Hiatus

Attending personal matters this week, apologies for anyone who was actually expecting daily posts.

Will try to get back into the swing asap.

Humans is the Craziest Peoples

It bothers me when people I like say things I can't reconcile. I don't want to hurt their feelings, insult or embarrass them, so I end up trying to just shut up and ignore it...but sometimes it gives me ulcers.

We've all seen it. Normal, likable folk will do something, exhibit some common human foible, and we twitch. In the hope I won't inadvertently wrong someone, I'll try to anonymize an example.

An editor and writer acquaintance who calls herself obsessive recently mentioned (in front of a broadly mixed audience including professional peers) some trouble she habitually has with a couple of homophones. That's common enough - you know people who confuse its/it's, they're/their/there, to/too/two or any of a hundred others. This was a much less common case, one of those nasty ones where the words end in -eet and -ete that stump us all sometimes.

I very briefly tossed her a couple of ways to know which to use, word associations and visual reminders. I only did that because it's the kind of thing we all need, I'd had that very problem, and many of us might appreciate the tools.  Believe me, I'm not shy about grabbing a reference when I realize I'm unsure of something. Simple enough, but her response in front of an audience was to flippantly dismiss it, claiming inability to understand or remember it, apparently intending to just live with the handicap...as a professional editor.

This is a known career writer and editor, blithely dismissing a distinctly professional foible in front of potential clients and peers? Ok, she is a smart, established career woman with a known reputation, and anyone who knows her should dismiss it as a moment's distraction (I hope), but to me it's like a professional programmer saying "pfft, what do grammar, punctuation and spelling matter to a computer?" If you know anything about it at all, you know it matters a lot.

It's like a professional carpenter saying "Wow, I only brought a sledgehammer. Oh well, it really doesn't matter."

It's like a biology teacher, asked whether a squid is a mollusk or a chordate, responding with "Like I care. Go look it up," before going back to a magazine. Anyone else would give such a response, it should be expected - but that person in that situation maybe should not. Not knowing is fine, is only human. Not caring when it's so obviously relevant to what you profess is a little harder to swallow.

I call myself a science fiction writer. I love it when people ask me about odd stellar phenomena, obscure theories, quantum mechanics interpretations or likelihood of life on other planets. Sometimes I may not be in the mood to discuss it, but I don't want my potential audience to believe for a moment that I don't *care*.

I do care. I sometimes use "it's" when I should have said "its", or "that" when I should have used "which", but I care, and if you point it out, I'll fix it. If you suggest rules to help me decide, I'll likely tell you it's absorption in the story, not ignorance,  but I'll try very hard to catch it in the editing.

I don't want my baby to be ugly because of blemishes, but if the problem is just dirt I could have easily wiped away, the fault is truly mine.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been looking over some of my writing, and editing the mistakes that creep in when you're concentrating on moving scenes along, rather than being grammatically correct. It's time for a cup of coffee and some humble pie.

Mood and Voice

It's been a long damned day -- a long year, a long life.  If you know someone unaffected by the twitching economy, offer them a sandwich because they have nothing.  While you're at it, I'll take a PB&J.

Read the torrent of commentary on the web and it seems all anyone wants in this market is commercial paranormal romance with a gut-grabbing opening, a constant fast-paced easy read that doesn't require you have a dictionary nearby, and maybe a soft grade of paper because you're never gonna want to read such tripe again, and will probably burn through a chapter every time your bowels move, so it might as well do double duty.

Do you hear the frustration? The snarky tone? Is this edgy enough, or do I need to throw in more profanity?

---

I love doing that. String together cliché words and phrases and make something recognizable. Fun! Admittedly, it can be a bit trickier to write in a mood you don't currently share, but hey, authors are actors, playing every character in the book. Sometimes you have to get into the part!

It's like writing poetry; dirge of woe or ode to joy, we take words and weave a mood. It's what makes or breaks a story, but I have a quote for you:

"A only writer begins a book; a reader finished it." - Samuel Johnson

• Take the top section and read it with the mindset of gloom and a long face and it comes out one way.
• Go back and apply grumpy anger and it comes out differently.
• Try again with resigned humor and it shifts yet again.

The reader is under no obligation to think of what the writer was imagining. My favorite example: J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle Earth in which THE HOBBIT, LORD OF THE RINGS, and of course THE SILMARILLION occur, was a master of this idea.

Do Balrogs have wings? It's a topic people rage over (yes, maybe only geeks, but they are a significant market...)  Look at the argument and some discussion of each side HERE. The answer is, they do if you imagined them that way while reading the passages. Or don't if you didn't.  Your book, your world, your choice. The author did not choose to decide for you.

Yep, I really said it.

So when you buy a book, think of it as unfinished furniture you still have to paint.  The author wrote the words, but you have to give them breath and life.