Primer Course for Aspiring Writers

Aspiring writers and editors, pay attention. Class is now in session.

The modern literary world is a tough place to live. The quality of the craft has dropped off a cliff while the quantity has proportionately spiked. Anyone who can scrawl a few sentences suddenly thinks he has what it takes to write a book. I assure you, he does not.

Learning and mastering the craft of writing takes years, if not decades. One cannot simply "decide" to write a novel one day. Just as specialized knowledge goes into, say, building a house, the same is true for writing. This means understanding mechanics, punctuation, grammar, spelling, and syntax. These are the required materials to build a book. If they're even a little crumbly, the whole thing will collapse. Essentially, being an effective writer also requires one to be an effective editor.

Some so-called editors with whom I interact have a shaky-at-best grasp on the aforementioned aspects of writing. For example, in the United States periods and commas always goes inside the quotation marks at the end of a sentence. However, I consistently see editors place it outside the quotation marks. Incorrect uses of ellipsis, dashes, and apostrophes (never add apostrophe-s to pluralize a word) abound. Also, I don't care what you learned in sixth grade Language Arts - unless you still use a typewriter, please stop using two spaces between sentences. It's archaic, a throwback to a more primitive age in literacy, and nearly no editors want to see them any longer. (For more in-depth reasoning behind this, read this and adapt accordingly.)

My question is: who do you think you are? You "writers" and "editors" who come at the craft full of passion, swagger, and good intentions (and often delusions of grandeur), but lacking elementary understanding implicit to successful writing? You don't just get to say "I'm going to be a writer (or editor)!" without paying your dues. Learning to write and edit requires education. It requires a tremendous amount of reading. Most of all, it requires years of practice, of trial and error, of harsh rejection.

Of course, with the dumbing down of modern readers, all this is probably moot. Readers are not the discerning, discriminating, lovers of fine art any longer. They don't care if someone splashes comma splices, dashes run-on sentences, or misspells every other word. This has led to a complete saturation of the industry, an embarrassment and obstacle for those who still cherish it and hold it sacred. Those who've paid our dues, in other words.

I've spent decades honing my craft and am finally beginning to see some return on it. It's only fair others do as well. If you're an aspiring writer, do yourself (and the rest of us) a service and take basic writing courses. Then take advanced courses. Then take pride in what you write. Learn from your mistakes. Share your talent with the world. After all, your work is your legacy. Do you want it littered with dangling participles and misplaced modifiers?

Make the world a better place, not more unbearable than it already is. Make it one where the real masters of the craft can make their name.

Class dismissed.

Dear Editor: Edit THIS!

As a writer who depends upon editors to buy my work, I realize this post is playing with fire. I'll take my chances.

Often while browsing the 'Net, I'll come across some small press editor or other's blog which I eagerly devour. Invariably, I can depend on finding that obligatory post in which said editor denigrates, belittles, or otherwise condemns the hopeful writers who anxiously submit their work for review only to ultimately be rejected. Hours of clattering away at a keyboard (not to mention even more hours revising draft after draft) before finally clicking SEND on that fateful email, only to wait three months (or more) for a form rejection letter really, well, sucks.

But, hey--that's the industry. I am a professional. I possess the thick skin required to await the inevitable rejection...after rejection...after rejection. I have never replied in anger to an editor who has rejected my work. I accept that not everything I write is perfect (some of it is downright despicable) and I accept that even good stories sometimes get shot down. It just makes each acceptance all the sweeter.

Further, I understand an enormous cross-section of people who think they can write well cannot and a large subset of this group may, by extension, also be classified as unprofessional. I empathize with an editor's frustration when a writer submits piles of pure slush or responds to rejection with bitterness or outright malice. As a one-time editor myself, believe me--I know.

Now let me turn the tables. What follows is an actual reply I received from an editor recently. I am including it here without an iota of retouching. Please note: I'm not picking on editors (especially those of you who currently have a story of mine under consideration. Heh.). Most of my interactions with them have been wonderful learning experiences. Obviously, I am withholding said editor's name. I just couldn't ignore posting this. Read on to see why:

i read some and scanned the rest

you have to tweak it to make it fit more of what i am looking for.

1. stop beginning words with AND. never a good thing

2. make the dialogue more standard format. way to much slang and sloppy writing (i know thats the style but i dont like it)

3. have the character, one or both, take into account what they are doing, they are killing people, its something to think about. this antho isnt about killing people, its about dealing with death. so its needs to be a little deeper.

4. when someone says, somethin. you ned to add an ' on it to replace the G same with em is 'em

if you feel like doing this stuff and sending it again, i dont see whay i cant use it.

(i didnt edit this email much, i dont bother)

thanks

Let's dissect this point by point.

1. From now on, I will stop beginning words with AND. Andalusia, Andrew, Android and several others have now been stricken from my vocabulary. Not really. Because what this person meant to say was "Stop beginning sentences with 'And'." Wait, why is it never a good thing? As long as conjunctions are used sparingly to start sentences, they are perfectly acceptable. I promise. Don't make me go all Strunk & White on you.

2. Standard dialogue format is wonderful if that's the way your character speaks. This particular character doesn't speak in standard English. In fact, I don't know many people who do. Maybe a few stauncher politicians and members of the clergy. I understand too much slang can be distracting, but let it go. Feel the character. Get inside the character's mind, man. Trippy, right?

3. Perhaps if this editor had finished reading the story, the "dealing with death" would have become clearer...since a death is the climax of the story (and actually is implied rather than described). The characters aren't "killing people." Of course, those things might be difficult to glean just from scanning. That got me thinking about how many stories are rejected by editors who don't, you know, actually do their job and read the thing top to bottom. And then I felt my blood pressure rising, so I stopped thinking about it. Must...keep...beast...at...bay.

4. Adding an apostrophe when dropping a letter or letters from a word is the writer's choice. I understand doing so is standard (something this person seems to adamantly uphold), yet it is not required. Just ask a guy named Steve King. Or Cormac McCarthy. Or Bernard Shaw. Me, I prefer a page uncluttered with throwaway punctuation. Still unconvinced? Check out this article, paying close attention to the paragraph labeled "Omission and elision."

5. The penultimate sentence tops everything. Let me get this straight: I am expected to revise my story to make it more standard, but this editor can't be bothered to employ correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, or mechanics? If you don't have the inclination to be professional, then I can see I have wasted time submitting.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, writers. Editors, feel free to weigh in as well. Am I off the mark here? Writers who submit to markets learn quickly they need editors far more than editors need them and that anything perceived as bitterness toward editors comes off as unprofessional. Well, I'm bucking that trend today. Because there are certainly some editors we writers do not need. And (uh-oh, there's that pesky coordinating conjunction starting my sentence again) I'm not bitter in the slightest. Just appalled.

Spellbound

Happy Friday, folks.  I just read a great piece by Elizabeth Bluemle over at PW and it served to reignite my frustration with the way people of the modern age abuse language.  There's just no respect for it anymore.  Is it laziness?  Stupidity?  Apathy?  Sorry, none of those are acceptable excuses. 

Today's blog will be a column I wrote for The Observatory that was never published.  The editor never explained why, just asked me to submit an alternate piece before deadline.  My guess is it was a touch too abrasive to be read by the good citizens of my county.  Maybe the editor thought it struck a little too close to home.  In any case, here it is now - a year later, but no less relevant.  Or fraught with frustration.

You've heard people say, "This country is going to hell in a hand basket!"  Of course you have.  And they're right.  But don't blame our fall on Obamacare or illegal immigration or soaring oil prices.  Blame it on widespread apathy toward humanity's greatest invention. 

            What is this invention, you ask?  The written word, of course.  The very foundation of civilization.   

            Imagine a world without writing, where complex instructions and documentation could only be transmitted orally.  Where would we be?  My guess is not far beyond the Stone Age, tapping out arrowheads with chunks of quartz and years from grasping the fundamentals of agriculture.  In other words, not at all civilized (which is not to suggest being uncivilized is worse, but that is an argument for another day). 

            I'm merely noting that since we are indeed civilized, we should grant total respect to the textual medium that helped us get where we are.   

            In America's earliest days, before spelling had been standardized, people paid little mind to how they wrote words (those who were literate, at any rate).  "Spelling" or "speling" would have been equally acceptable.  Fortunately, we pulled ourselves together and homogenized our language into something coherent, concise and decipherable.  And thanks to Merriam-Webster, we have concrete knowledge of how words are supposed to appear. 

            Today, though?  Today, spelling seems to be the last thing people can be bothered with.  Scanning my friends' Facebook updates, I see "to," "too" and "two" used interchangeably.  "Your" and "you're?"  Don't get me started.  "Breath" and "breathe" -- one is a noun and the other a verb.  How did these simple differentiations slip out of common knowledge?  Maybe I just need smarter friends. 

            Am I being too hard on folks?  Let me put it this way.  If you want to use our language, shouldn't you want to use it correctly?  It's the same reason I use a calculator when figuring sums; I want to do it right.  Writing is something most of us do daily, whether emailing the boss, making out bills, or a writing a letter to the editor.  Shouldn't we want flawless spelling, no matter the task?

            And believe me -- I'm not tooting my own horn.  There are loads of words that give me trouble.  But if I'm unsure, I look it up.  It only takes a few seconds and makes all the difference. 

            Ah, here it comes: the Spell Check Argument.  Word processing programs have completely superseded the typewriter, including the ability to scan documents for spelling errors.  Unfortunately, Spell Check works like a fishing net with a hole in the webbing: it will catch most of what you want it to, but a few whoppers are still going to slip through. 

            A professor once told me (after discovering a spelling error on a paper that both Spell Check and laborious proofreading failed to catch), "Mr. Gudmunson, if you can't spell correctly, you shouldn't be writing at all."  At first I was indignant, but after some consideration I concurred.  I don't worry about messing up advanced algorithms because I don't do advanced algorithms.  But I do write every day and thus feel it is my duty to ensure I write, well, right. 

            Another professor told me, "Learn to write effectively and you can have anything you want in life."  That starts with proper spelling.  And while I can't say I have everything I want, I can say I'm on my way.