I think these are very intelligent and inspirational thoughts. I know that I never identified myself as a writer so I've felt more freedom in that vicinity, but this entry encourages one to challenge themself to think differently. Certainly if I was in your shoes I'd be thinking as you are. *crosses fingers* I bet you CAN be published, but I do believe that the TRYING is the most important thing. Don't feel bad or give up if you aren't successful at first - you can't succeed if you don't even try.

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はじめまして! _{Artist, Writer/Poet, Photographer, traditional medium mostly, anime, sci-fi and the bizarre.}

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to keep in mind. At this point, I'm not even so much concerned about getting published, I just want to be submitting things. Hell, Steven King used to tack all of his rejection slips to a wall, and by the time he finally got published, he'd needed to switch from a thumbtack to a railroad spike to hold all of them! That story always gives me hope.

I understand the freedom you get from not thinking of yourself as a writer. I get that from other activities, like sewing. But you know, you probably could get published yourself someday, if you ever set your mind to it. You've got some grammatical and stylistic errors that you need to work on, but your writing has definite potential. You've got good instincts in that regard -- I've seen you pull off things in your fanfiction that even more seasoned writers would have trouble with.

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I just figured out that there is a grammar disc with one of my textbooks, so I plan to play with that some. Honestly, how on Earth is a person supposed to remember grammer that they learned almost 20 years ago? I really don't have a clue where my mistakes are even, I count on the word program to catch it for me. Recently, I've been told that the program is fairly flawed when it comes to spotting grammar mistakes. Greeeaat. What's a "stylistic error?"

I also don't know where the line is between one's own STYLE and an error. For example, we are told not to begin sentences with "and" or "but". However, once you LEARN proper English then that is not an issue. So... *shrugs*

I appreciate the feedback and encouragement very much! It's true, Steven nearly gave up, it was his wife who kept him going. I like that part of the story too.

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はじめまして! _{Artist, Writer/Poet, Photographer, traditional medium mostly, anime, sci-fi and the bizarre.}

You heard right about Word -- I always disable the grammar checker myself. Not only does it not catch everything, but sometimes it's even wrong! Really, the only failsafe way to check for mistakes is to have your work looked over by somebody who knows their stuff. I strongly believe in using betas/editors before posting or submitting things, no matter how good of a writer one is. (Hell, even English profs edit each other's work before they publish it!)

A stylistic error is a mistake that violates the standard rules or conventions of writing (and of course, those rules will change depending on what you're writing!), even if it isn't necessarily grammatically incorrect. For example, a lot of new writers will go out of their way to avoid writing the word said. So instead, you find a lot of dialogue that looks like this:

"What's the matter, Charlie?" Wonka interrogated.

"I have a maths test tomorrow," Charlie moaned.

"I always liked math," Wonka mused.

And so on, until the poor reader wants to stab their eyes out. The thing is, "said" is an invisible word in fiction. Your readers won't notice if you use said 1,000 times in a story, as long as you don't repeat it twice in the same sentence. The same thing goes for character's names. However, a reader will notice any other word used in place of said, or any phrase, or epiteph, used in place of a character's name. Every time you use another word in place of said, you run the risk of momentarily throwing the reader out of the story while they process it. And generally speaking, that's not a good thing. As fiction writers, we usually want the readers to be so intrigued by the story that they're not paying any attention to the way it's written. Now sometimes, of course, a skilled writer will deliberately violate a stylistic rule, because they know which effect it's going to have on the story. It's kind of similar to the way some artists will mess with perspective or whatnot to achieve a certain effect. Really, it's just like your example of using "and" or "but" at the beginning of a sentence -- once you know the rules, you know when you can break them.

To my mind, that's the defining difference between a writer's STYLE and a stylistic error -- if a writer breaks a convention on purpose, it's part of their style. If they do it by mistake, it's an error.

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That was extremely helpful and fascinating. I also plead guilty to commiting it. XD

Thank you, I'll be more careful about that. It's true that I worry about breaking up my words probably too much. I didn't at first and then I got snobby about it and then I realized that there were probably some words which it wouldn't matter if I repeated them. But...I wasn't sure.

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はじめまして! _{Artist, Writer/Poet, Photographer, traditional medium mostly, anime, sci-fi and the bizarre.}

I'm glad you found it fascinating. It's dangerous to get me started on topics like that -- when questions of grammar and style come up, I automatically switch into English teacher mode. *looks embarrassed* Thanks for taking my lecturing in stride.

You know, if you ever do have questions like that, where you're not sure about something, you can always e-mail me about them. I LOVE talking about this stuff -- there's a reason I beta for so many people!

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You bet! I am ALL about grammer right now. I want to get better. I don't have to be perfect, but I'm into brushing up right now, going to school and studying a disc that came with my English book. Antecedent is now back in my vocabulary. I've been drawing and writing on instinct and I have been shy about getting critique but if I want to get better, take pride in my work then I have to face those things. You can plead, "I don't know what I'm doing." for only so long I think.

Oh yes, you're old offer to beta has most definately crossed my mind. It's so interesting that you LOVE talking about such stuff. It's still a bit gobble-dee-gook as the disc goes through it with me. Guess I feel the same way about comics and astrophysics though. I mean, the last time I had grammar was in the seventh grade. It wasn't covered much after that. Part of what prompted me was the marks my English teacher was putting on my papers. Nothing bad, but still I'd furrow my brow and think, "Huh? There shouldn't be anything wrong with this near as I can tell."

The best part of talking to you about it is that 1. I trust you and 2. It's true, you're not an English snob.

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はじめまして! _{Artist, Writer/Poet, Photographer, traditional medium mostly, anime, sci-fi and the bizarre.}

What can I say, we've all got things we get passionately geeky about! Middle school grammar could be enough to put you off it for life, though -- in my grammar class today (which, thank GOD, my advisor just told me I could waive!) the prof mentioned that most high school grammar classes don't reflect any of the knowledge that linguists have about the subject. That's akin to science teachers trying to teach physics without knowing anything about what actual physicists are studying! It's just absurd! And it's sad, too, because grammar really is a fascinating topic, and a very political one.

I'm glad you don't think I'm an English snob. I try very hard not to be. When I'm beta'ing, my usual policy with stylistic mistakes is to point them out, and then describe why they're generally not used, so that the writer can make their own judgement call about it. i'm a pretty thorough beta, and I think that can be intimidating for some people, but at the same time, I learned how to edit in my classes. By the time I'm done looking over a story, I want it to be strong enough that the author could submit it to a magazine (not that most magazines would want Wonka slash, but still, if they did . . .)

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I came here to thank you for the shout and got totally lost in your favorites. Found good stuff exploring.

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はじめまして! _{Artist, Writer/Poet, Photographer, traditional medium mostly, anime, sci-fi and the bizarre.}