The truth about writing

2 Words Forward


The Trouble With Writing

One of the reasons I wanted to write a blog about writing was to dispel the myths. Believe it or not, writers are normal, if a little eccentric, people - we have trouble with our work, we get frustrated, and we feel lost sometimes too. Another misconception about writing is that the first draft is a magnificent piece of art which only requires the slightest of tweaking to be made into the book that is sold. Want to know how good my first drafts are? They're so wonderful I actually do a full rewrite. This is not because I have difficulties with spelling and grammar - it's because my first draft is the process of the deluges and trickles that form the first writing of a story. There are times when I can't find the words I need and I put others in their place. There are others where I have a scene so clearly that it falls out of my head faster than I can type. This kind of writing leads to a very handy template for further attempts at the novel, but not the novel itself. It's problems like these which are addressed in this blog which I highly recommend to anyone who is concerned that their writing progress is abnormal or that they are not churning out books as good as Ernest Hemingway with the speed of Stephen King.

1 Word Back

I could of been an editor

The main problem with 'could of' is that it is a bastardised version of 'could've'. It is used by people who don't understand that they mean to say 'could've' or 'could have'. I encountered the problem once; I was in a class and we were workshopping a non-fiction piece by one of the students. He used the phrase 'could of' in a piece of dialogue. All of the trainee editors in the room jumped at it, myself included: 'You can't use 'could of', it's not proper English!' Now, as an editor I think I was wrong; in non-fiction pieces it's important to quote people accurately. If someone said 'could of' you should write 'could of'. Likewise, if you are writing a fictional piece and you can hear your character saying 'could of' then you should write it. Outside of dialogue, however, 'could of' will only make the writer appear  as though they don't understand the words they are using.

Of Nano and trying

2 words forward - My ode to November

So Nano has come and gone for another year. For those of you who are new to the writing game or haven't experienced the horror and ecstasy of the challenge Nano is short for National Novel Writing Month (also called Nanowrimo). Throughout the thirty days of November we fearless wordsmiths take to our keyboards and get down all the words, that's right, all the words. Well, actually 50,000 of the words and many are repeated. My point is that in one month we write 50,000 words in the form of a novel. A friend asked me the other day why we do this. I told her it's because we love to write. She then asked if anyone fudged their word count (copied crap from wikipedia or something like that) and I told her no, I've never heard of anyone doing that because it all comes back to the first reason: we love writing.
Sure, I could copy and paste a heap of words into the wordcounter on the Nanowrimo website and make it look like I'd written 50,000 words when really I just have a copy of 1984 saved to my desktop but how would I feel? There'd be no rush of adrenaline each day as I return to my project and attempt to figure out the next twist, the next happening, the appropriate reaction for my characters. Instead I would be heavy; weighted with words that hadn't poured from me onto the page. When I'd hang out with my fellow Nanoers I'd feel like a thief, someone who stole a prize that they earned. And what is the prize? The Nano site offers discounts and even bound copies of your project if you hit the 50,000 before the end of the month but, while that's pretty awesome, they are not the real prize. The real prize is the fact that you are proud of your achievement, you have conquered the 50K, you have put an idea on paper and you can now call yourself a writer when people ask what you do.
That's why I've done Nano for the past three years and that's why I'll be sweating over character profiles and chapter summaries all the way through next October and why at midnight on November 1st I'll be torn between chatting with my fellow writers and hitting the ground running on my new novel: I'm a writer and I love what I do.

1 word back - Try and read this

As well as being a writer (I'm allowed to call myself that now, see above for details) I'm also an editor. While I'll talk writing for 2 words forward, 1 word back will be dedicated to the work of taking other writers sculptures, firing them in a kiln and adding a little glaze. Today I'm going to start with a phrase that's been popping up a lot lately and has been getting to the point where I need to bite my lip to stop myself from yelling every time I come across it: 'try and ...'. But what is so harmful about 'try and ...'? Why does it elicit such a strong response? The harmful aspect is that it doesn't mean what people who write it thinks it means (as I'll explain below). The strong response is because I not only see this on facebook and twitter - places where my editing brain turns off for fear of burnout - but in published material. Even worse, a lot of those published works are really well written.
So, let's pull apart 'try and ...' and put it back together again.  If someone tells me to 'try and read this' I'll do both - I'll try and I'll read it. This is because that's what you are asking me to do. There is no option for failure, you must try and you must succeed. On the other hand if someone tells me to 'try to read this' then I'll take a shot at reading it and hope I get through it. To all the 'try and ...' users out there, I'm sure you just mean that you want me to have a go at reading something, the problem is that you're telling me to do both and I don't think that's what you mean.
For my sake and the sake of people like me who read literally please try to avoid the phrase unless you want me to try and put down your book.