Our Purpose: To promote excellence in romantic fiction and advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers within the genre of erotic romance through networking and advocacy, dissemination of information, professional education, publications, and other appropriate activities, and to provide continuing support for writers within the romance publishing industry.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

August Workshop

Punctuating Your Way to a Contract
By MM Pollard
August 1-28, 2013

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:

Are you guilty of apostrophe apathy? Has comma chaos taken over your writing? Does simply thinking about punctuating dialogue give you hives? If so, fear not. During this workshop, MM Pollard, editor with Black Velvet Seductions, will use her unique way of distilling information that will have you punctuating like a pro, and editors will notice. 

MM throws in a bit of humor to make the lessons much more fun than your jr. high English classes were. Cross her heart!

She will cover in this month-long workshop:
Lessons 1, 2: apostrophe use with singular and plural nouns; to show dual ownership; with numbers, dates, letters, and words mentioned as words;
Lessons 3-8: comma use in introductory words and phrases, in non-restrictive clauses and participial phrases; commas in compound and complex sentences; the dreaded comma splice; dash and parentheses use and how they differ from commas; the comma conventions;
Lessons 9, 10: punctuation in dialogue; comma, period, question mark, quotation marks, em-dash, and ellipises
Lesson 11: those other marks you have no clue how to use but might need to some day because you are a writer – hyphens, slashes, italics, quotation marks not in dialogue, colons.
Lesson 12: review of all punctuation marks covered in workshop
Yes, there will be homework with each lesson. MM was an English teacher for fifteen years, after all.
Reward for doing your homework: If you post all of your homework when due, she’ll proofread your 1,000-word submission for grammar, usage, and punctuation errors.


ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

As an English teacher and acquisitions editor for Black Velvet Seductions, MM Pollard has had the mission to find ungrammatical grammar, misused usage, and problematic punctuation in others’ writing. Mistakes seem to jump off the page for her – yes, she’s that good.
Her goal is to teach writers what they need to know about English grammar, usage, and punctuation so that they won’t need an editing service to correct their mistakes in these areas.
MM has presented or will present workshops for Muse Online Writers Conference, Savvy Authors, Writers Online Classes, Novelists at Work, and Orange County Chapter RWA, in addition to those in her virtual classroom.

WORKSHOP FEES:

$15 for Members
$20 for Non-Members


To pay via PayPal, please send payment to workshops@passionateink.org and make the subject line WORKSHOP: PUNCTUATING. Please be sure the information field includes the name and email address you will be using for the workshop.


To pay via check, please include WORKSHOP: PUNCTUATING in the memo area. Also, please include a note containing the name and email address you will be using for the workshop.


Mail checks to:

Robin L Rotham, Treasurer
P.O. Box 2412
Norfolk, NE 68702


***Permission to forward granted and encouraged.***