No Room for Snark

No Room for Snark Unless you are JA Konrath and your brand is snark, dont try to weave it into your writing persona. It will backfire. Someone will label you crass. Many will quit buying your work readers as well as editors. As an editor, pitches come to me in the guise of Sunday clothes and good manners, which is good. We should present our best self. However, the true person arises when I reject a pitch. Well, if this doesnt work, then what does? Just give me a subject and Ill write it if you dont like this. Why doesnt this work? Im most certain it fits your guidelines. Whatever. Screw you or Forget you or Fill-in-the-blank you. Do you discriminate against fill-in-the-blank? You are an elitist b-. While these writers may not have been memorable before, they become memorable after these remarks. It works the reverse as well. I listen at conferences, workshops, and events where names bigger than mine put on shows, shake hands, meet and greet the room and represent themselves to authors as well as each other. There are a few agents I would never pitch because Ive heard them make fun of their clients, the writers around them, even the speakers at the podium. Theres a big name in the publishing industry I heard making fun of someone on a panel for pretending to be an author. Many people forget that shy writers listen harder. You are a professional. Keep it professional. Yes, I know as well as anyone that some days you want to snap back and speak your mind. This newsletter is my outlet, and luckily I have a teeny bit of snark woven into my brand to give me room for release. But on someone elses blog? In an email? In front of people who buy my books, ask me to speak, or want to advertise with me? Never. Why slit my own throat? The publishing world is teeming with authors, writers and others climbing the ladder. Everyone is watching everyone else. What is she doing that works? What is he saying that you can take advantage of? How is she slipping up, and how is he making mistakes? Everyone is trying so hard. When the public is your client, you are on display. There are no soundproof rooms. So paint on that smile. Pull out your best behavior. Make anyone you meet happy to have met you. Why on earth would you ever be snarky to anyone in this business as you are fighting your way to publication?

Spain essays

Spain essays Canaria has central mountains and rich valleys. Las Palmas, the largest city of the Canary Islands, lies on Gran Canaria. Fuerteventura is flatter, drier, and less populated than Tenerife and Gran Canaria. Spain climate is sunny and hot, but it is good weather. The Meseta and other inland regions of Spain have dry, sunny weather throughout the year. These regions, which make up most of Spain, have hot summers and cold winters. The average temperature fo some areas rises above 80 F (27 C) in July, the hottest month. It may fall below 30 F (1 C) in January, the coldest month. Summer and winter droughts-broken only by occasional rainstorms-are common. In addition, steady winds often whip up the dry s l. Snow covers upper mountain slopes in the Meseta region during most of the winter. Mild, rainy winters alternate with hot, dry, sunny summers in the Coastal Plains and the Balearic Islands. The average January temperature rarely falls below 40 F (4 Â ° , and the average July temperature usually rises to almost 80 F (27 C). Short, heavy rainstorms are common in winter. But summer droughts last up to three months in some areas. The dry, sunny summers attract millions of vacationers to the Balearic Is nds and to Costa Brava, Costa Del Sol, and other famous resort areas along Spain's Mediterranean coast. The Canary Islands, also a popular vacation area, have mild to warm temperatures all year. Winds from the Atlantic Ocean bring mild, wet weather to e Northern Mountains in all seasons. The region has Spain's heaviest precipitation (rain, snow, and other forms of moisture). Rain falls much of the time throughout the year, usually in a steady drizzle. There are many cloudy, humid days, and fog and mi often roll in from the sea. This region's heaviest precipitation comes in winter, when the upper mountain ranges usually build up deep snow. In January, the average temperature in the regi...

Chemistry of Depression Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Chemistry of Depression - Essay Example Depression is mainly seen among females even though it is common among males also. Medical science was confused about this discrepancy in the occurrence of depression among males and females. However, recent studies have shown the reasons. â€Å"Scientists from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, showed that the brain's serotonin systems in males and females are different. They think they might have found one of the reasons why more women are affected with depression and chronic anxiety than me† (What Is Serotonin? What Does Serotonin Do?).Apart from Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, melatonin, insulin and prostaglandins are some other chemicals which affect mood and emotions. Dopamine is also an aromatic compound in organic chemistry. It is a kind of neurotransmitter which controls the movement of emotional responses. Dopamine deficiency can cause not only depression, but also other disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease etc. â€Å"Pharmacological trea tments support the idea that an overactive dopamine system may result in schizophrenia: Medications that block dopamine receptors, specifically D2 receptors, reduce schizophrenia symptoms. The brain regions known as the thalamus and the striatum are affected by dopaminergic activity† (Gromisch).The neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) and the dopaminergic neurones play an important role in schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease (PD). A decrease in DA in the substantia nigra of the brain has been implicated as the cause of PD.

William Wordsworth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

William Wordsworth - Essay Example The characterization of Tim O’Brien in the book, although fictitious, is important in generating a sense of relationship between the story and the reader in ways that explains a very profound side of war pertaining to truth. Through his various stories, O’Brien reflects on different perspectives of war and its associated notions of courage and bravery. In a story he tells, O’Brien feels like a coward because he supported or conformed to a stand he did not stood for. He attempted to try to escape the war by running away to Canada but inevitably decides to give in to social pressures of giving his service for the draft. A prominent emphasis is on the aspect of truth related to war. Occurrance does not entail truth and thus, everything that happens does not necessarily mean it is true. With this concept, O’Brien tries to stress on the fact that truth is independent of happenings but depends on feelings. As such, truth is far beyond the usual accepted truths that are created through social or cultural discourse. This also implies that something cannot be deemed untruthful is its existence is fictitious but rather such â€Å"story-truths† are central to capturing truth as they engender emotions. O’Brien used various stories to demonstrate how the truth of any story lies not in its accuracy of evidence but in its emotional connection with a receiver: listener or reader. Some stories that are narrated in the course of the book also include some that do not necessarily seem to be truthful in their conventional ways but they are true in the sense that they appeal to their audiences in ways that establish a connection. Tim O’Brien has intelligently employed his characterization in various different stories throughout the book so as to build an interest and a sense of reality of experiences. With his book, O’Brien has tried to create an

HRD Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

HRD - Essay Example Different strategies are widely used by organizations to help individuals realize their full potential for working so that it will foster the individuality and yet enhance the effectiveness within particular contexts. Swanson and Holton (p. 4) defined HRD as an HRM strategy that focuses on developing and unleashing knowledge, skill and expertise for the purpose of improving individual, team, work process and organizational system performance. According to this definition, HRD is an approach to create and foster high performance working in an organization. International Labour Organisation (p. 1) emphasized that HRD involves issues such as education, training, recruitment, staffing, performance and career development etc. All the different development programs can improve work-standard of the people in an organization, and as a result, the organization would be able to achieve high performance working, as pointed out in the definition of Swanson and Holton. What makes human capital the more powerful assets in the organization? It is the knowledge they have, the skill they are born with, the abilities expertise they earned and so on. Physical development of the human resources in an organization is not as significant as developing their knowledge, skill and expertise. Organizations need to improve these qualities of human capital as these can increase the productivity, work standard and thus to achieve high performance working as well. As Reid, Barrington and Brown (p. 12- 14) education, training, skill-development are some of the main elements in the HRD that are meant to improve the quality human resources. It is simply a strategic approach to effectively utilizing the

Close Reading Essay Example for Free

Close Reading Essay The answers to these questions emerge more from the doing than the talking. Briefly, close reading is a basic tool for understanding, taking pleasure in, and communicating one’s interpretation of a literary work. The skills employed in close reading lend themselves to all kinds of cultural interpretation and investigation. Close reading takes language as its subject because language can operate in different ways to convey meaning. Reading sensitively allows one to remain open to the many ways language works on the mind and heart. When an assignment calls for close reading, it’s best to start by choosing a brief but promising passage and checking your assumptions about its content at the door. Close reading often reveals the fissures between what the speaker or narrator says and how she or he says it. You know from your own experience that life involves constant, often unconscious sifting of these nuances. Here are some useful steps. 1. Choose a short passage that allows you to investigate the details closely. Here, for example, is the first paragraph of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Chapter 2. In addition to what has already been said of Catherine Morland’s personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks’ residence in Bath, it may be stated, for the reader’s more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be; that her heart was affectionate, her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind—her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person pleasing, and when in good looks, pretty—and her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is. This single sentence will give us plenty to work with. 2. Look at diction. What kinds of words does Austen use? Does she aim for lofty diction (used for special occasions) or common diction? Are the words long or short, Latinate or Anglo-Saxon, specialized (i.e. legalistic, medical, jargon, elite) or ordinary? Remember that the rules for diction are different at different times in history. 3. Next, look at sentence structure. Can you map the sentence (find the subject and verb, locate phrases and clauses)? Is it a simple, compound, or complex sentence? How does the structure of the sentence relate to its content? Does the author use active or passive verbs? What rhythms does the sentence structure create—long flowing ones, short choppy ones—and how do these relate to the meaning? 4. After you have looked at language (and there are other technical issues one might pay attention to), you can begin to analyze tone. Is the narrator being straightforward, factual, open? Or is she taking a less direct route toward her meaning? Does the voice carry any emotion? Or is it detached from its subject? Do you hear irony? Where? If so, what complications does the irony produce? 5. At this point, you may discover some difference between what the author appears to be doing (giving you a complete, unbiased picture of her character) and what she also accomplishes (raising doubts about whether these qualities are worth having, whether her character is a heroine after all, whether women have minds at all, therefore whether this narrator can be trusted at all, etc.). You can now begin to talk about the ways Austen’s language, which seems to invite our confidence, is also complicating its message by raising these doubts. 6. At this point, you can propose a generic hypothesis, something like, â€Å"In this passage, Austen raises doubts about Catherine Morland’s character through her use of deliberately banal diction, her strained sentence structure, and her ironic use of the terms of character description for heroines.† 7. You can proceed to fill in the outlines of this point by explaining what you mean, using details and quotations from the passage to support your point. 8. You still, however, need an argument and will need to go back to your opening to sharpen the thesis. The question is Why? Or to what effect? Your thesis might build on what you’ve already written by suggesting: Austen creates this irony early in the novel to alert the reader to the ways she’s subverting narrative conventions. Or: The effect of this description of Catherine is to undermine any notion of her powers as a heroine and to introduce Austen’s theme that true character emerges from weakness rather than strength. Or: Austen’s cavalier treatment of her heroine suggests that she has little respect for the typical education of young women. 9. Even with these more developed statements, you will need to explain and support your point further. But you will have achieved some very important things, namely: 1) you have chosen a specific piece of the text to work with, hence avoiding huge generalizations and abstractions that tend to turn a reader off; 2) you have moved from exposition (explaining what’s there—and really, shouldn’t a reader be able to figure these things out for him or herself?) to arguing a point, which will involve your reader in a more interactive and risky encounter; 3) you have carved out your own reading of the text rather than taking the more well-worn path; 4) you have identified something about Austen’s method that may well open up other areas of the text for study and debate. Bravo! 10. With your more refined thesis in place, you can go back and make sure your supporting argument explains the questions you’ve raised, follows through on your argument, and comes to a provocative conclusion. By the end, you may be able to expand from your initial passage to a larger point, but use your organization to keep the reader focused all the way. The most exciting thing for a reader, and the most useful for an essayist, is that close reading generally offers surprises. Your project is not so much about telling readers what they probably can see for themselves but what they might have missed that could delight them. It’s helpful, then, to go into the paper with an open mind and be ready to adjust your thesis to the evidence you find in the text. Have a blast!

Modernization Theory Essay -- Sociology Modernization Essays Papers

Modernization Theory Modernization is the term used for the transition from the traditional society of the past to modern society as it is found today in the West. Modernization theory refers to a variety of non-Marxist perspectives which have been put forward to explain the development or underdevelopment of countries. Modernization theory is a model of economic and social development that explains global inequality in terms of differing levels of technological development among societies. Modernization theory presents the idea that by introducing modern methods in "technology, agricultural production for trade, and industrialization dependent on a mobile labour force," the underdeveloped countries will experience a strengthening in their economies. Modernization theory offers an account of the common features of the process of development drawing on the analysis of Durkheim and Weber. Development implies the bridging of these gaps by an imitative process, occurring in stages, such that traditional sect ors and/or countries gradually assume the qualities of the 'modern' western countries. There are many proponents of Modernization Theory, such as, Walter Rostow, W.A. Lewis, Talcott Parsons, and Daniel Lerner, however the theory has it's roots in the ideas of Durkheim and Weber. The proponents of the modernization theory all felt that the rest of the world needed to look to the Western model of modernity and pattern their society like the West in order to progress. Modernization theory was developed as an alternative to the Marxist account of social development. Modernization Theory Divides the World into two kinds of societies: "modern" and "traditional." Traditional societies are backward looking : Dominated by religious a... ...hat: poor countries are separated from the world economy. It ignores the possibility that one country's prosperity may mean another countries poverty. Further, modernization theory ignores the roles that powerful state governments play in helping with wealth-creation as they support, regulate, and direct economic growth. Modernization theory is an unworkable guide for facilitating Caribbean growth because of the many weaknesses, which have been highlighted. The modernization theory although is without a doubt one of he most influential theory, is in fact an unworkable guide to Caribbean development as it simply describes the development process without showing how it might be achieved. The theory is in fact a unilinear, ethnocentric theory and it is with all it's shortcomings which one can conclude that it provides an unworkable guide to Caribbean development.