Writing Journey: Evolution of a Word Nerd

TODAY IS READER QUESTION TIME:

Alexes from One Cluttered Brain asked me several all at once, and they're all sort of related, so I'm answering them together:

When did this fascination with grammar and words begin? Does it interfere much when you write something? And aren't you an editor as well? How does that work when you are trying your writing hat on? Does your editing hat ever get in the way?

Being as I grew up with a linguist as a father, conversations about words were typical dinner-table fodder.

(I thought this was normal. Apparently not.)

I don't remember ever not thinking that words and etymologies and so forth were interesting.

I also grew up with a mother who was always reading. My father used to joke that he couldn't get into his own bedroom without a library card. The master bedroom had several bookcases which were filled, stuffed, and then crammed with books.

The basement was the same. So was the kitchen. Every room in the house had books. And I mean every room. Yes, even the bathroom had a bookcase. (Not kidding.) When I moved out, guess what moved into my bedroom? Yep: more bookcases.

As a result of being the child of both a linguist and a bibliophile, I think it was pretty much inevitable that I'd develop a love of language and books.

On the other hand, the specific grammar and punctuation switch got turned on in 10th grade when I had Miss Drummond for honors English. She made those subjects suddenly make sense and be fascinating to boot!

I loved her as a teacher so much that I was her aide in 11th grade and then I took College Prep English from her in 12th. (After which, I challenged the AP test and passed with a 5, because she's just that good of a teacher.)

Even my brother, who has no interest in anything English, had her in high school and admitted that she was the only teacher who ever made grammar make sense to him. She made him get it.

(See? GRAMMAR CAN BE TAUGHT! It's not just freaks like me who can understand this stuff!)

The poor woman couldn't get rid of me. She also couldn't get rid of my family. First she had Dad as a professor at BYU, then my brother as a student, then my older sister as a student, and then me . . . twice. (Or for three years, if you count the aide thing.) Of us siblings, only one of us didn't have her as a teacher.

In college, two classes with Dr. Oaks cemented my love for all things language, whether it's grammar, usage, punctuation, or anything linguistic. But on some level, the interest has always been there thanks to Dad's PhD in linguistics and Mom's passion for books.

So on to the second part of the question: Does my word nerdiness interfere with my writing? After all, I do edit professionally as well on the side. Do they conflict? Not really. In some ways, having that background helps.

The nerdiness and internal editor are just part of who I am. Yes, there are times I put on my editor hat specifically to look at grammar and usage issues, but even in a rough draft, it's just not in me to throw in a random "less" when it should be "fewer" or to mess up "imply" and "infer." That's not how I speak or write. The rules are so ingrained that some things simply come out correctly the first time.

One thing that's easy to mess up as I type is homonyms, but that's not because I don't know the right word but because my fingers often get going on one word, and it's the wrong one, so I have to fix it later.

(So yes, even I, the person who wrote a book on the topic, mess up at times when I'm randomly throwing out a comment in on a blog or on a Facebook status, as Jessica noted so ably recently when I wrote "there" instead of "their.")

On the other hand, I do have to make a point of separating my editor side from my creative side. While I'd never write, "less times" (unless it's an intentional character quirk in dialogue), there are plenty of other editorial things I could be stressing out over, and drafting is not the time for that.

Trying to edit as I draft would be paralyzing, because writing is a creative experience. You have to let go to create, let yourself get lost in the world and the characters and the story. I can't worry about revisions and editing at that point. Those will come later.

So I let go. I take off my editor hat, knowing I'll come back and put it on another time. I love drafting. It's a ball living for a time in my own little world.

The nice part is that when I do come back for revisions with my editor hat on, I know that what I have to fix won't generally be grammar errors and spelling mistakes. (Just a small bonus, really.) That's not to say I won't have plenty of other things to fix (character motivation, plot holes, telling instead of showing, lame dialogue . . . holy moly, truly, on some days, the list goes on and on).

The one place my obsession does interfere with is reading. It's really, really hard to take off the word nerd/editor hat then, which is frustrating. I have a difficult time picking up a book and enjoying it for its own sake.

It's a rare gem that draws me in so fully that I don't notice clunky punctuation or where I don't mentally rewrite sentences or groan at a really bad typo or grammar error.

My personal favorite error I caught a few years ago: three times in the same book I found prostate instead of prostrate. Oy. Where oh, where was the proofer?! I also caught a dang funny dangling modifier in one of the Twilight books. I giggled like crazy (it implied that Bella was her own father), but obviously no one else gave a snit about it.

(Then again, I doubt I'd care the slightest bit about a dangling modifier if my books were on the NY Times list for dozens of weeks on end, sold millions of copies and were made into blockbuster movies. But I digress.)

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