Polishing Your Manuscript with Good Grammar

For the next few blogs, I want to share some common grammar errors that make your writing not as professional as it could be. With each blog, I also plan to compare a few homonyms whose misuse also detracts from your writing.

My pet grammar peeve is the confusion of the objective and the nominative cases.

For example, The editor gave Joan and I some tips on improving our manuscript.
This is incorrect. Instead of "I," the writer should have used "me."
Tip: To check your grammar in this situation, remove the proper noun Joan and the conjunction and; then read the sentence without them.
The editor gave ME some tips on improving our manuscript.

Today's homonyms: ALLOWED (permitted) and ALOUD (spoken)
                                 ASCENT (the climb) and ASSENT (to agree)

FALSE BELIEFS DISPELLED

If this is your image of today's Native American woman, you will find that belief quickly dispelled in Deerskin Daughters: True Stories of Native American Women. The manuscript is under contract with Mountain Press and will be illustrated by my friend and colleague, Carolyn Flores. Unfortunately, publishing moves rather slowly these days, and the book is not scheduled for the market until sometime in 2013. I hope you will put it on your future reading list so that you can learn about Maria Tallchief, Wilma Mankiller, Nancy Ward, Mary Musgrove, Emily Pauline Johnson, Rosebud Yellow Robe, Susette La Flesche, Mountain Wolf Woman, and Annie Dodge Wauneka--all highly accomplished Native American women.

PRESENTATION PICTURE

Thanks to the DAR for sending me this picture of my presentation to them.

APPRECIATION FOR COUNTRY AND STATE

This past week I had the privilege of reviewing my book Petticoat Spies: Six Women Spies of the Civil War to members of the Bexar County chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. One of the things that especially impressed me about this group of ladies was their deep respect for our nation and for our state of Texas. You could tell, as they recited pledges to both flags, that they truly meant what what they were saying.

The DAR website explains the background and purpose of this group: 
The DAR, founded in 1890 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a
non-profit, non-political volunteer women's service organization dedicated
to promoting patriotism, preserving American history, and securing America's future through better education for children.

DAR members volunteer more than 60,000 hours annually to veteran patients,
award over $150,000 in scholarships and financial aid each year to students, and
support schools for the underprivileged with annual donations exceeding one
million dollars.

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?

I frequently have people ask me where I get the ideas for my nonfiction books. Sometimes I start out with a definite idea for research, but often it's more of a serendipitous trail. For example, my first published book, Petticoat Spies: Six Women Spies of the Civil War, started with research on nurses, a topic that has fascinated me since childhood when I read all the Sue Barton nurse stories. When I discovered Sarah Emma Edmonds, I learned that she disguised herself as a man during the Civil War in order to be a battlefield nurse. Later, using a variety of disguises she became a spy for the North and infiltrated the Confederate lines. She suddenly disappeared as a spy after contracting malaria. Knowing that her gender would be discovered in a hospital, she returned to civilian life. After hearing her story, I decided that spies were more exciting than nurses and proceeded to look for other female spies during that same war.



Bullfighting Lady

Recently, a critique partner, knowing that I enjoy research and writing biographies, suggested that I take a look at the life of Conchita Cintron, perhaps one of the best known female bullfighters of all time. And so I began. I discovered that she wrote her memoirs and that her mother wrote a book about her as well. Other than that, most of the other sources take their information from those two books.

The life story revealed in the books is especially fascinating because she accomplished her fame in just fourteen years, beginning when she was thirteen and ending when she was twenty-seven. She didn't start out, however, to be a matadora. Rather her interest, from the age of three, was horseback riding. However, she was not satisfied with just riding, and before long had talked her instructor into teaching her to become a rejoneadora (a bullfighter on horseback).

The rest, as they say, is history. I'm looking forward to making her life story one that will be enjoyed by young adults, who don't mind a little blood along the way!

Blog Changes

After a good workshop presented by SCBWI Regional Advisor Heather Powers, I have updated the look of my blog and am in the process of adding pages about each of my published works. I invite you to take a tour of my "new look" blog.

I currently have three books, two collective biographies (Fearless Females and Deerskin Daughters) and one biography (Martin De Leon) looking for homes in the publishing world. My new research concerns Conchita Cintron and her bullfighting career. I never thought I would write anything about bullfighting but find Conchita's life story fascinating--hope readers will also.