[authorafrica] AKINYI PRINCESS OF K'ORINDA-YIMBO MONTHLY EZINE - JULY/AUGUST 2012
- From: "Cook Communication" <cookcomm@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <authorafrica@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 18:02:09 -0500
Our Environment is Royal and Divine. Treat it With Due Respect
The Apky E-Zine Volume 37 & 38 July/August 2012
http://www.akinyi-princess.de <http://www.akinyi-princess.de/>
If you like this E-Zine please recommend it to a friend
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Bound to Tradition
(ISBN 978-0-557-40453-7, 684 pages)
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cation_id=326
http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/bound-to-tradition/13039285 (here
you can download the book for €2.20)
The book is available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and at Barnes &
Noble and now as an eBook. Links below:
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The Works http://author-me.com/nonfiction/pink.html
*
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ocation_id=326
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You know what matters most to me? YOU. I’d not exist without you. So when I
say I need your feedback, suggestions, ideas and criticisms, I really mean
it. How can I improve your experience as a reader? Let me know. You can
write me an email, drop a line on my Facebook page, tweet about me or
comment on my articles. Cheers!
In this issue:
1. Mindset of the Issue
2. African Proverbs
3. From the Executive Editor
4. Did you know that… Haile Selassie was the 225th Emperor of Ethiopia
…..
5. Creative News & Stories
6. Features How Long Should Your MSS Be?
1. Mindset of the Issue
"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some
painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not
driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
~George Orwell
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2. African Proverb:
“A friend is someone in whose hands you can put the entire contents of your
heart, firm in the knowledge that he will be a gentle guardian of them”
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3. From the Executive Editor
Greetings Friends & Creators,
Welcome to you all, our new subscribers
Sorry that the July and August issues come not only late but also as ONE
Ezine. Our “double” website: www.AuthorMePro.eu and www.AuthorMePro.com
took me in custody.
The site is still going strong with authors sending in the author interviews
and guest bloggers posting on the new AuthorMeProfessionals Blogsite:
http://authormepro.com/conversation
<http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fauthormepro%2Ecom%2Fconve
rsation&urlhash=eSvy&_t=tracking_anet>
As I said last time, you can post on the Blogsite with links to your
products and invite your fans and followers to visit this site to read your
blog.
If you have a book, short story, article on anything and everything to do
with the above, contact me at Akinyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To submit a query for
an interview or as a guest blogger, please send query to
Submissions@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx telling us briefly about yourself and your
product(s).
Fan Pages
http://facebook.com/Professionaless62bloggerP and
www.facebook.com/KOrindaYimbo aretrotting along nicely.
Thanks to you, my fans.
Also do kindly visit, follow, like me or comment on these pages:
www.facebook.com/akinyi.yimbo
www.facebook.com/KOrindaYimbo
http://facebook.com/Professionaless62bloggerP
https://twitter.com/ @Apky11162
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horMePro.eu%20%0dhttp:/twitter.com/>
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horMePro.eu%20%0dhttp:/twitter.com/>
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horMePro.eu%20%0dhttp:/twitter.com/>
Enjoy the articles and:
Happy Reading, Creating and Writing!
Akinyi Princess of K’Orinda-Yimbo
Executive Editor
4. Did you know that…. another of the most known African kings was Emperor
Haile Selassie? Read on.
HAILE SELASSIE OF ETHIOPIA
To many in the West, especially in the United States, Haile Selassie was a
storied figure. He was the 225th Emperor of Ethiopia in a line that he
traced to Menelik I, who was credited with being the child of King Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba, identified in Ethiopia as Queen Makeda.
Once the Emperor was distributing gifts to men who served the Ethiopian
cause in World War II. After he had finished, one man approached him and
complained that he had been overlooked.
"You lie," Haile Selassie replied, calling the petitioner by name and citing
the exact place, day and hour that he had been rewarded for obtaining a
string of mules for the army.
The man flushed and trembled, for he had never suspected that the Emperor
would remember, since scores of others had been honored at the same time. He
started to inch away, but the Emperor summoned him back and tossed him a
bundle of banknotes anyway.
Unbending on protocol and punctilio, the Emperor, in his public appearances,
recalled the splendor and opulence of Suleiman the Magnificent or Louis XIV,
with the difference that he lived and worked in a modern atmosphere and
journeyed abroad in a commandeered Ethiopian Airlines plane. He once had
three palaces; but after he transformed the Gueneteleul Palace into the
Haile Selassie I University in 1960, he was reduced to a palace to live
in--the Jubilee--and one to work in--the Ghibi.
Guarded by Lions
Around the clock, he was guarded by lions and cheetahs, protected by
Imperial Bodyguards, trailed by his pet papillon dogs, flanked by a
multitude of chamberlains and flunkies and sustained by a tradition of
reverence for his person. He took seriously the doctrine of the divine right
of kings, and he never allowed his subjects to forget that he considered
himself the Elect of God. Indeed, he combined in his person the temporal
sovereignty of the state and the leadership of the Ethiopian Orthodox
church, the country's established church.
In moments of relaxation--and these were few, for he was an extraordinarily
hard- working monarch--Haile Selassie displayed considerable charm. He spoke
softly (in halting English if necessary), and he had a mind well furnished
with small talk derived from his daily scrutiny of the world press and from
viewing films and newsreels. He also absorbed information from his extensive
travels about the world. His talk, though light, was not likely to be gay or
mirth-providing or quotable. He referred to himself always with the imperial
"we."
Mansa Kankan Musa of Mali
5. Creative News & Stories
*
The Writer magazine 'will go on hiatus
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fclicks.aw
eber.com%2Fy%2Fct%2F%3Fl%3DGNYFS%26m%3DIcjN2br.Y0UaFL%26b%3DBxij2hCKFYGBcLXG
imCvFA&selection=tfol11a2c57255e73e00> ' after the October 2012 issue. The
magazine celebrated its 125th anniversary in January.
* Maeve Binchy
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fclicks.aw
eber.com%2Fy%2Fct%2F%3Fl%3DGNYFS%26m%3DIcjN2br.Y0UaFL%26b%3DeR18X4ccWh5pIVpX
xrOhtQ&selection=tfol11a2c57255e73e00> , writer and journalist, dies aged
72.
* Writer Jonah Lehrer has resigned from The New Yorker
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fclicks.aw
eber.com%2Fy%2Fct%2F%3Fl%3DGNYFS%26m%3DIcjN2br.Y0UaFL%26b%3DiAWlShE3wgf1.TfU
Eukqrg&selection=tfol11a2c57255e73e00> after getting caught making up Dylan
quotes for his book.
For daily news and updates follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/@Apky11162 <http://twitter.com/>
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6. Features
How Long Should It Be?
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be.html%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Demail&selection=tfol11a2c57
255e73e00>
By Arthur Plotnik @artplotnik
Here we go again with "size matters." Not long ago I was asked to help some
writing students answer the question: "How long should a piece be?" Talk
about generalizing---it's almost like asking "How good should a piece be?"
(Answer: Pretty damn good.) But the length question is a common one, and, as
I mused about it, my muse and I came up with some practical guidelines.
In answer to "how long?" the stock response is “as long as it needs to be.”
“Needs” covers a lot of ground, however, and depends on what you mean by
“it.” Often a publication and its editors set the length limitations.
Sometimes the form itself does, as with a sonnet (14 lines) or haiku (17
syllables). Time can be a factor, as with television scripts.
But if there are no set limits, writers still have to consider their purpose
and the interests of an audience. You don't want to run at the mouth or come
up short. What will make your communication hit home? Which elements have to
be there and which are going to be a distraction?
Limits are off only when writing something out of personal need; say, to get
a jumble of pressing thoughts into some kind of form. The result might be a
riff or a rant as long as the Alaskan Iditarod---and just as forbidding. Or
it might boil down to about 140 characters, luring you to spill your
inspissated guts on Twitter.
But what determines length when addressing a wider audience? Again, form is
key. In news writing you have to lay out the who, what, when, where, and
sometimes why, enough to tell a story; and, in opinion pieces, enough
argument to persuade---all within the attention span of the average reader.
In newspapers, that might mean 200-500 words for the average piece, and some
700-2,000 words in longer-form media, like magazines. (A double-spaced
manuscript page holds 250-300 words; a typical printed magazine page about
700-1,000; a page of an average published book about 350-500.)
Poetry is mainly a form of “distillation,” where meaning is boiled down to
the fewest telling words and images. Many literary journals call for poems
no longer than about 40 lines, which is what fills one of their typical
printed pages. Reflecting the tenor of the times, the editors suggest that
if something can’t be distilled into 40 lines of poetry, then it hasn’t been
worked on enough or the topic is unworkable. “Epic” poems, of course, are
long verse narratives that might be book-length. They are stone out of
fashion given the patience of today’s reader.
Short stories, too, are confined by journal guidelines. While quick-take
stories (or “flash fiction”) run up to 1,000 words, 2,500 is the average
maximum for short stories as the form has come to be developed. Experience
has shown that 2,000-3,000-words constitute a workable length for developing
characters and taking them through a meaningful episode.
With multiple characters to develop and more complex episodes, or a
time-span of many years, one enters the terrain of the “long story,” about
5,000-12,000 words, or up to 40 manuscript pages. Higher counts, say
15,000-30,000 words are usually classified as “novellas,” or small novels.
Like long stories they face a sheer cliff in getting published other than
through the occasional contest or in a collection of the author's otherwise
short stories. But here and there a bulked-up tale scales the heights.
Published novels tend to run from 80,000 words (e.g., romance novels) to
200,000 (e.g., historical sagas).
Common nonfiction lengths include the editorial essay or op-ed of about
300-700 words; 1,000-3,000-word topical essays, and 100,000-150,000
book-length treatments of a rich topic (e.g., a biography, history of a war,
or a year spent living in a tree with koalas).
Within the general lengths mentioned, a hundred aesthetic factors make for
variations. If a created character or suspenseful atmosphere is so
compelling that readers are likely to want more, greater length might be
justified. If the idea is to stimulate by understatement, then like the
“minimalists” you’ll be writing shorter pieces.
Often, an agent or even an editor will suggest cuts or expansions of a book
manuscript without any promise of publication. And, blast them, they are
usually right from a commercial publishing point of view. But not always;
you'll want some second opinions. Once the book is accepted, you're still
likely to face length changes from the editor---or a succession of editors
during the long publishing process. You can go along with them, argue, or
give back your advance. Your choice.
Crazily, the length might have to be changed at the last minute, owing to a
budget change or, with print books, to fit the number of "forms" on a press
(usually total book pages must be divisible by eight). You'll need to be a
good sport, even if it feels like they're reconfiguring your very molecules.
But back to first things, your manuscript. The famous advice of writer
Elmore Leonard still holds: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”
And in the age of Internet, when words from every imaginable source flood
every screen and every mobile device, people are skipping more than ever,
especially self-indulgent, off-message digressions of interest only to the
author and his/her unquestioning golden retriever.
And I hope I’ve left out those parts here.
Arthur Plotnik is a distinguished editor and author whose eight books
include The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts Into Words
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo
n.com%2FThe-Elements-Expression-Putting-Thoughts%2Fdp%2F1936740141%2Fref%3Dl
p_B000APZZW8_1_4%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1334099253%26sr%3D1-4&selection=tfol11a
2c57255e73e00> (2012, rev. and expanded, Viva Editions) and Better Than
Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo
n.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F1573446602%2Fref%3Ds9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i2%3Fpf_rd_m
%3DATVPDKIKX0DER%26pf_rd_s%3Dcenter-2%26pf_rd_r%3D0MFVN4T6JNXVVPXJSRW0%26pf_
rd_t%3D101%26pf_rd_p%3D470938631%26pf_rd_i%3D507846&selection=tfol11a2c57255
e73e00> (2011, Viva). His Spunk and Bite: A Writer's Guide to Bold,
Contemporary Style
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo
n.com%2FSpunk-Bite-Writers-Guide-Contemporary%2Fdp%2F0375722270%2Fref%3Dsr_1
_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26ie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1316009150%26sr%3D1-1&selection=tfol11a2c
57255e73e00> (Random House) has been a bestseller in its category. Website:
www.artplotnik.com
<https://3c.web.de/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.artpl
otnik.com%2F&selection=tfol11a2c57255e73e00> .
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