Shameless marketing

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Shameless marketing

I believe I made it clear in my brief review that I also really like Susie's style and narrative voice. My mechanical issues revolve more around the standard use of the punctuation with which she marks that style. I'm sure you would agree that a sentence should end with a period, question mark, or exclamation point, rather than just a double space.

In other words - having the eyes of an editor (or even a friend educated in good writing) look over your work can be a big plus. It's a challenge in the world of self-publishing, but not necessarily a major obstacle. A good editor will offer clarification and help without making you lose your writing voice.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

I missed endmarks? Haha! Much better than giving readers whiplash with too much punctuation, I guess. There's a tiny hope inside me that it was the formatting for Kindle tool, as I could swear I put in the exact same copy that I posted here. But who knows, as I will admit to going crazy, trying to take out some punctuation to avoid reader whiplash.

Seriously, I'm hoping that Scrivener really will do me the honour of being my 'mechanic', as I have no idea of the ins and outs of doing all this 'properly'. I'm pretty sure that he and I could work well together because he likes my work already, even the way it is, and I like his perfectionist ways. Together, I'm positive that my stories would be just the same old me and this same old town, but maybe with a shiny polish to them.

To tell the truth, his isn't the only review that's mentioned my faults. I had a humiliating one on a short story blog, last week. It took me days to get over that one. I considered quitting, or hiding under the bed, kicking the dog or yelling at the kids, putting a 'Caveat Emptor' into the blurb and warning readers to go ahead at their own risk, getting drunk or going off to find some dubious, anonymous sex (joke), and in the end decided to take it as it was given and find an editor. Especially after one of my friends here said to me that my job is only to write and the editors job is only to edit and to just let that part go so that I can get on with writing more stories, before all the people in town die out and their lives are forgotten.

[scrivener]

Re: Shameless marketing

The story is more important to me than an exclamation point.

Absolutely. Proper punctuation serves the story; it doesn't get in its way.

I think a lot of Susie's "style" is the fact that it is NOT perfect and that she just lets the story flow.

I agree that it's got a nice flow, but good flow is ensured by proper mechanics. In the sentence I quote in my review, there is a verb missing in one of the clauses. Many people might not notice, but I'm assuming Susie wants her story to flow for everyone, even people who would notice. The flow of that sentence was interrupted by my having to go back and re-read it three or four times to make sure I understood what she was saying. I'd bet huge money that inserting the missing verb (probably "is") wouldn't have interrupted the flow for you in any way, and it would have enhanced it for those who did notice it and who do care about standard grammar.

wasn't there a very famous writer (e.e. cummins?) who didn't use much punctuation?

When language is used creatively by those who understand it, that creativity can be an amazing thing, as in the case of e.e. cummings. The thing about cummings that sooooo many people miss is that he was a VERY structured poet; he didn't just type whatever was in his mind in whatever format. Take a look at this, one of his most famous poems:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

On the one hand, the established conventions of punctuation and capitalization are (deliberately) flaunted here, but on the other, cummings has written a sonnet, one of those very very structured forms we all studied in high school. Check it out: roughly iambic pentameter, ten syllables per line, ABAB CDCD EDED FF rhyme scheme, fourteen lines of verse.

Cummings (and he did prefer to have his last name capitalized when it was written by others) uses the lower-case I with a very specific purpose here.

My point (and sorry if I'm taking too long to make it) is that the language is a beautiful, dynamic, forgiving thing. When we break established standards in the interest of creative purposes, it can be the vehicle for breathtaking art. When we do so because we're just sloppy, we contribute to the language's degradation, which I don't think is Susie's intention.


I should add that I don't mean to belittle anyone or to come across as a language snob. But like those people whose job it is to ensure safety in a crowded building, I notice details in language that perhaps many don't. Someone's got to!

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

I love language. I love the ebbs and flows and emotions of language. I love how language can make you 'see' with just the ideas in it. Mathemeticians must feel the same way about numbers, I imagine. Or musicians and their notes. Artists, too.

But I'm not very good at some parts of the inner workings of language. I just like....need...to talk a lot. I love it when I can tell about what I saw or how it felt or why it happened and have people understand what I'm saying and what I want them to see. Funny I ended up in a place where, for years, nobody understood me and I didn't understand them, eh?

Sometimes I get so carried away with talking and trying to tell what I want to say, that I get lost or get off track. Or I review it afterwards and think to myself that I was an ass to say it that way. Or I try to reword it and spoil the whole thing. Or stop writing for a time because I lose confidence in myself.

And this mostly happens when I try to look over things and edit. It's horrible, this editing thing. Or maybe I simply cannot look objectively at my own work. Each and every one of you have been so kind and so supportive of my stories, and I thank all of you from the very depths of my soul...but I'm sure I can do better. Or at least not have such awful doubts.

How on earth do editors do their thing, anyway? I have the utmost respect for anyone that is able to read someone else's story and keep on the right track and just look at the skeleton and not get emotionally involved with the actual tale. Something akin to being a psychologist, who does the same for the people on the couch that are talking.

Am I making any sense or is this all too much emotion and maybe I should head off to bed because it's actually quite late here on this side of the world and tomorrow is another day and anyway I will probably look at this tomorrow and say what an ass you can be, girl.?

[anapuni808]

Re: Shameless marketing

[SIZE="2"]
I should add that I don't mean to belittle anyone or to come across as a language snob. But like those people whose job it is to ensure safety in a crowded building, I notice details in language that perhaps many don't. Someone's got to!

ah, yes - I do remember the "Just Taco's" discussion. hehehe

[Kaonohi]

Re: Shameless marketing

How on earth do editors do their thing, anyway? I have the utmost respect for anyone that is able to read someone else's story and keep on the right track and just look at the skeleton and not get emotionally involved with the actual tale. Something akin to being a psychologist, who does the same for the people on the couch that are talking.

Well, your punctuation is flawed, but it's just us, so who cares?

I spent a significant time of my life as a proofreader/editor. My title was editor, but the wonks I worked with needed a proofreader more, so I did what I had to.

Editing is hard work, and yes you must keep the elements together, consistant, and manage the flow. Years ago I could do that, but no more.

Every writer needs an editor, because we cannot be objective about our own work. Every writer and editor needs a proofreader, because the nit-picking details escape us when we are doing our jobs. I have not recently read anything that did not have punctuation, grammar or spelling errors. Nothing is perfect any more. And, no one seems to care.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

Eats, leaves and shoots. I love this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves

[Kaonohi]

Re: Shameless marketing

Eats, leaves and shoots. I love this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves

Oh Susie! You want to re-check that sequence?

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

Oh Susie! You want to re-check that sequence?

Haha! Yeah, I've been laughing at myself for the past few minutes. Gotta appreciate sentence structure and punctuation, eh?

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

I once ordered a copy of a Strunk's and White's English textbook just because I loved the way the introduction was written. I'd seen it in an older book from the library at UH Hilo. Sorry to say that, when the book arrived, it was a new issue and the beautifully phrased introduction had been modernized.

Once I was silly and wrote an essay about how I loved reading Roget's Thesaurus just for fun. Which is perfectly true but didn't make for a good essay. Well, the assignment was to finish the title and write about, "I am God's greatest Gift to...", and I think I didn't have the maturity to write it with the sense of humour (I was trying for silly but serious) I wanted to.

[GregLee]

Re: Shameless marketing

... to write it with the sense of humour (I was trying for silly but serious) I wanted to.

My spell checker flags your "humour" (see Wikipedia on "-our" spelling). And since, reading your referenced Wikipedia entry, I see "... Marcus Brigstocke ... blames Truss's book for starting off a trend in which people have become "grammar bullies," " does this mean you're saying that scrivener is a "grammar bully"? (I'm not trying to cause trouble, of course.)

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

My spell checker flags your "humour" (see Wikipedia on "-our" spelling). And since, reading your referenced Wikipedia entry, I see "... Marcus Brigstocke ... blames Truss's book for starting off a trend in which people have become "grammar bullies," " does this mean you're saying that scrivener is a "grammar bully"? (I'm not trying to cause trouble, of course.)

I also say 'colour'. I can't help myself. But I don't say 'condom' or 'preservative' for the Yankee 'rubber'.

[GregLee]

Re: Shameless marketing

I also say 'colour'. I can't help myself.

You mean you also write "colour"? The two spellings do not reflect a difference in pronunciation. It's just a spelling difference. Writing "humour" or "colour" is a way of saying, indirectly, "I'm a Britisher."

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

You mean you also write "colour"? The two spellings do not reflect a difference in pronunciation. It's just a spelling difference. Writing "humour" or "colour" is a way of saying, indirectly, "I'm a Britisher."

Ok, ok! Yeah, I used to live just outside of London and picked up some of their spelling habits and now can never make up my mind about spelling one way or the other.

I also learned to love a good spotted dick.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Shameless marketing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_dick