Laffar-Smith interviews Melissa about the value of relationships in writing and how family played a significant role in her memoir. Subscribe right now so you won’t miss out.



Is it a novel or a book of writing tips?

It’s both actually, if you want it to be.  On her website, the author says it came out of “discussions I had with my mother”.  So it is about a writer and her mother, but also about a creative writing class.  Since Breen herself has taught such a class, parts of it are autobiographical, although she declares there is a lot of fiction woven in.

“Susan Breen has written a beautiful and inspiring story with a few surprises thrown in for good measure. Read it! There are so many layers to this book, you’ll find something that touches you or inspires you.” ~ Mary Evelyn Lewis at Virtual Wordsmith

The story is structured around the nine weekly classes and what happens in between them.  The sections on the classes are numbered sequentially, but they are interspersed with numbered chapters, so Chapter One comes after First Class, and is followed by Second Class.  Another element enters the structure part way through, but it would spoil the story to tell you about that in this review.

The writing tips fall out of the description of the classes.  In the first class, the teacher tells her students they will find it easier to start writing if they pick subjects that are important to them.  I love the way she expresses it: “Write about the thing that sets up a commotion in your mind, and you will find that the words come flowing.”  That’s one of the great things about this book.  Many aspects of writing may be familiar, but the language used to explain them is unique and wonderful.

Each class ends with an assignment that the students have to complete before the next, and the assignment follows the book section that describes the class.  For aspiring writers or blocked writers, these assignments alone could be helpful as prompts to get them going.

“This is a delightful first novel written with genuine wit and personality.” ~ Dennis Lythgoe at Deseret News

The first sections also include a brilliant demonstration of how to show your readers what your characters are like.  The main characters in this novel are the teacher and the students of the writing class, plus the teacher’s mother and her carers.

In Chapter One, after the class the teacher visits the nursing home where her mother wants to hear all about it.  The story of their relationship forms a backdrop to the classes, or it could be the other way around, depending on your point of view.  There is also a little love interest, so this book could appeal to quite a wide readership.

But writers, or aspiring writers, will certainly take away lots of writing tips from the class sections.  The section called Second Class discusses characters and what to do with them once the initial ideas for them have germinated – how to make them come alive on the page.  Third class concentrates on plot, the narrative arc, the inciting incident and the climactic scene.  (If you want to know what all that is about, you need to read this book.)

The fourth, fifth and sixth classes cover points of view, description and descriptive language, and dialogue.  In the sections on the final three classes you can learn, or revise, pacing, theme and voice – not active and passive, but the author’s voice that makes each one different from every other.

After reading this book, we should have no trouble writing our own novels.

And interspersed with all these tips and guidance are some hilarious goings-on, plus a very touching story about a mother/daughter relationship developing into a greater understanding and affection, through the medium of language and learning to write.

“Susan Breen teaches fiction classes for Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan. Her stories have been published by a number of literary magazines, among them American Literary Review and North Dakota Quarterly. She lives in Irvington, NY with her husband, children, two dogs and a cat. In her free time, which she has none of, she likes to read.” ~ From SusanjBreen.com

“A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it.” — Danielle Steele

So, you want to be a reviewer. You see bloggers and writers reviewing your favorite books, products you’re drooling over, and expensive stuff you only dream of holding in your hands. But you don’t know where to begin. You can’t figure out how to attract the attention of the sponsoring companies, right?

I’ve been in your shoes. I used to dream of receiving products in the mail like the bloggers I read all over the Web. I used to fantasize about reviewing food, books, and other products on my blog. I had no idea how those bloggers attracted the attention of companies. I couldn’t imagine myself being able to achieve my dream of being a reviewer.

Honestly, I finally got tired of waiting around and reading reviews – I was itching to write them myself!

Packages started arriving so fast, I couldn’t even review ‘em quickly enough.

What did I do, you ask?

Tips to Begin Reviewing

1. Decide what it is you want to review: books, food, health products, office products, a variety of products.
2. Once you’ve honed in on what it is that you want to review, consider where you’re going to write about it: your own blog, magazines, newspapers.
3. If you have a blog already, this is a great place to start. Of course, if you’re already working for a magazine or newspaper office, see if you can be their go-to reviewer.
4. If you don’t have a blog, start one. Keep in mind the type of products (or books) you want to review and name your blog and URL accordingly. Also choose a theme that is either neutral, or reflects your interests. For example, my raw food health blog has a fruit and veggie theme.
5. Start blogging about products/books you already own, that are similar to what you want to review. If the product is in nice condition, take a photo of it to upload in your review post. If it’s showing wear and tear, simply find one online somewhere (be sure to read the copyright agreement) and then write your post based on what you like (and dislike) about it. Go ahead and name the company or brand and give credit where credit is due.

Of course, we’d all love to start out as a reviewer for The New York Times but since that normally doesn’t happen, we need to begin somewhere. I hope my tips help you do just that.

Stay tuned for tips on how to approach potential sponsors…

Did you enjoy this article? Feel free to visit the other articles Michele has written for Writer’s Round-About–or contact her to write for you.

Are you a reviewer? Did you start out blogging? Do you write reviews for newspapers or magazines? If so, do you have any tips to share with us? Don’t be shy, share your thoughts!

Photo Credit: xaila

Reference: Think Exist

Moving doesn’t always happen smoothly. Maintaining your writing during one of the most stressful times of your life is challenging. Ideas for articles come in many forms, this one is no different. Fortunately, the idea wasn’t lost because I took the opportunity to jot down a few thoughts before they left indefinitely.

Some of the most stressful times in a person’s life are moving, death, births, divorces, and weddings. All of those events are life altering. It is possible to write during those periods, even if the writing doesn’t produce an article at that exact moment. Recording your ideas becomes a necessary step to include with any major change in your life.

While undergoing any life changing time in your life, keep a notebook and pen with you at all times. The notebook doesn’t have to be fancy or large. A simple flip pad will do – and can fit in the back pocket of your jeans. Along side that notebook, keep a pen or pencil handy to scribble away ideas, thoughts, emotions or bits of conversation. After the words are scribbled, put the notebook away until you need it again.

When life has settled down and routine becomes familiar, you can pull out that same notebook and refer back to the pages. The mind is incredible, once you place words onto the page, you naturally recall the moment and everything associated to it. You will hear voices of dialogue, expressions on faces, emotions within, and, perhaps most importantly, the words played in your mind.

Ah, yes, those words. They are the ones that create the characters of a novel, a poem about the beautiful sky, and the article you’ve promised to write for an editor on the other end of a paycheck. With just a few simple words on a piece of paper, you will be capable of recalling all the information you need to complete that looming assignment or resume the novel that had you stuck.

It is a simple exercise that takes a bit of practice to master. Nurture your Muse by writing down all the words she supplies you. When it comes time to work through a challenging time in your life, your Muse will be kind to you. Chronicle your thoughts and ideas and begin learning how to recall the information she provided when the idea originally popped.

I’ll never go without my notebook and pen. You could say that they saved my tail during my most recent move. How has your notebook and pen saved you? Do you prefer a certain style of notebook or type of pen? What do you love most about your favorite notebook and pen?

After reading about Sue Silverman and her book, “Fearless Confessions – A Writer’s Guide to Memoir” on Writer’s Roundabout I was keen to get a copy. It wasn’t long afterwards that a copy was sent to me after winning a contest on WRA.

Once started, I couldn’t put the book down; I was learning so much from it. I’m a budding writer, unpublished. This book is going to help my first book change from ordinary to wow.

Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s a tough business; the ‘wow’ above is for me personally, I want to feel that ‘wow factor’ for myself.

My father wrote his memoirs, it was directed at his friends and family who knew him well. He wrote the way many would “this is my life and how it happened.” I didn’t want that but hadn’t the first idea how to turn it into something with more punch. Sue Silverman’s book did just that!

I learned so much while reading this book, I believe the most important lesson is where to start, how to create what Sue calls the it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night effect and catch the reader’s attention immediately.

I also liked how she reminds us to reveal our scenes rather than state them; using the senses to hold the reader in that moment with you so they can almost taste, smell, see, feel, and hear everything going on.

Losing unnecessary words and tightening up sentences is extremely important, especially for me as I can float away a little. Another useful lessons was the vital use of metaphors to engage the reader, to bring them on your ‘ride’.

Overall, I really loved the book and Sue’s style of writing. This book isn’t a ‘how-to’, it’s a guide with important information for budding writers like myself or those who need a refresher.

Thanks to this book, my book won’t be a “this is my life and this is how it happened” styled memoir, instead it will invite readers to “ride this roller coaster with me” and I thank Sue Silverman’s Fearless Confessions for introducing me to the new direction.

When Angela and Jodi first approached me to host Sue Silverman on her book tour I saw the word, “Memoir” and thought, “I don’t write Memoir and I don’t ever plan to.” But, Sue is a writer and “Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir” is not a book about memoir, it’s a book about writing.

Sue is incredible. After our initial contact she got a copy of her book into the post for me and it arrived within days. That was over two months ago, and while at the time I promised to move “Fearless Confessions” to the top of my reading list, I put it off, and off. Some deep, secret reserve held me back from opening the covers. Fear and perhaps an inner knowing kept the book at arms length. I would glance at the cover, feeling guilty because I knew that I would be reviewing the book this month and I really needed to have read it to do that.

Fear comes at us in all areas of writing, be it memoir or fiction, because, ultimately, with each word we write we tell the story of ourselves. I’ve struggled with my current novel because I know that there are elements of myself in each of my characters and I don’t know them. I don’t know myself enough to know these characters. Knowing that in finishing this novel I will have to truly learn who I am creates gargantuan writer’s blocks built of fear.

Perhaps, that is why “Fearless Confessions” found its way to me. I opened the pages and began to read and I could see myself in Sue’s words. I knew, from the first page, that this book would force me to look at my own situation, and, if I could muster Sue’s courage, it would force me to explore who I am. In turn, perhaps it would allow me to finish my novel.

Toward the end of each chapter, Sue William Silverman asks us to participate. It is not enough to be actively engaged in her voice and the heart she shares on her pages. Sue pushes her readers to take action, to begin now, to grasp courage and move forward. In book form it is tempting to skip over these writing exercises. It takes courage to commit to the exercises just as it takes courage to begin reading. But in claiming that courage with each exercise, it becomes easier to do the next.

Although there is a definite slant toward memoir writing through the book, “Fearless Confessions” is about all writing, particularly fiction writing. The techniques Sue shares are cornerstones in all excellent writing. Learning these skills and developing the craft of storytelling will improve your writing in every aspect of your life.

When we are first learning to read and write we are taught to distinguish facts, “An apple is red.”. As we grow older we’re told to expand on this, “An apple is red and round.”. As we discover writing as an art we learn that there is far more to every aspect of our lives then the simple facts. “Red” and “round” are no longer descriptive enough to truly convey what an apple is.

Sue Silverman’s “Fearless Confessions” asks us to look deeper. To see with adult eyes the complexity of life and express that complexity, in full, rich, evocative color, on the page. She asks us to discover ourselves in our writing and in turn, discover our writing within ourselves.

If you’ve ever wondered how to develop your writer’s voice, how to put emotion on the page, how to tell a story that readers live and won’t want to put aside, then you need to discover your own “Fearless Confessions“.

Now, it’s time to return to my own story.

Please, don’t forget that Sue will be visiting Writer’s Round-About on the 21st of August and you still have a few days to ask your questions and enter the draw to receive your very own copy of “Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir“.

How much do you really know about language usage? Are you sure you use “they’re“, “there“, and “their” correctly? When is it appropriate to use “whom“, “whome“, or just “who“? Confused about whether to “lay” or “lie“? Grammar Girl has the answers and she gives them in a way that makes it simple to understand.

I can’t think of any book that covers so many language quirks within its pages. To be honest, I found it a little draining to read. I read Grammar Girl’s book, several pages an hour, one tip after another without pause, but it is a book better suited to reflective browsing. In the same way that reading a dictionary will do wonders for your vocabulary but can be exhausting if attempted in a single sitting, Grammar Girls’ Quick and Dirty Tips for Betting Writing will do wonders for your writing but can be overwhelming if rushed. It is the kind of book one needs to savor, allowing each tip to simmer in your mind before sampling the next.

Having failed ninth grade English, and dropped out of school soon after, I never learned the ‘rules’ in a formal setting. I am amazed at what my nine-year-old daughter brings home from school about phonics and usage. She is learning things in grade four that I had never learned before; she teaches me! Twelve years removed from school I’m beginning to understand the difference between nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. I’m still working on understanding objects, subjects, and participles. I write instinctively, having read extensively, but am beginning to learn WHY a sentence works one way better than another and WHY this word differs depending on tense.

Feeling a little out of my element with grammatical context I found every page was a learning experience. There was so much to absorb in this plethora of information and insight that I had never truly comprehended before. Every tip offers an opportunity to learn about language from regional distinctions to popular adaptations. Not only does Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, share simple tricks to help us remember ‘the rules’, she also explains the grammatical reason, the ‘proof’, that they are, in fact, the grammatically correct.

I found Grammar Girl’s book intense. I am learning so much! I LOVE IT!

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing is a book I know will sit upon my desk for years to come. It is not the kind I might read once then allow to gather dust on the shelf of the formerly loved. Despite it’s cheery cover and warm voice this is definitely a writers reference, and it includes a detailed index to make it even more effective as a reference guide.

If you’re looking for an addition to your desk, particularly a comprehensive guide to modern word usage and grammar, then this is the book you need. I want to give a big shout out, “THANK YOU!” to Michele Tune. I had never heard of Grammar Girl, or her book before Michele shared both on her blog and had I not won my copy of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing it might still be sitting on my Amazon wish list! Thank you, Michele.

Do you have a particular usage stumbling block? Want to know if Mignon Fogarty covers it in Quick and Dirty Tips? Drop a comment below and I’ll look it up for you!

Writing compelling copy that engages readers and entices them to take action is a powerful skill, particularly when writing for the web. All writing, from landing pages, sales copy, press releases, and marketing documentation, to something as simple as a blog post or email requires an element of persuasive writing.

Recently, a new client hired me to write landing pages for affiliate products. It is a fantastic job, giving me everything I love about this business; in particular, a new challenge that pushes my boundaries and forces me to expand my writing repertoire. To do the job well I’ve had to spend time researching how to write copy that compels visitors to buy.

Lindsay Camp’s book, “Can I Change Your Mind?” had been on my ‘to-be-read’ writing shelf for several months but with this new challenge it leaped out of the waiting pile. 240 pages later I came away with a deep sense of how writing can be used to transform people, to compel them to act, or change their opinions and beliefs.

First, we discover how persuasive writing is useful for everyone, not just professional writers. These days, we all use written language for all sorts of reasons from a simple note or email to blogs and fiction.

Persuasive writing plays a part in all writing because the key aspect of persuasive writing is to ‘change’ your reader. That change might just be to convince them that they want to keep reading (as in a novel) or it might be to have them part with their money or support a cause.

You need to know how to write persuasively. Not just so that you can write for clients, like the one who hires me to write affiliate landing pages, but so that every word you write connects with your readers.

Ultimately, the craft and art of persuasive writing comes down to a single rule. Lindsay covers this with “The three Rs of good persuasive writing”.

“Remember the Reader and the Result” ~ Linsday Camp

There are two things you must know about any writing project. You must know these things down to the elemental facts. You should have a these two elements honed to a fine tip pen before you begin writing.

Remember the Reader

Who are you trying to persuade? In freelancing we know this better as our reader, our target audience.

For example, YOU are my target reader, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now. My sharpened image of you is, “An adult who is interested in making a career from freelance writing, particularly in an online environment.” Now, there may be a few who read WRA who don’t fall into this ‘target’ but when I write, these people, ‘those interested in making a career from freelance writing, particularly in an online environment’ are the people I’m talking to. (If you’re not one of these people, PLEASE, leave a comment and let me know what brings you to WRA.)

Remember the Result

What do you want them to do? Simply keep reading? Leave a comment? Buy a product? Subscribe to your blog? Learn something new?

There are millions of results you might be aiming for when you sit down to write. One of the biggest mistakes we can make as a writers, is to begin writing with no concept of our intended result. Every form of writing evokes a result of some kind and not having a firm grasp of the result we want, the very reason we are writing, can often lead to unfocused, jumbled, and meandering writing.

For example, the result I want from this review is: ‘to give you enough information about “Can I Change Your Mind?” to decide for yourself if it will interest you’. Notice, that in this case, my result isn’t, ‘convince you to buy’. I don’t want you to buy the book if you don’t think you need it. I could set my result as, ‘convince reader they need this book’. But, I’m not brave enough to be so pushy and opinionated in a review.

Lindsay discusses this “Big Theory” far better than I have done in this blog post. Obviously, there is so much more to writing persuasively then I can cover in less than 800 words. In fact, “Can I Change Your Mind?” has a whole A to Z and several post scripts that go into more detail.

Readers Want Results Too

Ultimately, I have to ask myself if Lindsay Camp’s book had the result its target reader wanted. Did this book help me produce the persuasive copy I was hired to write? It sure did! And now I can turn these new skills and techniques toward all my future writing projects.

Now you need to ask yourself: Would your writing benefit from learning how to convince your reader to take action? If it would, find yourself a copy of Can I Change Your Mind?

What do you already know about persuasive writing? I’d love to know more so if you have any resources you recommend or information you’ve learned, please, share your thoughts!