My guest this week, Constance Hale, wrote “probably the hippest grammar guide ever written,” Sin and Syntax – which has just been released in a new edition. Charles Harrington Elster, in the San Diego Union-Tribune, calls it “a plugged-in, cutting-edge alternative to the must prescriptions of Strunk and White … an open-minded, exuberant approach to style that is intelligent and refreshing.” Connie has worked on the staffs of the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, Wired, and Health magazines, and freelanced for The New York Times, Atlantic, Smithsonian, and the Los Angeles Times, to name just a few. I absolutely ADORED her series in The New York Times’ Opinionator. Her two other books, Wired Style and Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, are fabulous, too, as is her blog at sinandsyntax.com. If you’re near San Francisco, Connie is doing a workshop on Sept. 14 titled “Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose—40 bucks, four hours, free bagels, free books.” And her post below … sinfully inspiring. – Meg
Fifteen years ago, I published a little book on grammar and writing. The book got lost in the shuffle when the editor delayed the publication to June (when readers want beach books, not grammar tomes), my publisher was fired the week my book came out (he was the book’s main champion), and Broadway was combined with Doubleday (swamping my publicist). The book got a little attention, then lodged itself in the “midlist” category for years, complicating my efforts to sell other books to nervous publishers.
Some advised me to just move on. But I thought there was life left in Sin and Syntax. I wrote essays for The Writer. I published excerpts for insultingly low payment. I did workshops anywhere that would have me. I developed lesson plans for teachers, I designed a Web site, I built a Twitter following (well, sort of).
Slowly, steadily, the books started to sell more and more, helped when places like Michigan State put it on the syllabus. I tried to convince my publisher to let me do a new edition, updated, with those fun exercises. The publisher, who’d made his money back by then, said, “Why should I do a new edition, when this is making me money?” I persisted. Book sales climbed toward 90,000. I got a new agent, who put meaning in the word “power” when he talked the *new* publisher (my book has moved from Broadway to Crown to Three Rivers) into doing a new edition. I got no advance to speak of for the new edition, but this had been a labor of love for years, so what the heck? I did the new edition.
It is now out. Pubbed last week. – Connie
