#editortips for 07.24.12

@smoulderingsea: Avoid overusing "before" in complex sentences. "He did X, before doing Y as he did Z, then A, before doing B." Messy.  #editortips

@smoulderingsea: A pitch or query should inspire questions that make potential readers curious--not questions that make them skeptical. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: "Penultimate" isn't a more final, dramatic version of "ultimate." It's actually one degree less than ultimate--second to last. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: "Precede" isn't the same as "proceed." To precede means to come before. To proceed means to move forward with an action. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Speaking of preceding...a precedent is not the same as a president. A precedent is a thing that precedes. A president is Obama. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: The phrase is "it didn't faze me." A phase(n) is a state; to phase(v) is to change state. To faze is to disturb or disconcert. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Don't use "that" when referring to a person. "She was the one that..." "Who" refers to people. "She was the one who..." #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Your staggering daily wordcount doesn't matter if you don't later revise and polish those words into something worth reading. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: There are few gimmicks that work better to get you to write than just sitting down and actually doing it. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Great masterpieces were written in cuneiform on clay tablets. On parchment, by hand. We have computers, yet we make it so hard. #editortips

@smoulderingsea: Comma splices are the devil, semicolons or periods are often more appropriate. #thatwasacommasplice #seewhatIdidthere #editortips

@smoulderingsea: You are more than your rejection letters. Don't let them shape your perception of yourself as a writer. Leave them in the past. #editortips

About #editortips:
#editortips is a daily rash of tweets from an only partially crazy editor, chock full of random chocolatey morsels about writing, editing, and querying vaguely disguised as helpful pointers and/or really bad humor. I tweet as @smoulderingsea, and try to post with some consistency every weekday at 6PM CST. Weekends optional, depending on if I’m spending yet another Saturday night editing because my social life consists of Netflix and wondering if Eminem has milk chocolate under his hard candy coating.