It's a Comma, It's a Noun, It's Grammar Girl!

I'm on a grammar kick this week and the universe must know. I tuned into Oprah yesterday and was introduced to
Grammar Girl, a podcast hosted by grammar guru, Mignon Fogarty.

What a fun way to answer your grammar and writing questions as you're pounding away on the keyboard. It's a way to enhance your self-editing skills, and thereby (or is it therefore, hmm, better ask Grammar Girl) limit some line-editing and copy-editing from your editor, teacher or beta reader.

I'd rather have someone edit the content of my work, and leave the line-editing until everything else is tweaked and polished. I'd like never to have effect changed to affect again, and now I think I've finally got it!

If you master the mechanics of language before you show someone your work, they can read it for content and context -- which is my preference. I also think that bad grammar, syntax, etc. detracts from the content.

I know some writers want their editors (professional and amateur) to check everything and just want their ideas on paper complete with grammar garbage.

Any thoughts?

P.S. There's a great little quiz on the Grammar Girl site...see how much you know, or don't, and let us know!

Indubitably

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
-- Stephen King

I find myself deleting adverbs in my own work and highlighting adverbs in the work of friends, and typing "this isn't necessary" into the comments.

I wonder what Lolly would think.



I grew up loving Lolly. Who didn't? We laid on the floor watching cartoons on network tv on Saturday mornings and devouring our most memorable grammar and history and math facts. I could sing along and then recall the lyrics -- lessons -- when I needed them. I still know the words to almost every Schoolhouse Rock song. Just try me...I can belt out a mean Preamble to the Constitution while riding right into Conjunction Junction. No lie.

Nostalgia aside, adverbs just aren't what they used to be. Study them carefully when you add them to your writing -- and then -- go Lolly's route and put most of them back on the shelf.

Once Upon A Time Is Now

"No--I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other."
-- Jane Austen, in a letter to James Stanier Clarke, April 1, 1816

Can you imagine living in a time when women were shunned for wanting to be writers? For pulling her pen and ink out of her apron pocket and sitting down amidst the chamber pots to jot down ideas, characters and dialogue?

Can you imagine not having a delete key or even -- white out?

Jane Austen is (was?) my kind of woman. Long before it was socially acceptable for women to work, she vowed to make her living "by her pen." When young women were readily marching down the matrimonial aisle to secure a place in society, even if the groom had no place in her heart, Jane Austen thewarted the advances of appropriate suitors and ran off with her true love. OK, she never married him or anyone else, just going to show you that she knew not only her own heart, but her own mind.

Differentiating between the two is hard for us today even with psychology and technology. Austen was a product of her time, yet remains a modern marvel.

Staying true to oneself, in life and in writing is key. Can we be one without being the other? Whether we write fact or fiction, writing reveals our authentic selves, if not at first, then through the process of every writers' eventuality. Because when we're not being true to ourselves, our characters, our readers know -- and we're not fooling them or ourselves.

Jane Austen knew, long ago, that in order to be true to herself she had to follow her own heart in her life and in her work. She found her voice in her works of literary grandeur. We should all be so lucky - so talented - so prolific.

But if we're not - or can only dream to be - finding and maintaining our voice in our writing is a gift we give not only to our friends, family and readers - but to ourselves.

We're Baaaaaaaaack...

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."
-- Mark Twain

In my world, writing is not unlike the laundry that piles up. I stare at it, hoping with all my might that it will do itself. I easily get it out of the hamper. Like ideas in my head, sometimes things just overflow and you have to make room for more whether you want to or not.

I can get some ideas down on paper, or onto a brand new sparkling clean Word doc. The idea of having everything organized, clean and fresh is very appealing. But then I have to make myself transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer -- before I forget and they start to smell. Like the bits of ideas that I throw together on the screen or the page...if I don't tend to them quickly I forget why they're there -- and that stinks.

But my biggest problem is not doing the job, but finishing it. Clean dry clothes tumbling around in the dryer...and getting them folded, hung up and in the right room into drawers and closets is my biggest downfall. In my writing life sometimes the worst part is finishing up, making things tidy and putting it all into its place.

And sometimes, I just walk over the pile of laundry, like for a couple of weeks like I walked over this blog. You know, when you close your eyes you don't even see it, and with enough practice you don't even trip. You just go about your day...

But don't worry, eventually it gets done...and like the thoughts and meanderings here.

So y'all come back now, y'hear?

Einstein's theory breaks down

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I'm not usually in the position of disagreeing with Einstein, since "Einstein" is synonymous with "brainiac," and he really was quite clever with that Theory of Relativity business. Albert, I give you props.

But he is at best misguided about the act of reading.

Reading, at any age, is a sure way of sparking one's own creativity. Although I do not normally attach electrodes to my brain while reading so that I can marvel at all the cortical nooks and crannies that light up (sure, I've been meaning to!), I can tell you that I've hardly come away from any halfway decent book without a staggering array of ideas ... and not just for my writing. I may not follow up on those deas, but that is surely not the book's fault.

There was one time when I had been in the middle of writing one of my books when I paused for some William Styron. When I returned to my own work, my sentences were suddenly richer, more full-bodied. I had unknowingly kept Styron's voice in my head. Although I was neither trying to imitate him nor succeeding, it was thrilling to come away from a book or an author with new possibilities for enhancing my writing.

Hey, Einstein, I've done my own work in the physics lab! And here is what I have found: The mechanism for ideas and creativity is based on the principles of the old-fashioned pinball machine, where one chance interaction sets off a slew of ricochets in unforeseen directions and unique combinations.

I cannot believe that Einstein came up with the beginnings of quantum theory without help from unusual sources that allowed him to think in different directions, or that caused his brain to pinball all night until the morning yielded a new thought.

I mean, what was Einstein reading back then anyway? Was it really something so generic and crappy? Or is it possible that, brainiac though he was, he didn't realize that you cannot approach reading a book as a passive activity?

Did he not know how to read?