Carolyn Shares a Memoir-ish Account of Her Love of Words

This is a blogpost replay. It originally appeared in a print magazine and then the Insecure Writers Group’s (ISWG) blog. I’m publishing in in my own blog today because I ran across it when I was searching for ideas among my own files for a new booklet for my HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers from #ModernHistoryPress. It should be in print in early 2024! This story shows a little about how a love for words (in this case “The Vocabulary Habit” led to lots of freelance work for me…and lots of new friends in the publishing industry. It brings back memories for me. I hope it leads to some memories for your own writing past—maybe a submission to this blog! We’ll make our own little #SharingwithWriters blog series. Maybe we’ll have a contest for what to call it.  Something like "SharingwithWriters Book of Memories." I bet you can come up with a better name! 

 

 

 

I was in love with writing—and even grammar—long before I was in love with words. I became smitten with words about the same time I fell in love with my husband about sixty-three years ago. When we opened the door to our new one-bedroom apartment ($75. a month, I kid you not!), we found a tattered book that once belonged to a previous tenant. It was one of the early paperbacks (pocketbooks) called something like “A Word a Day” and we committed exactly that—one word a day—to memory before we went to sleep each night. We did it together. That list was spot-on. It produced a list of words that appear on later SAT exams and a Graduate Record Exam (GRE) or two.

 

My vocabulary-intensity rating went up and down after that, mostly down. Jobs, children, and a business interfered. But lately it crescendoed along with my interest in poetry. And then one day (it was a cloudy, uneventful day during my self-imposed isolation during the Days of Covid) an email from WordGenius appeared in my email box. I may have signed up for it. If I did, I don’t remember, and I was a bit annoyed. Spam, I thought. But I played their little games and got hooked again. Then the emails kept getting more frequent. New and even more fun features. It was a little like the internet in general, designed for addiction.

 

I was especially intrigued with the words that were directly related to writing. They reminded me of a column I once wrote for a print magazine in the early 2000s for…was it Writer’s Magazine? I remembered what the column was called so I did a search in my computer for “Affecting Words” and there they were. Every single column. Soon I was adding words I collected from my new email games that I might someday use for more “Affecting Words” columns, words I didn’t know then, some words I had never heard!

That list is getting longer, and I started thinking about a kind of memoir based on the love of words—especially words associated with writing—and what Carolyn See, a now-deceased writing friend called The Writing Life in her memoir. 

 

And then it turned out that another auspicious email from Elizabeth Seckman, the editor of an IWSG newsletter I had subscribed to after I met a delightful young woman at a #writersconference in North Carolina. (That’s a good lesson on keeping in touch with people we meet in whatever industry our chosen profession happens to be in!). It wasn’t too long before I suggested a regular “The Vocabulary Habit” column to the powers that be at IWSG and authors and fans had new series from me showing up in their mailboxes.  That allowed me to continue to indulge in this newly revived addiction of mine. And I made a new friend with their newsletter’s editor, Elizabeth Seckman. I might have worn her out and now I’m working with another editor, Juneta Keyes!

 

If you are wondering if an author—a wordsmith by trade—could possibly need a word game other than The New York Times’ crossword puzzle you might already be addicted to, be sure to subscribe to ISWG’s newsletter and watch for the new booklet I’ll be doing for my series of books for writers. The booklet will be a little different; it will be limited to only writing-related words and if you don’t know some of them, you might someday wish you did. It’s all part of the writing business.

Here are some of “my” original Affecting Words” as a little test to see if you think you might run across some you need. As you can see, most are associated with writing or publishing in some way. Some may even nourish your crossword skills! In any case, why not give it a try! And send me words you’d like to see there at HoJoNews @ AOL dot com with “The Vocabulary Habit” in the subject line. 

 

Demiurgic

Palimpsest
Semantic Narrowing

Metonymy 

Asyndeton

Antiphon

Synecdoche (one of my favorites) 

 

Test yourself. Or join WordGenius.com and play with me. (No I don’t get paid for inviting you!) Of course, all my IWSG words won’t have appeared there and may not have appeared there in the past. 

 

Have I written the first page of that book I mentioned? Yes. But it’s slow going. Do you want to take bets on whether I do? I believe I will if I live long enough. But here’s the thing. In the meantime, I have lots of meat and potatoes for just such a book and I have renewed and fostered an old love. And all of you who visit and subscribe to ISWG will be helping me with my trek. What more could one ask from reviving an old habit (or is it a hobby?) than that? 

 

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER:

 

 

 

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, editor, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books published by Modern History Press include the third editions of  both the multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor which won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and the coveted Irwin award in its earlier editions. Yes, she also loves #SharingwithWriters anywhere she can. Thank you, #IWSG, #WritersontheMove, #SPARREW and all the other bloggers who have not discouraged me from sharing my love of words.

 

PS: To be notified of the new book when it comes out, follow me on my Amazon Author Profile. Did you know Amazon offers such a thing free and when as you publish each new book Amazon notifies all those who have signed up to follow you. It’s a great way (and one of the only ways!) to even know who the multitude of readers who have searched for you or your books on Amazon are.  Did I say it’s FREE? Find mine at https://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile.

 

 

Nine Big Reasons to Learn to Love Amazon

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, 
author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugallySeries of books for writers

 

Remember the little greeting card girl who looked like Pipi Longstockings? She put her hands on her hips, stamped her little foot, glowered out of the card at her audience and said “Get Over It!” That’s a little like I feel when I hear an author complain about Amazon. Not that I don’t understand their complaints, even sometimes agree with them. What worries me is that sometimes these authors resort to boycotting Amazon which leads to their selling their books out of their garages…or worse. Though what you might have heard about Amazon may be true but we authors still need to just take the advice of Pipi’s look alike and “get over it.” For the good of our books. If you are one of those authors, here’s why Amazon is good for your book and by extension, good for your peace of mind, and, yes, good for your book sales: 

 

1.     Amazon sells far and away more books than any other online 
bookstore. And far and away more books than all traditional bookstores in the US combined.

2.     Amazon provides easily accessed associate sites from Japan to the UK that let you sell your books overseas—even if you haven’t sold foreign rights to your book.

3.     Amazon provides a search engine arguably second only to Google’s—especially if you view this statistic from the standpoint of an author or publisher. Your prospective reader can find you by typing your name, title, or important key words like your genre into the search window.

4.     Promotion packages like Amazon’s Vine Program are available for getting reviewed by their top reviewers. Some are free, some are costly, but they all work.

5.     Amazon offers an author profile. You can even feed your blog and Twitter stream to it and so your readers know more about you instantly. If you don’t have a profile page, go to AuthorCentral.com and explore how you can add all your books to it and a knock-out biography, too.

 

Tip: I include a shortened URL in my e-mail signature that takes my contacts directly to my Amazon author profile.

 

6.     Amazon offers all kinds of ways to promote your book on a dedicated buy page where your readers get to buy your book, often with one click. That page includes:

o    Add-on features that let you highlight your credentials by choosing the best categories and subcategories for Amazon’s logarithms to find and rate your sales numbers against other similar books. (To make the most of these, the author must promote bestselling ratings when they achieve them—perhaps on Twitter.)

o    A new feature is available on your Kindle buy page. It is called “Amazon Plus.” Either the author of a book or its publisher may add five enticing quotations from your book and illustrate each with an arresting image of your choice for entry. Find the A+ entries my publisher (Modern History Press) added for the Kindle version of The Frugal Editor or any of the other books in my HowToDoItFrugally series to get ideas for your own book(s). (It works equally well for books of fiction.)

o    There is a place on your buy page to install an author- or book- related video.

o    The “What other customers buy after they’ve reviewed this item…” feature may feel uncomfortably competitive, but it connects your book to other top sellers on Amazon as well as others’ books to yours.

 

7.    Amazon’s Kindle Select marketing program is free if you can see your way to committing your book as an Amazon exclusive for ninety days. After that period is up, you can publish at Smashwords or anywhere else you want to and you can make marketing hay with the Select program when your book is released.

8.    Amazon offers an annual contest for e-books in partnership with some of the biggest names in publishing.

9.    When you publish new editions, Amazon offers a widget (gadget) for your backlist book’s buy page that directs readers to your new editions. See how one leads you from the second edition of my The Frugal Editorto the new third edition at my buy page. (Find it a little below the title of the book at the top of the page.

 

Tip: You may enter some typical “back of the book” features on your buy page yourself. That includes the more about the author, your favorite review, and more. Do watch this important page for changes. Amazon adds features to it and also taketh away. (It’s also the place that lists your book sales ratings. 

 

Don’t Forget: When your book becomes a bestseller in the ratings (or highly rated in its genre!) that news can become highly convincing marketing material for your book. You’ll find a screen shot of one of the ratings Modern History Press recently made for me during the release of the third edition of The Frugal Editor at the top of this blog page.

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About the SharingwithWriters blogger: 

 

Cover image supplied by Amazon on their new Series Page

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a frequent contributor to this #WritersontheMove blog. Her The Frugal Editorwas just released in its third edition from Modern History Press. It is the second multi award-winning book in her multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. Find it on Amazon in paper, hard cover, or as an e-book at the new Amazon page especially for series . (That’s a new Amazon feature, too!) This new edition has been fully updated including a chapter on how backmatter can be extended to both help readers and jumpstart book sales.