When you get your manuscript back for the first time with all those scribbles in the margins, you can’t hold off your excitement – or fear – of finding out exactly what they say. It’s never easy to read a thorough critique of something you worked so hard on, but you know the notes are meant to help you do better. Now that you have your editor’s opinions, what do you do with them? The editing process itself is also quite intimidating. Here are some suggestions on how to use critique notes to edit your manuscript.

Don’t React Right Away

When you first get your editor’s letter and critique notes back, you’re eager to start revisions. Hold off, though, and wait a couple days before starting. Hopefully your editor provided a letter summarizing their critique. Read this, and then ponder it for a bit. Give your understanding of the critique time to develop, and let your ideas come to surface gradually. After you’ve let the comments sink in, get back to work with a clearer focus.
Read Everything First

Don’t just dive in and begin making edits page-by-page. Before you edit anything, read all of the comments and critique notes for the entire manuscript. You should be paying specific attention to anything that addresses content or consistency. Typos and grammatical errors are easily fixed. When it comes to content, you want to get the whole picture. The entirety of the editor’s notes will help you more than they will individually, and sometimes you may find they had a change of heart or developed a new opinion as your writing progressed.
Come Up with a Plan

The major changes, like plot and character development, should be tackled first, but it can be overwhelming to address everything at once. This is when a to-do list can really help you. Write out all the adjustments you want to make, and put them in order from most to least important. Start at the top and work your way down.
Keep Everything

Sometimes your manuscript will change drastically by the time you’re done making edits. Always keep a copy of your original, just in case you want to refer back to it. If you take out or change something, save the original elsewhere. If you decide later that the edit wasn’t necessary or still isn’t to your liking, you’ll be able to readily access what was there first.
Easy Does It

If your editor’s critique notes are particularly harsh, or there are just a lot of them, it’s easy to get carried away and begin making lots of major changes. Don’t do it. Over-editing is a big mistake. Edit too much, and you can get completely off track. Carefully consider your changes before you make them. If you change one thing, you don’t necessarily need to change everything else that’s related to it. Read the critique notes closely. Are they suggesting a one-time edit of a particular sentence or section, or are they suggesting a complete revision throughout the entire manuscript?

Alayne Valentine is an avid writer and English student who is an expert on editing manuscripts. She loves to write and covers anything from proofing advice to the use of grammar checkers.

Photo Credit: El Chupacabrito

Big in Japan

It’s so great to be asked to blog for Adrienne’s awesome site today. Thanks, Adrienne.

It’s super exciting to have a novel come out, I have to say. My fourth published book, BIG IN JAPAN, is now making its attack on the reading world. The plot is this: big fat Texan guy, Buck Cooper, is invisible in his lame life, until he goes to Japan and accidentally becomes the first blond sumo wrestler.

People have asked me where this idea came from. I’m a short mom of five with no athletic ability. “Write what you know” didn’t come into play for the sumo parts of this plot. However, I did have a great time during college living in Japan for a year and a half, and I drew from those days to help craft this novel. Adrienne asked me to tell Japan stories. I could go on all day!

I fell head over heels in love with Japan. Chiba—home of Narita Airport and the Chiba Marins baseball team and Tokyo Disneyland—was where I lived first. Several different people told me Tokyo Disneyland was built atop a landfill—I guess meaning land dredged up out of the Tokyo Bay. Unfortunately, I never got to go, but I did see the Tokyo Bay on a long bike ride one winter night. Across the bay we could see, through the blood-red haze, the dark outline of Mt. Fuji, Japan’s most famous peak. Pretty stark!

Later I moved to downtown Tokyo. There were exciting things like slam trains—where officers down in the subway wear white gloves and shove additional passengers into crammed train cars at rush hour. The Japanese know how to capitalize on tight spaces. A house adjacent to my apartment building was so narrow I could stretch out my arms (all five measly feet) and span it.

One fun thing was reading the oddly phrased English words on merchandise. One t-shirt I saw had a picture of a cartoon tortoise with the caption, “His mustache is so proud of him.” Brilliant. Another gem was a Hessian-style black helmet (the kind with the spike on top) dangling from the handlebar of a motorcycle parked outside a ramen shop. It was decorated with a skull and crossbones and the words, “Speak English or die.”

Food! Japan has tofu and sashimi (the real name for raw fish, in case anyone cares), but easily the most exotic thing I ate (under peer pressure) was a cricket. They sold them in the grocery stores in a Styrofoam plate with plastic wrap over them. Never would I have dreamed of buying one to eat myself, but I was at an English class one night and someone brought them, probably to pressure the gaijins (foreigners) into tasting them. I was game. And yeah, it was crunchy. The taste was all soy sauce and sugar, which was what my particular cricket was fried in. But I have to admit the prickly leg did kind of stick to the back of my tongue and made it hard to choke down.

Afterward, I asked why on earth that was considered food, and I learned a good lesson. After World War II, the economy of the country was devastated. Their food supply had all gone to the soldiers, I was told, and the rice paddies weren’t producing. There was widespread starvation. For many, the only way to survive was to forage in the mountains for crickets. The protein in the insects kept them alive.

Eating that cricket made me pretty grateful for the huge abundance I’d always known and the people who sacrificed so much to keep themselves and their culture and their country afloat despite great hardship.

My grandpa lived in Japan with his wife and 6 kids during the 1950s. He was really excited when I told him I was going to Tokyo. He helped me overcome my fears of living there—especially when he pulled out his slide projector and his gorgeous pictures of the millions of autumn leaves and the zillions of pink spring cherry blossoms flittering down from the trees. The cherry blossom represents the fleetingness of life, and I reflect that even though my time there felt long, it was fleeting. Here’s hoping someday I’ll get to go back and show my own family the resilient and beautiful islands of Japan. Maybe everyone should! (Or at least read BIG IN JAPAN to take a reader’s trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.)

Jennifer Griffith

Jennifer Griffith lives in Arizona with her husband and five kids. You can read more about her novel at BIG IN JAPAN. She also blogs. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Who are some of the most popular cartoon characters of all time? What are their defining features, and why do they deserve to be on the list? Making any kind of list involving cartoon characters is going to mean being selective, and leaving out some deserving characters. The list below is a sample of some of the more varied and iconic characters that have formed an important part of animation history, and can be viewed as influencing a number of other trends. From Disney icon Mickey Mouse to Bugs Bunny, and including Wile E. Coyote, Homer Simpson, and Tom & Jerry, these characters are known the world over, and are discussed in more detail below:

5 – Mickey Mouse

Disney’s mascot made his first appearance in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie, and has gone on to appear in over a hundred shorts, with notable appearances in 1940’s Fantasia. However, Mickey has been less a film star than a brand connecting different television shows, video games, comics, and merchandising ideas. Mickey and Minnie Mouse are the most prominent faces of Disney theme parks, and Mickey is among the most merchandised characters in Disney history.

4 – Wile E. Coyote

Wile E.Coyote, and his fruitless attempts to catch the Road Runner, has been the star of 48 cartoons since his first appearance in a 1948 Warner Brothers short. The character was created to be part of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, and was defined by his ongoing frustrations, and use of elaborate devices from the ACME Company. Wile E. has also been a part of numerous shorts, Internet specials, and part live action films involving the Looney Tunes, all speaking to his iconic status and put upon identity.

3 – Homer Simpson

After more than 20 years, Homer Simpson remains perhaps the most memorable face of The Simpsons, eclipsing the early popularity of Bart. Voiced by Dan Castellaneta, Homer is the American everyman, combining his work at Springfield Nuclear Power Planet with sweet, but often misguided efforts to deal with his family. Homer is one of the most fascinating cartoon characters, equal parts alcoholic, loving father, and drawn into everything from space flight to 3D representation. Over the years Homer has become an honourary citizen of Winnipeg, Canada, and the face of multiple commercials.

2 – Tom & Jerry

This cartoon cat and mouse were created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera while working at the MGM animation unit. 114 shorts were produced between 1940 and 1957, with the cat and mouse being revived for new cartoons and television series from 1960 under a new creative team that included Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones. The popularity and inventiveness of the duals between the cat and mouse led to a feature film in the 1990s, and a more recent revival of the characters for Tom and Jerry Tales on the Cartoon Network.

1 – Bugs Bunny

One of the most iconic animated characters, Bugs Bunny was created in 1938 by Leon Schlesinger as a grey hare with a trickster personality and a New Yorker accent. Originally part of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, appearing as a supporting character in Elmer’s Pet Rabbit and Wild Hare, Bugs graduated to his own shorts, which showcased his ‘eh…what’s up, doc?’ catchphrase. Bugs went on to become an iconic character in multiple films and specials, as well as the face of the Looney Tunes brand around the world.

Sebastian is currently working with Cartoon Network, the home to your favourite Cartoons. They are currently promoting their website which allows you to watch cartoons online. Perfect for the kids and the whole family.

Our name is usually one of the first things we tell people when we meet them. For most people this is not an issue, especially if you have a relatively common name such as Jane Taylor, Michael Brown or Sam Anderson. 100 years ago, there was a small pool of names from which most babies in the UK were named but nowadays you can call your baby practically anything. People who have less common names like Trixibelle, Araminta or Zowie may be less confident about introducing themselves and having to go through the same lengthy explanation about their name for the thousandth time. Changing your name is easy and quick, and thousands do it every year for a variety of reasons.

Glamour

In the heyday of Hollywood, it was standard practice to change actors names to make them sound more attractive and glamorous. Would Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland have been as successful if they had stuck to their birth names of Norma Jean Baker, Frederick Austerlitz or Frances Gumm? Although modern day movie stars are more likely to use their real names, there are still a few notable exceptions such as Tom Cruise, who was born as Thomas Mapother. Movie stars have to have names which trip off the tongue, are easy to spell and are memorable. Cruise fits these criteria much better than Mapother.

Linguistics

America is known as the world’s melting point, and there are names of many different nationalities found its major cities. Many well-known people have changed their names simply to make them more recognizable and easy to spell. The famous designer felt his Ralph Lauren Denim & Supply line would sell better under that name than under his birth surname of Lipschitz. For similar reasons, cosmetics industry entrepreneur Helena Rubenstein changed her first name from Chaja.

Weird and Wacky

Of course, some people feel forced into changing their names because their parents have lumbered them with very odd or wacky names. David Bowie’s son Zowie soon grew tired of people making fun of his rhyming name, and took the decision to change it to the far more normal Duncan. Another rockstar’s daughter with a wacky name is Memphis, daughter of U2’s Bono. Luckily, her middle name is Eve so she uses that rather than Memphis.

Process

In the UK, changing your name legally is simple and quick, and just involved filling in a few forms. You are legally entitled to call yourself whatever you like, and all you have to do is inform your bank, employer and so on of your new title. Birth certificates cannot be changed however, and you cannot change your name into something which is offensive. Brands and companies often do not take kindly to people using their protected trademarks, so there may be legal difficulties ahead for people wanting to call themselves Coca-Cola or Ralph Lauren Denim & Supply, for example. Changing names should never be done on a whim as the decision may be regretted after a matter of days.

Citations:

• Image courtesy of RockyandNelson

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