I don't know what happened, I don't know what I did differently, but I think I've finally found the voice I want for The Witch of November.
I can't even really explain why it's different from what I'd written before. It's not as verbose and a little funnier than before. I also think I've managed a nice balance between the adult voice for the narrative and just a touch of kid voice to give the prose a punch.
Have a snippet:
“I’ll be right back,” she muttered, more to herself than to Charlie. All right. She could do this, right? It shouldn’t take more than a minute to find the ball and squeeze back through the fence and she could totally handle sixty little seconds. And besides, the longer she stood there thinking about it, the more nervous she’d be. A rescue mission like this needed to be done quickly and without thinking. Kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid.
But then again, she’d always been afraid to rip off the Band-Aid super-fast.
Rolling her eyes at herself, she gave Charlie a small wave and took off for the back yard. The next time Charlie fired the ball over the fence, he was going to have to be the one tromping into the Witch’s yard to get it back. Even if he called her a chicken on top of calling her a baby.
The plastic ball had rolled to a stop a couple inches shy of the wooden deck attached to the back of the house. Oh, Charlie so owes me an ice cream for this, Allie thought as she dashed forward and wrapped her hand around the ball. A real ice cream sundae from Sweet Indulgence, too, not one of those little treat things he usually got from the freezer at the 7-11.
“Hey, Allie!”
“I’m coming!” she hollered back. Cripes, that boy had no patience. She hadn’t even been gone a full minute yet! What more did he want from her? “Relax! Jeez.”
A flicker of movement in the dining room window stopped Allie dead in her tracks. Oh, holy crap, if that was even the Witch … that one little glimpse of her from the safety of the lot across the street had been more than enough, thank you very much.
It still needs work, of course, but it's reading more the way I want it to now. Which has turned my "There's no way in hell I can do this" into "I just mght be able to do this!"
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Back to Basics
I used to take public transportation to and from college: two trains and a bus. Yes, that meant I spent a lot of my time not only riding trains and buses but also waiting for trains and buses. To pass the time, sometimes I'd do homework. A lot of times I would read, both school texts and books for pleasure. Other times, I would write.
Because I didn't have a laptop at the time, my process was writing on looseleaf paper snagged from my binders for class and then typing it up when I had enough written to make it worth it. My first draft would thus be handwritten and I would then edit it as I typed it all up.
Since getting a laptop, I've gotten away from the whole handwriting-it-all-out thing, simply because typing is so much easier! I type a lot faster than I handwrite, even taking into consideration the fact that my finger is pretty much glued to the Backspace key, so it just makes more sense to type everything.
Due to certain circumstances this past weekend (read: going out of town for a family wedding), I bought a notebook to write in on the long car ride since I didn't want to drag my laptop with me. And I discovered that there's something about handwriting in a notebook that I've ... missed, for lack of a better term.
I felt more connected--both to the piece and to my own style--when I was trying to recreate my first chapter from memory rather than just rewording what I'd already written. I'd missed that, seeing a blank sheet of paper and watching it fill up with ink and words.
I realize I'm not going to be able to handwrite my 82,000-word magnum opus in a little one-subject notebook but I can use what I've learned. How about instead of doing my normal line-by-line rewrite for my edits, I go back to basics a little bit and try to recreate the chapter? Maybe I should even push the content I've already written further down so I can't see it and just let the edits flow, only going back to check when I feel I need some direction.
Maybe I'll have an easier time finding my voice if I give myself a blank slate, so to speak.
Because I didn't have a laptop at the time, my process was writing on looseleaf paper snagged from my binders for class and then typing it up when I had enough written to make it worth it. My first draft would thus be handwritten and I would then edit it as I typed it all up.
Since getting a laptop, I've gotten away from the whole handwriting-it-all-out thing, simply because typing is so much easier! I type a lot faster than I handwrite, even taking into consideration the fact that my finger is pretty much glued to the Backspace key, so it just makes more sense to type everything.
Due to certain circumstances this past weekend (read: going out of town for a family wedding), I bought a notebook to write in on the long car ride since I didn't want to drag my laptop with me. And I discovered that there's something about handwriting in a notebook that I've ... missed, for lack of a better term.
I felt more connected--both to the piece and to my own style--when I was trying to recreate my first chapter from memory rather than just rewording what I'd already written. I'd missed that, seeing a blank sheet of paper and watching it fill up with ink and words.
I realize I'm not going to be able to handwrite my 82,000-word magnum opus in a little one-subject notebook but I can use what I've learned. How about instead of doing my normal line-by-line rewrite for my edits, I go back to basics a little bit and try to recreate the chapter? Maybe I should even push the content I've already written further down so I can't see it and just let the edits flow, only going back to check when I feel I need some direction.
Maybe I'll have an easier time finding my voice if I give myself a blank slate, so to speak.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Grammar Pet Peeves
I've previously posted these in my LiveJournal, but this is a good post for this blog as well.
It needs to be said here that I'm not a grammar nazi. I won't correct you unless you ask me to do so. There are plenty of things I screw up still (lay/lie, affects/effects, and frequently ending sentences in prepositions, to name but a few), but I do have some pet peeves. Most of these are written mistakes because I tend to see them all over the damn internet and then I get twitchy. Without further ado:
Pet Peeve One: Definitely.
Definitely. Not definately. It's one of those words that is spelled wrong so frequently that most people use the incorrect spelling thinking it's correct. However, there is no "A" in the word. Finite, infinite, definite. Definitely.
Pet Peeve Two: Lose/Loose
Lose = to misplace (verb)
Loose = not tight (adjective)
These words are NOT interchangeable! You cannot "loose" your keys. You cannot feel like you are "loosing" your mind. You "lose" those things.
If you're using the word as a verb, for the love of puppies and kittens, please use one "O."
Pet Peeve Three: Should Of/Would Of/Could Of
This one literally makes me go "Oh HELL no."
"I should of gone to the game last night" is very, very wrong because there is NO SUCH PHRASE as "should of." The phrase is "should have." The "have" is part of the tense of the verb (conditional tense) and it is needed for the sentence to make grammatical sense.
I understand where this one comes from (there I go ending sentences with prepositions!) I once had a kid ask for grammar checks in a story he'd written and he used "should of" in dialogue even though he wrote it correctly anywhere outside of dialogue. When I asked him why he did that, he said, "Well, it's dialogue."
That was when I realized he wanted it to read the way it sounds when people speak. And while I'm all for vernacular in dialogue because there's nothing worse than reading dialogue and thinking, "No one really talks like that," he should have contracted it to "should've." Dialogue or no, you need the "have." It's important.
So it's "should have" or "should've." No exceptions!
Pet Peeve Four: Just Between You and I
Anything occurring "just between you and I" is WRONG. Anything that happens "just between you and me" is correct.
I know it's drilled into our heads in elementary school to not use "me," but there are instances where "me" is the correct word. That's, you know, why it exists as a word.
"Me" is proper in "just between you and me" because "between" is a preposition and needs an object, so you need to use the object form of the pronoun.
An easy way I was taught to spot the difference between using "I" and "me" is to take everyone else out of the picture:
Take the sentence "Bob and me went to the store." Would you say "Me went to the store?" No, so you'd use "I" there. (Grammatically, this is so because "Bob and I" is the subject of the sentence and the subject pronoun is needed.)
Now, "Jim went to the store with Bob and I." Would you say "Jim went to the store with I?" No. Use "me" there. (Again, with = preposition, which needs an object, so you need the object pronoun.)
I = subject. Me = object. Keep it straight, peeps!
Pet Peeve Five: Loath/Loathe
This is the one that makes me groan out loud. For freakin' real.
Loath = reluctant, unwilling (adjective)
Loathe = to despise, to detest (verb)
You are NOT "loathe" to tell her something that would hurt her feelings. You are "loath" to tell her something that would hurt her feelings.
This is one I'd seen in so many places that I actually had to go to dictionary.com to make sure I wasn't wrong! I think this mistake irritates me so much because no one really says "loath to" anymore unless they're being pretentious. But when you're being pretentious and you do it wrong, it just makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about (yep, another preposition ... go me, ha).
So there we go, my top five grammar pet peeves. I also have a list of Things Not to Do When Posting a Story Online, but that'll be a whole separate post, ha.
It needs to be said here that I'm not a grammar nazi. I won't correct you unless you ask me to do so. There are plenty of things I screw up still (lay/lie, affects/effects, and frequently ending sentences in prepositions, to name but a few), but I do have some pet peeves. Most of these are written mistakes because I tend to see them all over the damn internet and then I get twitchy. Without further ado:
Pet Peeve One: Definitely.
Definitely. Not definately. It's one of those words that is spelled wrong so frequently that most people use the incorrect spelling thinking it's correct. However, there is no "A" in the word. Finite, infinite, definite. Definitely.
Pet Peeve Two: Lose/Loose
Lose = to misplace (verb)
Loose = not tight (adjective)
These words are NOT interchangeable! You cannot "loose" your keys. You cannot feel like you are "loosing" your mind. You "lose" those things.
If you're using the word as a verb, for the love of puppies and kittens, please use one "O."
Pet Peeve Three: Should Of/Would Of/Could Of
This one literally makes me go "Oh HELL no."
"I should of gone to the game last night" is very, very wrong because there is NO SUCH PHRASE as "should of." The phrase is "should have." The "have" is part of the tense of the verb (conditional tense) and it is needed for the sentence to make grammatical sense.
I understand where this one comes from (there I go ending sentences with prepositions!) I once had a kid ask for grammar checks in a story he'd written and he used "should of" in dialogue even though he wrote it correctly anywhere outside of dialogue. When I asked him why he did that, he said, "Well, it's dialogue."
That was when I realized he wanted it to read the way it sounds when people speak. And while I'm all for vernacular in dialogue because there's nothing worse than reading dialogue and thinking, "No one really talks like that," he should have contracted it to "should've." Dialogue or no, you need the "have." It's important.
So it's "should have" or "should've." No exceptions!
Pet Peeve Four: Just Between You and I
Anything occurring "just between you and I" is WRONG. Anything that happens "just between you and me" is correct.
I know it's drilled into our heads in elementary school to not use "me," but there are instances where "me" is the correct word. That's, you know, why it exists as a word.
"Me" is proper in "just between you and me" because "between" is a preposition and needs an object, so you need to use the object form of the pronoun.
An easy way I was taught to spot the difference between using "I" and "me" is to take everyone else out of the picture:
Take the sentence "Bob and me went to the store." Would you say "Me went to the store?" No, so you'd use "I" there. (Grammatically, this is so because "Bob and I" is the subject of the sentence and the subject pronoun is needed.)
Now, "Jim went to the store with Bob and I." Would you say "Jim went to the store with I?" No. Use "me" there. (Again, with = preposition, which needs an object, so you need the object pronoun.)
I = subject. Me = object. Keep it straight, peeps!
Pet Peeve Five: Loath/Loathe
This is the one that makes me groan out loud. For freakin' real.
Loath = reluctant, unwilling (adjective)
Loathe = to despise, to detest (verb)
You are NOT "loathe" to tell her something that would hurt her feelings. You are "loath" to tell her something that would hurt her feelings.
This is one I'd seen in so many places that I actually had to go to dictionary.com to make sure I wasn't wrong! I think this mistake irritates me so much because no one really says "loath to" anymore unless they're being pretentious. But when you're being pretentious and you do it wrong, it just makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about (yep, another preposition ... go me, ha).
So there we go, my top five grammar pet peeves. I also have a list of Things Not to Do When Posting a Story Online, but that'll be a whole separate post, ha.
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