List Time

Therefore, it must be a Monday. Or a holiday. Or both.

• With my colleagues over at Precision Editing Group, I'm speaking at The League of Utah Writers Roundup. The five of us are teaching an all-day workshop on writing, plotting, and editing on Friday, September 17. The other instructors are H. B. (Heather) Moore, Josi Kilpack, Julie Wright, and Lu Ann Staheli. It's gonna be awesome.
• I'm also teaching several classes at the Writers Conference sponsored by the American Fork Arts Council. They'll have a bookstore at the conference. Chocolate Never Faileth should be there for sale! Woot! See details and find out how to register HERE.
• Speaking of chocolate, we're a month away from the cookbook hitting shelves!!! (Yippee!!!)
• You can even pre-order Chocolate Never Faileth from Deseret Book now!
• Did you hear about that chocolate cookbook that's coming out soon? :-D
• And that a companion DVD will also be sold? On it, you can see me talking too fast and having fun with chocolate and my buddy Sarah M. Eden.
• Recently discovered a cool new product for people in LDS leadership positions: planners specifically targeted to help presidency members keep things organized and running smoothly. (Cool idea, no?) Right now, the company is giving away the Primary planner for FREE to anyone willing to try it out and give feedback before they launch their 2011 line. To get yours, check out LDS Planners by ID Clare.
• #2 finished Mockingjay last night. I'm having fun discussing it with her ("Did you guess who Katniss would end up with? What did you think about X? Did you like the end?" As much as I hate my kids growing up, days like this are real perks: I love discussing ideas and books and all kinds of things with them. (It's like they're becoming real people or something . . .)
• I recently booked #4's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. She keeps hugging me in thanks, saying, "It's going to be perfect!" Her effusive gratitude may be the only thing keeping me from retching at the idea of entering that place again.
• Happy Labor Day!

Top 5 Writers I Admire & Why

Continuing my Top 5 series I started HERE (based loosely on WD's Top 10 in the current issue):

Top 5 Writers I Admire, and Why

1) Barbara Kingsolver

She is a true word smith, an artist. Her characters are deep and layered. Her plots are complex. And her language . . . dang, there are times reading The Poisonwood Bible where I reread paragraphs just to experience the beauty again, to roll the words around in my head. After finishing it, I put the book down half elated, half depressed because it was so good . . . and I'd never be that good.

But she's given me a level to shoot for. Even if I never make it, at least I'm shooting high and will get higher than I would have otherwise.

I admire writers who care about the craft and not just about getting published. Bestsellers sometimes sit on their laurels and let the craft slide a bit, knowing that their name will sell copies no matter what's inside the covers. Writers like Kingsolver don't do that.

2) Jodi Piccoult

I haven't read all her books, but every one I have read has done two things: 1) moved me and 2) made me think. Neither is easy to accomplish, but she excels at both. Like Kingsolver, but in a different way, her voice and words are beautiful.

I also love how she finds seemingly random topics to write about and researches them. It's the epitome of writer curiosity (and justifies my fascination with weird research topics).

3) Charles Dickens

My senior course as an English major was on him, so I spent an entire semester digging into his works, including some of his lesser-known ones (like Dombey and Son and Our Mutual Friend). I love watching how he changed as a writer over the course of his career. I love his vivid characters. How he manages to make big social and moral statements without preaching. Instead, he makes the reader feel in the injustice or the hate.

4) Jane Austen

Brilliant humorist who could poke fun at the specific period of and society she lived in while creating timeless characters and stories. The nerdy English major in me also loves how she deliberately poked fun at the two literary periods she straddled. (One of these days I'll blog about that. And some future day, I will visit her home and see her writing desk!)

5) L. M. Montgomery

Obviously. My love of her work began at the age of thirteen. My interest in her as a person grew as her journals were compiled, annotated, and published over the course of many years. My admiration, compassion, and, yes, even pity, for her developed as I read them. She was very flawed, very human. But she was also exceedingly talented and faced big challenges. Arguably, she's had the greatest influence on me as a writer than anyone else.

Who are some of the writers you admire most? Why?

WNW: A Rant: Could NOT Care Less

Hearing (or reading) I could care less is one of my eye-twitching peeves, because it states the exact opposite of what the person means.

I could care less means that the speaker/writer could conceivably care less than they do at this moment.

So . . . they DO care. At least a little. Because they COULD care less.

So it's possible for them to care less than they do right now.

Yeah, not even ALMOST what they mean.

Try again:

What they mean is that they care so little that there is no way for them to care any less than they already do. There is no caring here. At all. None. Zip.

Ergo, they could NOT or couldn't care less.

John Cleese says it better. He's also fun to watch while ranting about it:

Cut to the Chase

Our house has a pretty miserable excuse for a tooth fairy.

Like one of the last times #4, thrilled over her latest lost tooth, put it under her pillow. I fully meant to engage the tooth fairy on her job before I went to bed. I really did. But I was tired. And I forgot.

In the morning, #4 came to me with a sad little furrow on her brow. "The tooth fairy didn't come."

#3, who is older and wiser and knows a bit about the ways of the world, helped distract #4 while I ran around the house for change and sneaked it into her room.

Turns out the tooth fairy just pushed the money into an awkward corner deep under her pillow so she didn't see it.

Phew.

Or something.

Yesterday, #3 lost one of her last teeth. An hour or so later, I walked into my office to find a 5X7 piece of red cardstock on my desk and a note from her on it:

Can I have a buck?

Plus a smiley face . . . and her tooth.

Smart gal. Might as well cut to the chase, get your cash, and not risk Mom forgetting to whip the tooth fairy into action.

Or something.

Top 5 Essentials to a Writer's Life

Totally stealing this idea from the current (Sept '10) Writer's Digest. It's their "Big 10" issue, where every article and department has a theme of 10.

One section has ten best-selling writers, each given a question with their top 10 answers. I'm going to answer some of those myself, only keep the answers to five instead of ten. (I'm no Jodi Piccoult.)

Top 5 Essentials to a Writer's Life

1) The Right Tools

This definitely includes a computer, because you simply cannot function in the modern publishing industry without one. That is, unless you're Ray Bradbury (who still insists on using a typewriter). But he's Ray Bradbury.

Some writers prefer drafting in longhand, so their tools include a notebook and pen or pencil. I can't do that, in large part because my handwriting is atrocious. One of my best tools ever is my Alphasmart Neo. I've done more drafting on that puppy than almost anywhere else, and it's made drafting possible in places a laptop or other device wouldn't be convenient.

I'd include books under this category. A writer must read. A writer must research. Books are the lifeblood of a good writer.

2) Brainless Time

This is time when my brain can wander around and be creative, thinking ahead to maybe what scene will come next, how to solve this plot problem, what this character is really like. If I use my brainless time wisely, I'll be ready to crank out 1,000 words next time I'm at the keyboard.

Brainless time is critical for anyone who isn't a full-time writer. (In other words, those of us not lucky enough to have big blocks of time to write. Or, most of us.)

3) A Solid Internet Connection

This can be both a blessing and a curse: if I'm not careful, I can "just" check e-mail or "just" read one blog, and next thing I know, two hours are shot, with nothing written. That said, e-mail is how I communicate with my editor, how I submit articles, how I communicate with my readers, how I, oh, blog. It's how I stay up-to-date on the industry and trends. It's a must.

4) Rewards

These can be small, for daily goals (I get a piece of chocolate if I finish this scene/chapter/reach my word count) or big (I get a massage when I finish drafting this book). Or somewhere in between. Really, it's scary how well bribery works on your inner writer. It's such a baby.

5) Writer Friends

If I didn't have friends who are as weird and loopy as I am, friends who get me and the way I think, who have been there and understand both the highs and lows of writing and publishing, I'd completely lose my mind. The act of writing is solitary; I desperately need links to writer friends to breathe life back in to me.

What are your essentials?

WNW: Rules? Who Says?

Several people have asked me recently about the rules of grammar and usage. Who makes them? What determines what a rule is? When and why and can we break them?

To answer that, first, we have to back up a bit.

Language evolves; we all know that. Take a look at the opening line of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original, and your eyes will glaze over. (That is English? What the . . . )

My dad has the first paragraph memorized, and when he recites it, it sounds stinkin' cool . . . but nothing like English.

My History of the English Language class was taught, as I've mentioned before, not by a linguist as it should have been, but by a well-meaning but ignorant literature professor who had no clue what the material meant. (Fortunately, I could go to Dad to figure out what the HECK she was teaching.)

But the workbook was helpful. It gave us exercises to show how the language had gradually changed in very predictable ways (if this vowel came after this consonant, it changed into this one). We'd apply the changes to Old English sentences and get Middle English ones. Then we'd get a new set of rules, apply them and, assuming we'd done the previous set correctly, we'd end up with Modern English.

It was way cool, especially to see how the changes weren't random, but very systematic.

We did similar things with sentences in a current dialect: BEV, or Black English Vernacular. Such "street" talk may sound random and just wrong, but even it is governed by its own rules (whether the speakers know it or not).

That was a lesson in a simple linguistic concept:

No dialect is inherently better or worse than another. They all have quirks and rules and structure. There is nothing in and of a standard dialect that makes it better than another . . .

Except for the fact that those who are educated have picked the standard as the dialect of the educated. They've selected it as the "correct" dialect, for lack of a better term.

Therefore, to be taken seriously in school, jobs, and other settings, a person must know the standard dialect and know its rules.

If you break the rules of the standard dialect in a situation where the standard is called for, you risk losing credibility and looking uneducated.

But break the rules of the standard by speaking your home-town dialect with family and friends, and that's totally fine. That dialect is what's expected of you in that environment.

Most of us have several of these "registers" (sort of like mini dialects) that we use in different situations. For example, I'd tell the same story to a gal pal very differently than I would to a police officer or my parents or one of my children. In each situation, I'd slip into a different register, using different vocabulary, sentences lengths, etc.

Okay, so back to the standard dialect and THE RULES:

The rules change gradually over time. Note the over time part.

A true change can take literally decades before it's accepted as a new standard.

So who accepts it as the new standard? Essentially, if the majority of educated, standard-dialect speakers view the change as an acceptable usage, it's considered a new rule.

Forty or so years ago, parents constantly corrected children asking, "Can I go to the bathroom?" with, "May I go to the bathroom?"

But the word can has since taken on a definition beyond ability. It also implies permission. Today, you'll occasionally run into someone old-school who insists on the old definition, but kids today will grow up with the new one.

Recently we watched an old movie that had a moment using can in the old sense, with an adult correcting the child, and my kids were genuinely confused as to what the problem was. (And these are well-read, smart kids, if I say so myself.) The rule has simply changed. Can I go is perfectly acceptable now.

Another rule that's on its way out but has a few die-hard people holding on is whom (and its cousin, whomever). There's a funny scene on The Office about when to use whomever, and it's a great example of how the general (educated!) public has almost entirely lost the meaning of whom. (Pam, the secretary, knows the rule. Michael, the manager, doesn't. Then again, I wouldn't call Michael educated . . .)

Today, whom is so rarely used that in my own writing, I avoid any sentence structure that would call for it, because it would draw attention to itself. Can you imagine Kim from Band of Sisters asking "To whom does this straw belong?" Um, no.

Other books, including the new Mockingjay, use who in places where the old rule required whom, which again shows how things are changing and how we're getting pretty darn close to having who being acceptable in every situation. (But not in everyone's book, quite yet. I'd give it another ten years.)

All of this is why, in casual conversation and on blog posts, I don't worry about broken rules and the like. Those aren't situations (or registers) that require the rules, such as they are, to be kept.

But in professional situations, such as in articles and novels and the like, I tend to lean on the side of being conservative, to be sure that my colleagues, readers, and reviewers are aware that yes, I am well-versed in the standard dialect and know its rules.

And this is precisely why I freaked out when a copy editor added a lay/lie error to one of my books. I caught it at the last minute (phew!). And yes, I know 99% of readers likely either wouldn't notice or care. But I do. And I know that there are readers who do care.

I also know that the distinction between lay/lie is dying, but, to quote Monty Python, it isn't quite dead yet.

So it's a good idea to learn the rules, including what's gradually changing and how close the changes are to being considered standard. Then use that knowledge in speech and writing when the register is appropriate.

Hanging out with friends, I could well say, "Me and my sister went to the store," but if I'm talking to a prospective employer, I'd rephrase it as, "My sister and I went to the store."

Because I know the rule and the expectations surrounding the standard.

Lots of rules are bent all the time, and you can definitely get on those bandwagons, but if you're hoping to be taken seriously in a professional writing capacity, you do need to know the "real" rules of the standard and know how to apply them.

But then you can have fun breaking them in dialogue, because your characters can speak in whatever register and dialect they want.

NOT an Anne Freak

I'll be back with my regular schedule soon. For today, here's a favorite post of mine from waaaay back, from March 12, 2007.

NOT an Anne Freak

I know this may come as a shock to many people. To many of my close friends, in fact.

But I am not an Anne of Green Gables freak.

Sure, I have every single one of the Anne books. They're all dog-eared and nearly memorized. I own all the movies except for the last one, which is a vile thing that should never have been made. (Any self-respecting fan knows what I'm talking about, and I could go on a rampage about the timeline, the characters, the technology, and the sheer adulteration of all things Montgomery, but I'll spare you.)

I was introduced to Anne in the eighth grade. It was the year when L.M. Montgomery's books were being republished after a long time of being out of print, and I scooped them up as quickly as they were being reprinted (and as quickly as my allowance and babysitting money let me). I remember the excitement of buying Rilla of Ingleside at the Farrer Middle School book fair.

My closest friends were doing the same, and we were all living the Anne life. We took long walks through nature and watched sunsets and ate cookies and had tea parties the way we imagined Anne and Diana might have. We started (okay, I started) a creative writing club based on Anne's.

But there was a big difference in how the rest of them viewed our activities. While they imagined themselves as being Anne, I imagined myself as her creator.

Forget Anne; I was Lucy Maud Montgomery!

Oh, I liked Anne. I still do. But I wanted to be the writer who made her up. I wanted to create a character and stories. I wanted the paper and pencil in my hands (or the keys of the typewriter under my fingers).

To this day, I have an entire shelf in my office that carries my LMM books. And it has a lot more than Anne; it has all of her books that I began collecting in eighth grade. At some point (when I really, really trust them) I'll let my daughters borrow them.

In addition to Anne, there's Pat and Emily and Marigold and Kilmeny and The Story Girl and Jane and Valancy and The Tangled Web and a slew of short stories. There's an autobiography. There's five volumes of journals. There's a CD of photographs and information about LMM's life. There's a first edition Windy Poplars. There's a volume that includes poetry and other writings that pre-date Anne.

If I'm being perfectly truthful, Anne doesn't even make the top three of my favorite LMM heroines. [2010 note: Those would be Rilla, Emily, and Valancy.]

To me, Anne is only a slice of who Maud really was. (No, she didn't go by Lucy. She hated that name.) For that matter, she only wrote eight books about Anne because the public demanded it. Even she got tired of Anne. Ever wonder why she started writing about Anne's KIDS?

I love learning about who she really was, what her life was like. How it differed from her books. (VERY MUCH.)

Some day I'd love to go to Canada and visit places that are special to her.

And no, it wouldn't necessarily be the Green Gables house, although that might be fun. I'd prefer the manses where she spent her married life and did the majority of her writing, and that might mean not visiting Prince Edward Island at all. Instead I'd go to Leaskdale and Norval, both not too far from Toronto, on the mainland. I'd visit her final house, which she aptly named Journey's End.

If I ever do go to PEI, I'll be sure to go to Park Corner and check out the little nail by the stairs that she used to measure herself on each time she visited her cousins. Those are the little human elements that make her real to me.

LMM has had such an impact on me that I've noticed phrases, characters, and even plot lines in my own work that hearken to hers--unintentionally. My computer is even named after her. (Maud, of course, not Lucy.)

As a nod, I try to read one of her books each year.

[2010 Note: Up next is Rilla of Ingleside, to me, the best of the Anne series.]