Not My Rule

I’m an accountant by profession. The last grammar lessons I memorized were back in high school, and I think they’ve changed the rules in the decades since. So in the twenty plus years that I’ve been published, I spend a lot of time learning new things. One of the fun things I’ve learned is that most of the “rules” I’m told about really aren’t rules. They’re just things people make up to make me crazy.

Okay, maybe they should be called “style” rules. Except they still aren’t rules. They’re annoyances sometimes, but some writers can get away with a lot before they become annoying. Being the nonconfrontational type that I am, I prefer to avoid annoyances when possible, but if I can’t finish the freaking book because I’m fretting over every “as",” then I’m annoyed.

I’m finishing up the final edit of SMALL TOWN GIRL at the moment. (Don’t get me started on titles right now, that’s a whole different rant.) And someone on one of my writing lists asked about using the sentence construction of “He did this as she did that.” They’d been told this was bad structure. Just what I needed, one more insanity to hunt down.

Since I was already agonizing over too many sentences like this, I pulled out the rule books. The only thing I can find is that “as,” “when,” “while,” and similar words are subordinate conjunctions. Yeah, I know, my eyes glazed over, too.

So anyone who can find a real rule about this, feel free to let me know. Meanwhile, I’m assuming if the thing has a name, it’s just fine, and it’s how often I use it that matters. Because my characters tend to do three things at a time, and if I can’t use these words, we’re all in a heaping lot of trouble. I’ll be back to “See Dick run and see Jane laugh” real soon.

Begin at the Beginning

I spend the better part of every day pouring my heart into my stories so I’ve never had any particular inclination to journal my feelings online. If you want to know what I feel or think about life, read my books.

But quite often while I’m writing, revising, or editing, a thought about how or why I did what I did occurs to me, and I want to talk about it. Of course, that could be procrastination, but sometimes the Muse needs that little techno-break. So I’ll go online and talk to a bunch of other writers about it, or I’ll make a note in my file about a future speech or article, and there it ends.

But after writing the last piece of brilliance into an empty file to fall on deaf ears, I thought maybe blogging offered a means of pretending I’m not wasting my time. I have no idea if I can keep up this writing diary or even if I should, but it shouldn’t hurt to try.

Besides, I like feedback, and I’ve been told this is a way of getting it.

I’m just learning how to set this up, so I’m not offering any brilliance today. But if you’re really interested in where my mind drifted in today’s revisions, take a look at how many times I used the word “it” in the paragraphs above. Can you always tell to what I refer when I say “it”?

I can’t. And after reading a book I finished six months ago, it’s even more difficult.

Note to self: excise “it” from vocabulary.