The Great Blog Off is something I made up as an excuse to write a blog post and then link to the Write On, Mamas! Indiegogo fundraising campaign. Our group is raising money to self-publish an anthology of our essays.

Here’s the link to our site.
Here’s the link to our campaign.

Thanks to Phoebe Bode and Andrea Torres for already supporting the cause!

Write On and Blog Off!

Here’s today’s post. Real thoughts by a real thoughtful person.

I just got this great writing tip from Constance Hale, the author of Sin and Syntax. Yes, Connie and I were having drinks and she said to me... OK—it didn’t go down like that. She was giving a talk for a Litquake event and I was moving chairs and overheard snippets.

I wish I had been able to hear the whole thing—that’s why I’d signed up to help with the event to begin with, but of course, helping out means that do what needs to be done and it just so happened that chairs needed to be moved.

But I did hear this about dynamic and static verbs. Static verbs are like equal sign. “Are” is a great static verb. As is “is.” Dynamic verbs are like little stories. “Choked.” That’s a dynamic verb. Ms. Hale said that when she’s editing a manuscript and she finds that it’s gotten boring, she looks at the verbs and almost almost always she finds that the author has slipped into using static verbs instead of dynamic ones.

In the two days that have passed since I received this gem of wisdom, I have noticed that when my fingers pause on the keys and I feel stuck, I can think of an action, something active, and suddenly the word I was going to use (“pick”) becomes “pluck.” Isn’t that cool? I bet that makes you think about writing and how much you’d like to support the people who write. I bet it makes you feel grateful that you have come across this post with so much wisdom embedded in it. I bet it makes you wish you had something to click on right about now so that you could go help someone continue write and give wisdom.

It just so happens that I have such a link to click on. Right here.