Remember how I was talking about the somewhat counter intuitive writing style empolyed by publicists pitching books? Well at the risk of being repetitive, what the hell?? A couple of weeks ago I asked if I could write a pitch letter for a book. Basically just to get a little practice and have a sort of writing sample for applying to other jobs. So I read this book (not so good) and wrote this letter and today I went over it with the publicist (whose name ultimately appears on it) so it can be sent out next week. Among the many silly changes like loading up the first sentence with participals and adding the phrase "ensued upon a freight train," was the completely erroneous decision to change "She expertly employs the first person..." to "Expertly, she employs the first person..." WHY????? In what way does that make anything clearer? Why would you take an adverb away from the verb it modifies? It's just senseless!
1 comment:
how bout:
"Expertly using the first person..."
except i hate adverbs.
I think most semi-pro writers just don't like to start sentences with pronouns. i feel like it's one of those english rules that doesn't have any real meaning except it attempts to make the language 'neater.'
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