Hounding from the Depths of Perdition

Me too.

I'm baking bread tonight. So far, so good.

I'd like to watch a nice horror movie tonight, though. That sounds good.

Ooo, what kind of bread?

Whole Wheat with molasses. It came out nicely.

Now I'm trying get some ambition so I can look at a blank page and lose focus.

Mmmm... That sounds good.

I liked it. Right now I'm doing a lot of stress-baking. That gives me an excuse to make stuff for my neighbor who has helped me out so much. Tomorrow I'm making them a cheesecake. It's a no-bake thing I found that I've always wanted to try.

Some exciting news here!

Two of my stories will be published! One of them is a Lovecraftian type of short story horror, the other is a flash horror story. I'm really excited about this, things are starting to roll.

I learned a lot about the process of submission, editing and everything else that leads to publication. Both of the editors that accepted my story had the same thing to say, this is where I welcome any available advice you guys can give - It is obvious that English is not my first language, both of them said that my stories were good, powerful to be exact but they needed editing. Not editing in terms of changing the story in some drastic ways, only to rearrange words, replace some and fix several grammatical errors (a, the, an...)

Now I understand where my weakness comes from and what part of my writing needs work. My question here is how to work on it? For example how I arrange words in a sentence, I have been told that needs a bit of work. Any advice helps.

It is really exciting getting published for the first time and getting advice and tips from editors. Especially when they found time to help edit my stories in order to publish them.

Congrats!

Ok, how to learn English grammar when English is not your first language? I taught ESL for a few years and I can tell you it's not easy. English grammar is archaic. The only thing that helps is by learning the rules as you go. There are all kinds of websites out there. Here's one you might like. But some are more entertaining than others.

It is not that my grammar is horrific or anything like that, but when submitting to a bigger publisher who dose not have enough time for editing, they might reject a story based on several miss-placed a's, the's and so on. Also, I noticed these edited versions of my stories also had sentences that are mostly the same but with one descriptive change, for example - thunder struck is changed to thunder cracked. Things like that, nothing major but enough for me to get rejected with bigger publishers.

Just to say, because it might sound wrongly hahaha, I understand very well that not all rejections are based on things above, they also come from my story not being good enough or for their magazines, I'm not trying to deny such things.

Thanks for the info, you are helpful as always!

That's when you need a professional editor, I'm afraid.

I'm plotting a one-shot story in May.

I was commissioned by a friend to write a ghost story. I know exactly what to write for her.

TedTheewen said:

That's when you need a professional editor, I'm afraid.

Click to expand...

I'll try to go over my stories in greater detail, playing with different words and sentence constructions, we will see where that will lead. If not I'll try with few favors and if not that... Then I might give a thought to an editor. I'm really not into paying and editor for short/flash stories.

Good luck. I know there are some out there who are certainly worth it.

I'm fighting with Word again.

I use Open Office. It's open source, free to use, and powerful. I haven't really had too many issues with it.

I might do that as back-up.

I really like it.

I'm still waiting.

Waiting for what?

*joins waiting line*

What are we waiting for again?

I'm not sure but Noizchild is waiting for something totally awesome and amazing that's going to change all of our lives forever. It slices, it dices, and it makes amazing coffee with the push of a button.

...it makes coffee?

Well dagnabit, I waited in line five whole minutes for nothing. Seeing as how I gave up coffee (again). Six weeks and counting. *twitches*

There are much better things to get addicted to, trust me on this.

Spider Solitaire is not one of them. Trust me.