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  • The Red Pen: Comma Chameleon

    The Red Pen: Comma Chameleon

    Perhaps no single keystroke has incited such violence of emotion as the Oxford comma. Also called the serial comma, it’s more or less grammatically optional in America—but don’t let our noncommittal adoption of the mark fool you. The Oxford comma has become something of a pop culture icon. It appears on t-shirts, drinking glasses, infant […]

    Merry Gordon

    May 6, 2019
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits
    comma, editing, grammar, oxford comma, self-editing, writer, writing
  • The Red Pen: Deep Thoughts Edition

    The Red Pen: Deep Thoughts Edition

    Inner speech, interior monologue, musings—a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and there are plenty of names to describe the process of getting inside your character’s head. But what do you do once you’re there?—and how can you bring your reader with you? Read on for thoughts on…well, thoughts. First, let’s lay […]

    Merry Gordon

    April 8, 2019
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits, Writing Tip
    Books, editing, fiction, inner monologue, interior monologue, thoughts, writing
  • Author Kelli Call on Stereotypes, Superheroes, and Sensory Processing Disorder

    Author Kelli Call on Stereotypes, Superheroes, and Sensory Processing Disorder

    Superman. Batman. Spiderman—oh, and don’t forget Clark, hero of It’s Not Easy Being a Superhero (Pink Umbrella Books, 2019). If author and mother of three Kelli Call has anything to say about it, you’ll put Clark in the pantheon of superheroes too. No, not Clark Kent. This Clark is a hero of a different sort: […]

    Pink Umbrella Books

    March 17, 2019
    Uncategorized
  • The Red Pen: Save Yourself from Seven Deadly Writing Sins

    The Red Pen: Save Yourself from Seven Deadly Writing Sins

    Okay, bear with me. Here’s a first draft: FIRST DRAFT: She was clearly dolefully miserable. “How . . . how . . . how could you?” she sputtered out in a voice that was icy with shock and rage. He sank down into the couch and rubbed his temple, framed by thick, salt and pepper […]

    Merry Gordon

    March 6, 2019
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits
    book, editing, rough draft, self-editing, writer, writing
  • The Red Pen: Meter Mishaps

    The Red Pen: Meter Mishaps

    Congrats! You passed Meter 101 in my last post and you’re ready to move into master class territory. Today we’ll look at two common metrical problems in drafting children’s books: forced emphasis and over-consistency (yes, there is such a thing). METER MISHAP #1: EMPHASIS I remember watching my then three-year-old daughter do a puzzle. The […]

    Merry Gordon

    February 6, 2019
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits
    Children’s Books, editing, meter, poetry, rhyme, syllables, writing
  • It’s Not Easy Being a Superhero Blog Tour

    Pink Umbrella Books is excited to announce the It’s Not Easy Being a Superhero blog tour, which will run March 18-28, 2019. About the Book: Unlike most superheroes, Clark’s superpowers aren’t a secret. And instead of just one, Clark has five superpowers he must learn to control: super hearing, super sight, super smell, super taste, and super […]

    Pink Umbrella Books

    January 3, 2019
    Uncategorized
  • The Red Pen: Meter Matters!

    The Red Pen: Meter Matters!

    Children’s books are deceptively easy. On the surface, the formula seems tried (or is it trite?) and true: a lovable character, a plot thinner than a fruit roll-up, a handful of sing-song nonsense words and a rhyming dictionary are all you need, right? If only! Let’s face it—if writing good kid lit really was that […]

    Merry Gordon

    December 31, 2018
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits
    Children’s Books, Children’s Literature, editing, foot, meter, picture books, poetry, Seuss, syllables, writing
  • The Red Pen: December is for editing.

    The Red Pen: December is for editing.

    Ready, set . . . edit. It’s December, and NaNoWriMo 2018 is history. Forgoing Netflix binges and holiday preparations alike, your retinas are seared by long nights of blinking cursors and you have emerged triumphant (if exhausted) 50,000 words later. A newbie novelist might be ready to slap a cover on that mess and CreateSpace […]

    Merry Gordon

    December 6, 2018
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits
    Books, copyediting, developmental editing, editing, editor, grammar, line editing, NaNoWriMo, writer, writing
  • The Red Pen: NaNoWriMo & Editing? Blasphemy! (Or not. Keep reading.)

    The Red Pen: NaNoWriMo & Editing? Blasphemy! (Or not. Keep reading.)

    I know what you’re thinking. This is NaNoWriMo! There’s no editing in NaNoWriMo! And you’re right. The whole point of it is to produce a 50,000 word manuscript in a month. That’s about 1,600 words a day, and nobody said they had to be great words. Or punctuated words. Or even grammatically correct words. That […]

    Merry Gordon

    November 5, 2018
    The Red Pen: Five-Minute Easy Edits
    book, edit, editing, NaNoWriMo, writer, writer’s block, writing
  • Little Women Legacy: Alcott, the Environment, and Real-Life Heroes

    Little Women Legacy: Alcott, the Environment, and Real-Life Heroes

    In this blog post series, we’ve featured contributing authors from our anthology, Alcott’s Imaginary Heroes: The Little Women Legacy. In this post, we’ll share some final thoughts from Julie Dunlap, ecologist, teacher and writer. Contributor Julie Dunlap reads Little Women in Old Ellicott City, Maryland. Little Women teems with uncomfortable truths. Hardworking families can fall into poverty; […]

    Pink Umbrella Books

    October 30, 2018
    Alcott’s Imaginary Heroes: The Little Women Legacy
    activism, anthology, Books, classics, contributors, ecology, environmentalism, Imaginary Heroes, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, writing
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