Doing a good job without the proper tools can be tough. But it's even harder to do a good job with tools used improperly or without care. A hammer can be invaluable for driving a nail but can also punch a whole in the wall and mash your finger. So learning to use your tools in a controlled manner is important. It's important for building a house. And it's important for building a story or article. Being careless with a tool or using it for the wrong job can seriously wreck your results - let's look at some commonly misused writing tools.

THESAURUS

I love the thesaurus. I don't use it very often but when I'm hunting for just the right word and it refuses to bubble up from my cheese brain, the thesaurus has saved me more than one. But a thesaurus is only as good as your understanding of the words it offers.

The thesaurus groups related words, words whose meanings are similar - but not exact. Words are unique items. "Run" and "Trot" are synonyms but they aren't strictly interchangeable. If you write "Jack ran up the hill" you have a totally different feel and nuance than if you say "Jack trotted up the hill." A trot is more leisurely, more fun, more light-hearted than a run. And of course, if you're choosing the gait for a horse, a trot and a run are very different indeed.

I often see reckless thesaurus use in manuscripts and so do editors. This happens when a writer knows that he/she doesn't want a tepid little verb like "went" or "moved" but then used the thesaurus and grabs a word without thought to what else it might be carrying.

Words carry more than definition, they get the extra baggage of attitude. For example, among movement words "ambled" has an entirely different attitude than "shuffled" and many times I've seen one of these used in entirely the wrong mood.

While the thesaurus has coaxed many writers into poor choices for words for movement, it's done far more harm when writers pick wildly in choosing words for speech tags. Think about it a moment. When you're describing how you told your husband about the fender bender this morning, we're you tempted to tell him you "decried," "queried," "equivocated," or "conjectured?" If not, why would you make your narration say those words?

Unexpected words that don't flow with the style of the rest of your narration draw attention away from the content of your story/article and onto the word. It's like wearing a beautiful outfit with a dirty rag tied around your wrist. The part that "doesn't fit" will draw the eye and distract from the image you're trying to convey. So don't choose words you wouldn't casually use - don't reach way beyond your real working vocabulary or you're have a sudden shift in voice that calls a halt to the reader's momentum and makes him wonder why this thing is there.

SPELL CHECK

Spell check is a great thing as it helps me catch a lot of my typos - not all of them, but a lot. I would really miss having spell check if it went away. But I know better than to rely upon it too heavily. Spell check won't catch usage errors (and grammar check doesn't do much better with those, so don't think clicking that on will save you some serious proofreading.

But spell check will not help you choose the correct word if you don't know it already. When I type: "I ate supper at there home" spell check is perfectly content with that. It doesn't flag it. It doesn't try to get me to make the change. That's because it knows "there" is a word, and it doesn't know that "there" is not the correct word. I need to know that.

So if you have word choice weaknesses, if you have trouble telling when to say "its" and when to say "it's," or you tend to use the word "to" when you mean "too," or if you find you are unsure of the right times to use affect/effect, lay/lie, or then/than. Stop, drop, and learn. Look them up, write out the rule and tape it to your computer monitor or other obvious place so you can see it every single time you revise. Spell check can't do that for you - but it still needs to be done.

MARKET GUIDE

A market guide is a wonderful thing. It can point us toward markets we haven't considered. It can be a great place to check our memory of details of that market. But if used incorrectly it can cause you to make inappropriate submissions that annoy editors.

Just because a book market guide list hundreds of publishers doesn't mean there are literally hundreds of publishers who might publish your specific book. It also doesn't mean there are hundreds of publishers you would even considering let publish your book.

I have heard authors say, "I send a query to everyone, and if I get any nibbles, I'll start researching the ones that seem interested." Why? Why would you clog up an already explosive slush pile with one more inappropriate submission just because you don't want to bother researching? Is your time worth so little? Do you feel the editor's time is worth so little? Do you want to encourage more publishers to close the door to submissions?

The market guide can seem a little alarming. There are a lot of publishers in there. That's why I tend to approach them in two ways. First, I tackle a few pages at a time when I get a new market guide and I read every single thing about a publisher on those few pages. I read whether they publish fiction or nonfiction (really this is basic and an amazing number of writers skip that one simple item). I read their age groups, word lengths, and departments. I read everything and if a market seems like a likely one for me, I highlight that market in my guide so I can learn more about it by tracking it down online.

The second thing I do with my market guide is to use it as the STARTING PLACE when I have a piece ready to sell. I use the INDEX to look for markets that publish the sort of project I'm submitting. There is no point in my sending a picture book to Llewellyn FLUX, for example, since they only publish YA. And yet - I would be willing to bet they get picture book submissions. But I don't have time to waste on pointless submissions.

When I have used the index to make a list of likely markets, I think read every single one of the likely market entries from first word to last. I'm looking for any reason why this market definitely wouldn't publish my project. Do they only take resumes/clips - then no point sending them a finished project and I strike them off my list. Do they only take nonfiction and this is a fiction project - then I strike them off my list. Finally, I look at the remaining possibles and I move beyond the market guide to find out if this is really a possible market before I mail anything. From this point I:

1. Use Google to check for the publisher's website which I read entirely, making notes of anything I learn.
2. Continue down the Google links to read things people have written about the publisher - am I finding complaints or warnings? This will definitely move them off my list. I'm a writer, not a gambler.
3. If this is a book project, I continue to Google so I can find links to book reviews or links to the publisher's authors. I want to find out if this publisher is getting books reviewed and I want to see cover images. Professional covers look professional and that will tell me a lot about whether I want to deal with that publisher.
4. If this is a book project, I take my list (which now has several titles by each publisher) then to my big box bookstore and try to find books by that publisher. If the bookstore has NONE of the publisher's titles and they can only be gotten by special order, I mark them off my list. I am not interested in selling books out of my car, I need the publisher to place the books in bookstores so the professionals can sell them.

YOUR WORD PROCESSOR

So how can your word processor get you into trouble? Many writers simply don't know how to use it. They don't know how to do headers. They don't know how to set margins. Or worse still, they know too much and decide to make the manuscript format suit their own aesthetics with home-made illustrations pasted in, fully justified margins, and fancy fonts and sizes.

Word processors are both too hard and too easy. Many writers just give up on learning the basics of setting margins, making headers, and setting spacing. So writers are still double-spacing by hitting "enter" twice at the end of every line and typing in headers on each page and hoping they don't migrate too much they begin revising. This will eventually do you a huge amount of harm in selling your work professionally. Learn to do hose basic things in your word processor. If you can't figure out your help file, find a helpful teenager to explain it to you. Find someone who can show you. Consider it as essential and any other aspect of learning to write.

You know that market guide I warned you about - chances are it has a section near the beginning of the guide that shows you what a finished manuscript should look like. It will show you what headers, what margins, what spacing, etc that you should use. Use those. Editors won't be impressed by your cute manuscript - they'll be impressed by your great writing. A cute manuscript would just annoy. Don't make your writing compete with the annoyance of a "choose your own formatting" manuscript.

Conquer your word processor. It's time. Really.

YOUR ENTHUSIASM

Okay, how can your printer possibly get you into trouble? It can push you to hurry. I hate to break it to you but writing is not a good profession for people in a hurry. The editor won't be in a hurry. The publisher won't be in a hurry. So you need to calm down and refuse to hurry too. Take the time to get it right.

If you've heard yourself say, "I don't know much about grammar, but I can tell a good story." - it's time to learn about grammar or get yourself an excellent critique partner with a lot of patience. Because the competition is fierce. An editor doesn't have to take a good story with bad grammar because she already has five good stories with good grammar competing for that publishing spot. An editor doesn't have to deal with trying to read a single-spaced manuscript, or guess at your word count because you didn't read about what needed to be in a header - she already has a pile of good stories by writers who took the time to learn how to format a manuscript.

So, if you can tell a great story, that's totally fantastic. Now learn how to do it well. Learn how to showcase it in a manuscript formatted according to the standard an editor expects to see. Really, you've done the hard part - you told a good story. Don't quit now that you're in the homestretch. Don't hope the story wows the editor so much she's willing to overlook the stuff you know…really, you know…you needed to do before sending it. Instead, stop and learn to do it all.

And when you're looking at your name in print and thinking about all the children reading your words and benefiting from them - you'll be glad you took the time to control your tools. I know you will.