Archive for June, 2009

Why Writers Must Know Grammar

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

It surprises me how many aspiring fiction writers don’t know a thing about grammar. The majority can’t identify the eight Parts of Speech, explain when you would use ‘well’ instead of ‘good,’ or understand why you shouldn’t end a sentence with a prepositional phrase.

I am not a grammarian myself. There are many rules about language structure that I don’t understand, despite having studied grammar independently, taken a few college courses, and taught it to children. I forget, for instance, the difference between an embedded clause and a relative clause (or embedded relative clauses?). I could use more practice in sentence diagramming. I sometimes mix up British and American usage.

Like many writers, I make mistakes. There are also things that I have learned to do incorrectly. For example, it wasn’t too long ago that I broke myself of the habit of using an ellipsis (…) instead of a dash (–) to indicate an interruption. For some reason known only to my muse, I occasionally write her when I mean him or him when I mean her, not because I’m confused by the difference, but by some sort of defunct muscle memory.

My point is that I need a copy editor and a proofreader as much as anyone. However, I do not expect a copy editor to do my writing for me. I know the basics, and I make an effort to always be learning and practicing.

There are many writers who know next to nothing about grammar or punctuation. That’s okay as we all have to start somewhere. However, it is a problem when writers believe that they don’t need to know grammar, either because they don’t recognize how difficult their writing is to understand or because they assume it is the job of a copy editor to fix their mistakes.

Let’s dispel this myth! If a publishing house wants to print your manuscript, an editor will help you make your story better, a copy editor will go line-by-line through your work, and a proof reader will make sure all is set for print, but it is not the responsibility of any of these professionals to teach you how to write.

A writer who cannot form coherent sentences is not going to get published. At the very least, every writer should know the basics of grammar and punctuation. You should know all the Parts of Speech, what they mean, and how to identify them in a sentence. You should understand what a sentence is and how it differs from a clause. You should know how to use all punctuation marks, including commas, semicolons, dashes, apostrophes and ellipses correctly. Otherwise, your manuscript is going to resemble a garbled mess that no one will want to wade through in order to find the story!

At least have a grammar book! Everyone should. It wouldn’t hurt to have several.

Not all grammar books are stuffy and hard to understand. The basic ones are like encyclopedias, but some are written like narratives and can be entertaining. The best grammar books (in my opinion) are a mix of the two and explains the whens and whys with really clear and interesting examples.

My favorite grammarian is Grammar Girl, or Mignon Fogarty, who was one of the first people I started following on Twitter. I love her because she responds to my questions. She has a podcast and a best selling book. In fact, you can win a copy of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by entering this contest at Writing the Cyber Highway (ends June 13, 2009).

You can keep up with Grammar Girl in the following ways:

* On Twitter: @GrammarGirl
* Subscribe to Grammar Girl’s daily tip newsletter.
* Visit Grammar Girl’s website and listen to the podcast!

Writing is a craft. If you are serious about writing, you need to understand the structure of your discipline. A writer who ignores grammar is like a chef who ignores ingredients. You need to understand the elements of language if you are going to tell a story you expect anyone to read! Doing so will not only make you a better writer, but also make the process of writing more enjoyable.

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Beloved Fantasy Author David Eddings Passes Away at 77

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

I learned via Michael Pinto on Twitter and an article from The Guardian that David Eddings has passed away. He was 77.

David Eddings is a fantasy author most famous for the epic fantasy series the Belgariad, which was five novels in length, and its sequel the Mallorean, which was also five novels. He wrote high epic fantasy at a time when it was an underserved genre. His works were inspired by The Lord of the Rings, and followed a similar (now common) story outline of a simple farmboy whose is really a prince and whose destiny was to become a sorcerer, take the throne of his kingdom, and defeat an evil god according to an ancient prophesy. Of course, Garion wants nothing to do with any of that.

The story had several lovable elements, most of which were in the characters. The sorcerer Belgarath plays a role similar to Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, but doesn’t take himself as seriously and sometimes needs firm reminders from his daughter Polgara (also a sorceress) not to be a scoundrel. One of the most memorable characters is Silk, a thief who is the funniest character in the cast and also the most disreputable (but in a good way). One of my personal favorites was CeNedra, the princess destined to be Garion’s bride, who is spoiled, obsessed with vanity and wealth, but comes to love poor farmboy Garion (much to her dismay) without knowing he is her betrothed, and upon accepting the situation shapes up to be a better person in order to support him.

The Belgariad was a lovable story, as evidenced by the fact that I can recall it so well having not touched it in over ten years.

Of course it wasn’t perfect, and David Eddings did borrow a lot from Tolkien, which is obvious to anyone who has read both series, but he made his stories unique by poking fun at tropes in the fantasy genre, writing viciously funny dialogue (his characters were consistently irreverant toward powerful people), and providing a fantasy world rich in medieval elements Tolkien didn’t mess with, such as knights, mythological gods, hunts, economics, and politics. The books’ themes also included a slew of commentary about the relationships between men and women, which made them funny and more relatable for young girls. They were a delight when I was reading them in middle school.

David Eddings grew up in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, which is also where I grew up and live today. According to The Guardian, Eddings saw himself as a story teller who hoped to inspire reading in young people:

Eddings was always delighted, he said, to hear that he’d turned non-readers into readers. “I look upon this as perhaps my purpose in life,” he said in 1997. “I am here to teach a generation or two how to read. After they’ve finished with me and I don’t challenge them any more, they can move on to somebody important like Homer or Milton.”

I did move on (to both Homer and Milton), but I still have some of Eddings’ books (the exact same ones I read in middle school) on my shelves. They are in poor shape. I read Eddings before I read Tolkien, and although he was not the author who inspired me to read and love fantasy (that was CS Lewis in the third grade, followed by DragonLance in the fifth grade), he was one of the authors whose work I reread three or four times, carried around with me, and occasionally lost in that space between the bed and the wall. I haven’t read any of his work in awhile, and doubtless I would find much to critque in his stories (I vaguely remember thinking the Mallorean was too similar to the Belgariad), but he will always be one of my most nostalgic and beloved authors.

David Eddings, you touched a generation of young fantasy readers. You were one who inspired me to write. You will be greatly missed.

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Review of the Palm Pre: Why I Switched to Sprint!

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Today, June 6, 2009, I bought the Palm Pre mobile smartphone from Sprint. I work in social media as an analyst and write for a living, so it’s really about time I jumped on the band wagon and got a decent phone (yes, I can blog from it!).

I live in Bellevue, Washington. My local Sprint store sold out of the Palm Pre at 9:05 am. They opened at 8:00am. I was the second to last person to get one of these awesome phones! Yes, I had to stand in line, but not very long; maybe 20 minutes. I didn’t camp out or anything.

I spent another hour in the store playing with it.

The Palm Pre is my first smartphone and I am very excited about it! In fact, it is my first ‘cool’ phone. My previous phone was a Samsung A707 which I bought in 2007 (it came out in 2006). The exciting feature with that phone was that it was ‘flat’ and fit in my pocket and had a color screen (hawt). After having it for about a year, I cracked the front screen by stepping on it (oops). Since then it has been occasionally unreliable (unless the reason for that is AT&T’s network suffering from iPhone over-usage).

Here is a picture of my old phone:

My old Samsung on Twitpic

I didn’t get a better phone. Affordable phones required new contracts and cool phones required data plans at $30 added to my already too-high AT&T bill. AT&T has been raping me. I pay over $75 a month on the LOWEST voice plan ($39.99) they have. I don’t use my phone to talk much. I use 0-10 Anytime Minutes a month and have several thousand rollover minutes stored up for no purpose. I do text message, though, so I bought text messaging for an additional $20 a month. This brings my bill to $60 without taxes and other fees (the grand total being $75).

I was sold unlimited text messaging. I didn’t even know they had other options. It is ridiculous because I don’t text that much and any sales person should have seen that when looking at my bills. I even complained about it when I bought my last phone. They could have informed me that there was an option of 200 text messages for $5 a month, which is too little, or 1500 text messages for $15 a month, which is too high, but they didn’t. If AT&T had made an effort to set me up with the best plan for me and make me happy, I might have felt better about the whole thing, but as it was, I felt they were just out to sell me as high as they could.

It doesn’t upset me, but it’s not loyalty-inspiring.

They could have informed me at ANY time how they could SAVE ME money on a different plan. All they have to do is build a robot to look at people who regularly aren’t using all their minutes or text messages and inform those people that better options are available. This would have created brand loyalty for me.

As it is, we have a business relationship. My contract with AT&T is up in three weeks and I feel no reason not to go elsewhere.

So I am moving to Sprint! While I was cruising plans on their website, a representative contacted me via chat. Cool. I talked to a real person (though that person is probably not named ‘Jessica’ despite the IM label). This sales rep helped me figure out that I could cut my regular bill in HALF with a Sprint plan if I did not want a smartphone. With a smartphone, I could still save $30 a month on service over comparable plans offered by AT&T or Verizon. I haven’t heard of any Network Coverage complaints for Sprint in my area, and the word on the street is that customer service from Sprint has soared to fangasm amazing since David Hesse became CEO and presumably fired all the surly, rude customer reps that worked for Sprint a few years ago. I was sold.

So, my dear Sprint, as you have addressed and corrected your problems, and because you have been good to me, you have won yourself at least one new customer who will blog your praises to other potential customers.

Also, you have a HOT phone.

I shall now gush out a review of the Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre – Sprint’s Hawt New Phone

The Sprint Palm Pre on Twitpic

I decided I wanted a Palm Pre while looking for a boring phone to replace my current boring phone with a better rate plan. I read about the Palm Pre while researching Sprint (against all competitors) and couldn’t believe the phone was coming out at the end of the week I happened to be looking for a new phone. I had wanted a smart phone for awhile. I had considered the iPhone because of the spiffy apps, but I wanted a keyboard. And lo and behold! The Palm Pre has both.

It should be obvious that I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to mobile technology, but as a writer I do my research and I can tell you why so far I think the Palm Pre is awesome.

As a writer, I need a phone I can use to write to the web. BlackBerry has been tempting for years, but I wasn’t motivated to get one because of the price tag. Also, I had to ask myself: ‘is email really all that important to me?’ Then the iPhone came out in all its sexiness. I like the iPhone’s pretty touch screen and the lovely apps, but I still wanted a physical keyboard, and the iPhone was also very expensive.

When I learned about the Palm Pre, I did even more research. People have been buzzing about it for months.

The Palm Pre has been dubbed the ‘iPhone Killer.’ It is Palm’s first market-competitive phone in ten years. It is Sprint’s greatest hope. Here are the top ten things I like about the Palm Pre (in no particular order):

  1. It has a physical QUERTY keyboard
  2. It has a touch screen
  3. It has apps like the iPhone
  4. You can run multiple apps at a time (which you can’t on the iPhone)
  5. You can load and check multiple email addresses
  6. Service plans are cheaper with Sprint than competitors
  7. You can surf and post to websites and social media (including your blog)
  8. It has a music player and syncs with iTunes
  9. It is sleek and pretty
  10. It runs on a faster network than the iPhone and has better coverage (at least where I live)


Extra kicks: The Palm Pre comes with a USB charger as well as an outlet adapter. This means I can charge it on my laptop if I really need to (of course that would drain my laptop battery if I am not plugged in) as well as plug into an outlet. The Palm Pre also comes with earphones (albeit, not very comfortable, but good sound quality and I go through earphones like nobody’s business so I enjoy an extra pair!)

Drawbacks to the Palm Pre are minimal. I’ve noticed that sometimes I cancel out of applications without meaning to. The software may be oversensitive to touch, but it is just as likely user error as I am not used to the touch screen. The keyboard is also quite small, which has led some people to wish the Palm Pre also had a virtual keyboard like the iPhone, but I like the Palm Pre’s keyboard. I’ve had it a few hours and I am used to it already. I find physical keyboards to be much faster and easier than virtual keyboards.

Best of all is that the Pre Palm is with Sprint and therefore more affordable! I did a lot of research on Sprint before purchasing, so I can break it down for you. The best thing for me is that Sprint offers packaged service plans where you can reduce Voice minutes and still have unlimited text, media, messaging, and data. You can get unlimited voice, 900 Anytime Minutes, or 450 Anytime Minutes. This plan set-up is ideal for me as I don’t talk on the phone all that much and would be overpaying for Voice with other carriers.

I have the Everything Plan with 450 voice minutes for $69.99. This includes unlimited weekend minutes, unlimited evening minutes that start at 7:00 pm, unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, and unlimited messaging and data. This allows me to use the phone less for talking and more for texting, web surfing, and writing, which is what I really want to do. Woot! If I did want unlimited talking, the total would be $99.99 for Sprint’s Simply Everything Plan, which is still a lot cheaper than competitor prices.

Some people have reservations about Sprint as a carrier. I researched this too. For coverage, as with ALL carriers, reliability with Sprint can depend on where you live. Network coverage with Sprint is great in Seattle. It is great most places, I hear, especially populated places, but of course YMMV. I am not sure, but it may be less reliable out of the United States (AT&T is said to be the best out of the country because it runs off of a GSM network as opposed to CDMA). Generally, Sprint has great nationwide coverage.

As far as customer service is concerned, Sprint used to have a very poor reputation, but since Dan Hesse became CEO, customer service has changed a lot. The poor customer service rating Sprint received in the past was a motivating factor for me to change to Sprint, not because I want poor customer service, but because I know they are concerned about that now and working very hard to address it. This signals to me that I can expect great customer service from Sprint. So far it has been everything I hoped!

For people who do not want to switch to Sprint, the Palm Pre will probably become available to other carriers sometime around Christmas (I heard 6 months). I don’t know the details, though. Still, I think you will be paying more with other carriers (AT&T and Verizon) unless they revise their price plans in order to be competitive.

Well that’s all I got! All I can say in conclusion is that I love this phone, and that I am thrilled to be able to write, read, edit, and respond to comments to my blog from my Palm Pre mobile from wherever I am at!

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Internet Drama: Why Writers Need to Be Aware of Social Media

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

I work in social media and online reputation management as a community intelligence analyst for Visible Technologies. Typically I work with internet data from blogs, forums, and social networking sites for Fortune 500 companies, but today I was reminded that social media affects everybody–especially writers.

I hang out on forums, blog, Tweet, participate in memberships, manage websites, moderate some newsgroups,write for Livejournal, etc. and so forth. I can tell you that social communities on the internet are as close-knit as social communities anywhere. They are just…better connected.

People know each other on forums, and despite what you may think, there is a culture on every website as well as rules for behavior (granted, these vary by community). A lot of folks forget this. It is easy to assume that having an internet username protects you with a shroud of anonymity. Furthermore, the physical distance makes people feel like they can say whatever they want without consequences. But this is an illusion. The people you speak to online are real people. If you are a professional, you shouldn’t say things to them on a blog or forum that you wouldn’t say to them in real life… in a public setting… where are all your friends are watching.

In fact, I would argue that behaving poorly online is worse than behaving poorly in ‘real life’. Why? Because written words are immortal. They cut deeper than spoken words because they can be read over and over. They can also be passed around. And trust me: they are.

As a writer (published or unpublished), there are some things you should never do:

1. Insult your readers, even if they gave a nasty review of your work.
2. Get in fights with other writers, editors, or readers, especially over petty issues.
3. Belittle editors, copyeditors, agents, or anyone else in the publishing industry (They know each other and they will share! Besides, shouldn’t you appreciate the people helping you to publish your work?)
4. Act like a child or a prima donna, especially about your work (a superiority complex is not attractive)

Blogs can be particularly dangerous for writers. They are very attractive because they incorporate what we love best: writing for an audience. But you have to be careful. It is a misconception that a blog is a “personal space.” It is not the ideal place to vent frustration. Blogs are public forums. When you write in a blog, you are publishing to a global audience. Forums also are public venues. Posting a rant, throwing a fit, or participating in a flame war is not advisable!

This isn’t to say that you can’t engage in reasoned arguments or can’t say how your feel. Just don’t say anything about anyone you wouldn’t say to their face…in front of a camera.

The reason for caution is that drama incites interest, and anyone who sees what you wrote can ‘move it’ with a simple copy and paste. You may not even know about it. The majority of people who read threads on forums and blogs don’t comment themselves. They may not have a membership, or prefer not to incite wrath by getting involved, but they might say something about it somewhere else!

There are in fact blogs, forums, and communities dedicated to harvesting dramatic spats and republishing them for the purpose of heckling (in fandom, a facet of social media that fiction writers should be familiar with, internet drama of ‘point-and-laugh’ entertainment value is called a wank.)

So if you value your online reputation (you should), don’t be douchebag. As a writer, your words represent you. Be careful with them. Control them. If you don’t, you may be exposing a poor side of yourself to the people you most want to impress, and you may not even realize it.

As your mother taught you, online or anywhere, always mind your Ps and Qs. When in doubt, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all!

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