Grammatical Correctness, is it wrong?

Is being grammatically correct really correct?

From the beginning years of grade school, you were admonished to “watch your grammar.”  Through the years growing up, your grammar was corrected, your papers were graded on the use of proper grammar, and you were advised to fix your grammar.

Now you have made that final step and there is no turning back.  You have decided, “I am a writer.”  Great!  Now you can finally use all those perfect grammar skills that have been demanded from you all those years.  Are you ready?  No?  Good.

Is it correct to be grammatically correct?  The short answer is ‘sometimes’.  Should you write that way?  Sometimes.  In fact, there are no doubt some wonderful tombs parked somewhere on dusty shelves written entirely in perfect grammar, although I haven’t actually seen any personally.  Should you write your story in correct grammar?  Probably some, but not all of it.

As a writer, correct grammar is just as important as it was in grade school.  But, it is also important to know when ignore those grammar rules.

Consider the rough character.  He has lived on the streets, surviving the best he can.  He has a full history of problems and hardships that have driven him to this point.  Now imagine that character talking and thinking in perfect grammar.

Good writing draws the reader in.  It flows in their mind so that they are absorbed into the world you created, feeling and living it without consciously reading it.

Now here is a writing exercise you can practice anywhere.  Pay attention.  Pay attention and take mental note of the conversations around you and the words going through your own mind; not so much on what is being said, but on how it is being said.

Most people do not think or speak in proper grammar.  They use contractions a lot and at some point break various other perfect grammar rules.  People also often speak in incomplete sentences and using the forms slang speech common to their particular lifestyle, background, and community.  Speech and thoughts expressed in perfect grammar sounds formal.  It could be a good tool as well when you want that formal feeling in your story.  But it won’t likely draw the reader into the story in the long run.

You want your story to flow in the same way that most people’s thoughts flow naturally.  You want your characters and the situations you put them in to feel real.  Use formal proper grammar where needed, but also know that a more casual flow of thoughts and words are essential to make a story flow naturally.

March Mayhem – MAIM - March Amend & Improve Mayham

Tomorrow is the first day of March; the month legend has it Mother Nature totally plays us with a game of lions vs. lambs. If it we enter into March with weather that is calm and quiet like the lamb we can predict the month will end with the weather roaring like a lion, wreaking Nature’s vengeance on us all.


Of course most of us don’t actually believe any of this stuff and year after year Mother Nature has let us down and forgot her game by the end o f the month.

.

I do have my own prediction for March and it has little to do with the weather.

.

March is three months after NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where writers around the globe pledge to put aside the daily vanities of life and throw themselves heart and soul into trying to write a 50,000 word novel from start to finish in only the thirty days of November.

If you are like me that is three months during which you have completely put that NaNo novel out of your mind to focus on other things. For myself December is spent stressing over Christmas, worrying over the lack of money to afford what is required of you, and getting little else done. The other two months I focused on writing and editing other projects, giving no thought at all to The McAllister Farm.

Three months sounds like a good break to me.

.

March also happens to be a free month, falling between Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever you celebrate around that time and the busy spring and summer time.

.

I predict March is as good a time as any to go back and tackle that first revision of the NaNo novel. A no holds barred attack in the same spirit of NaNoWriMo.

After three months of pointedly not looking at it or even thinking about it, it’s time to give that NaNo novel its first dose of merciless and aggressive editing.

Don’t stop to think or analyze. First impressions are everything.

This is not a carefully thought out edit meant to fix grammar and spelling or smooth minor flaws.

MAIM (March Amend & Improve Mayhem) that NaNo novel. Attack it without care with a big fat red marking pen (or the electronic equivalent). Cut and slash anything that on first impression is off, weird, doesn’t work, or just seems like extra baggage.

Scribble notes all over it, whatever strikes you as you tackle the beast. It doesn’t matter if the notes make much sense, impressions can lead to something later.

Anything that comes to mind: observations, ideas, questions, random thoughts, character traits, back story, behind the scenes story, what should have been, things you should link, etc. Anything goes.

.

EDIT: edit, deconstruct, improve, and transform that novel like you don’t care how perfect the final outcome is. This is only a first edit anyway.

.

Take one month, March, to completely go over the WIP start to finish and tackle the obvious. Amend, research, and outright challenge yourself. “What the hell was I thinking when I wrote THAT?!”

.

.

Starting tomorrow you have thirty-one days to beat that NaNo novel into submission, the iron master pounding a strip of iron into a shape that resembles the finished sword it will become.

.

It’s madness, but it’s my madness.

.

So tomorrow grab that NaNo WIP, put on your Mad Hatter hat, and pour the tea (wine in my case) and let’s have a writers’ editing party.

.

And maybe just for fun, the next time you write/edit using the services of your computer accessed dictionary and thesaurus, try running it in a foreign language. Oh, the madness just never ends.

Book Review - Pat Bertram's Daughter Am I

In Daughter Am I, Pat Bertram has created an entertaining tale of friendship, discovery, and mystery filled with diverse characters who are instantly likeable. Not only does she bring to life the past world of the gangster era in the current age where it is mostly forgotten, she also reminds us through her elderly cast just how closely linked the past and present really are.






Mary Stuart received a letter from a lawyer that would change her life. She learns that not only did her parents lie to her about her grandparents having died many years before, but also that those grandparents have just passed away and left her everything.



She immediately learns that her grandparents were murdered!

Driven by curiosity and perhaps a sense of self loss and the lack of direction her life has, Mary is drawn into the intrigue of finding out who these people were who her father denied her for her whole life, and the possibility of solving the mystery of their murders.

Mary begins to follow a trail she picks up at her grandparents farm, one that leads her back through their life by finding people who had once known them and finds herself travelling with an unlikely group of relics from a past era. Each stop they make in the search for truth ads another elderly person to her crew. They seem more interested in breaking the boredom of their lives and the excitement of sneaking off on a road trip than anything and yet hold the key to the secret of her grandparent's murder.

With colourful characters, leftovers from the long gone age of the gangsters, including Lefty, Teach, Happy, Lila, and more at her side, Mary finds more than just answers. She finds more questions and love, and a direction for her life.

Daughter Am I is published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC.

 

Works In Progress and other stuff

A few months ago (a few? I lost track) I put my finished W.I.P. to bed after months of pouring over it stressing over perfecting it (can any book be perfect in the writer’s eyes?) to the point where I knew I was missing anything obvious.


A break was in order, to work on other things and completely put it out of mind. So I went to work finishing writing/editing other W.I.P.s

In that time ...



I finished writing two novels (pending editing): Forgotten Princess and The Gypsy Queen

I hit the half-point in one novel : The Green Fairy

I came close to finishing my 2010 NaNo novel that I abandoned that year (possible title Old Bones)



I wrote 6 short stories (5 pending editing)

- No Wine for Me, Thanks

- Gift in the Waves

- Hidden Window

- Spiral

- The Red Mitten

- The Widows’ Willow



And for November I am mostly concentrating on my 2012 NaNo novel The McAllister Farm (a prequel of sorts of my finished W.I.P.) and am well on track to meet and even exceed the 50,000 words by November 30th.



After the 30th, when December descends on us, I plan to give that sleeping W.I.P. one last look over and decide if I will finally take the plunge into trying to have it published.

Is this a Sign? (on Beta Readers)

I suspect this might be a sign of something. A sign of what I’m not quite sure.




I am a firm believer that a writer needs a test reader. Someone who is not intrinsically a part of the story through living and breathing it through months of writing and editing it. A fresh set of eyes. Someone who can read it as a new reader will, getting enthralled or bored, revelling in the characters or getting lost in a confusing plot. Someone who will immediately pick up on things the writer left out that is vital to the story that the writer missed because they already know it, or is confusing to the outside reader.

As the writer there is so much of the story, back story, pre-story, and post-story in your head. There is the life and dreams and unknown driving forces that make up the characters and surround the events that don’t make it into the story. All the behind the scenes stuff that adds to the vibe the writer puts into the story is in the writer’s head. Things you thought you hinted at but happen later, and missed the hint, leaving an obvious story gap in earlier chapters.

It’s almost inevitable for the writer to miss things; things that the reader will pick up because they don’t know what you know. Things that if left out will make the reader go “Huh? What was that? That made no sense.”



Here’s where the sign comes in.

I have two finished books (and untold works in progress).

One of these books is a 120,000 word novel. Something of a murder thriller with kidnapping, murder and an antagonist who is tortured by his own actions and his past. There are twists and surprises, psychological suspense, and an ending that is hinted at but may take some readers by surprise. (At least that’s what I was going for).

I’ve written this book (and re-written it) over a number of years and have spent so much time editing and re-editing and re-editing again (repeat many times) and have come to that point where I just can’t find anything else to change or fix.

I know the book isn’t perfect. There’s no such thing as a perfect book. Writing is art and as such is open to the very fickle interpretation of the individual.

I also know the book could use some improvements before calling it publishable and that I’m just not seeing them. That’s where the test reader comes in.

My spouse started reading the book.

To be fair, I do have to point out that with a major career change for him involving now working on shift work, and some weeks doing almost a double shift with overtime, and our lives being a big hodgepodge of irregularity and zero routine stability, he’s had little time for things like literary pursuits. He also is not a book reader. It’s just not his thing. He’s read maybe two or three books in his life outside of required school reading as a kid and teen.



The second book is my first attempt at a kids’ chapter book. I made a list of what a good chapter book needs according to the experts (a couple kids I asked) and set out to write it. I’m on book three of the series. I’ve gone through the first round of edits on book one.

The problem is, how do I know I’ve done it right? If it’s too easy they’ll be bored and uninterested with it. If it’s too hard they’ll get frustrated and not read it. It has to be just right.

So I gave it to the first test reader, my nine year old. This kid loves to read. And, like me, she loves to read horror (that’s my girl!).



Now here’s the sign.

The husband hasn’t even gotten through the first couple of chapters, and that’s after weeks. He did note a few suggestions and very good ones – two in particular that are more than just missed spell-check errors and will involve minor rewrites of those two scenes.

And then he seems to have abandoned all interest (and yes, I do know that lack of time is a factor too).

The daughter similarly has quickly abandoned her reading effort. She was initially miffed that I hadn’t spent endless hours creating a wonderful and colorful cover picture for it before presenting her with the draft manuscript. Quite frankly I just haven’t had the time and I’m not exactly the artistic type who can just sit down and draw a fabulous picture. Her initial response after pouting about the lack of a proper cover was to toss it aside with no interest in the story. She read just a little bit and abandoned it. When asked about the story she made some vague reference to something being confusing and that has been the end of that. She was uninterested in elaborating on what was confusing.



The question is – what do I make of this?

I could just chalk it up to the fickleness off a nine year old girl and forty year old non-reader.

I could peg it as being a lack of time in our disorderly lives.

One must also not forget that those closest to you, family and friends, are not going to share your passion just because it’s what you love any more than you share theirs for hockey and grade four playground melodrama. They are their own people and have their own interests.

Then again, maybe they just thought the stories sucked and are afraid of hurting my feelings, so they won’t tell me that.

But they are just one reader of each story, and their opinions will be just as subjective as every reader’s will be to their own personal tastes, experiences, and relationship to the writer. One reader might hate it, while a hundred others might love it. You might have a problem if it’s the other way around, but good luck finding 100 test readers when many of us can’t even find one.

So, maybe the stories do suck or maybe those two test readers were just uninterested.

“Is it me or is Memorex?” (Remember that commercial?) Maybe I need to scrap or rewrite the stories or maybe I just had the wrong test readers. Of course, I may never really know since generally speaking I am my own test reader and that is not such a good thing.



The important message here is to never put too much into what any one person’s reaction is.

Opinions of the people closest to you will be the most biased. Either they’re afraid even the gentlest criticism or suggestion might hurt your feelings, or they might go the opposite way and are unnecessarily rough just to prove they are not holding back.

Opinions of people who might harbor any jealousy or ill feelings will be even worse. Probably the worst next to the people who need to tear somebody else down just to make themselves feel better.

It’s not the opinion of the individual reader that is the most important. What is more telling is the general response by multiple readers.

And if you are like me and don’t have a pool of available test readers, and don’t have the money to pay readers, put on that tough outer shell and take no offence if that one person who does agree to read your manuscript doesn’t show the interest you were hoping for.

It might just not be their thing.