I’m going to talk about a controversial topic here. Some of you may get angry, stop talking to me, and block me on our shared social networks. This post is about the Oxford comma. If you have strong feelings about it, you’ll notice that I used one two sentences ago.

The Oxford comma and I go way back. In elementary school (“grammar school” — ha!), I first became acquainted with the little guy. I was taught that, while it’s technically correct to put a comma before the “and” in a list, it’s more modern not to. Since I was a precocious, nonconformist type of kid, I adopted the Oxford comma. Over the years, my English teachers would circle it in red, suggesting that I leave it out, but I always kept it in. I knew I was right.

Later, in college, I began to realize that the Oxford comma wasn’t suited to every occasion. We drifted apart. In a list of A, B and C, his sideways smirk would just be distracting. I reserved my old pal for the most special of circumstances. I almost never called him up at all.

After many years of focusing solely on hard science, I got back into creative writing. The Oxford comma and I began to see eye-to-squinty-eye again. We became constant companions. But, like anyone who has fallen back into an old relationship, I questioned my judgement. I worried about “comma vomit,” an oft-used criticism of amateur writing. I took a class in Professional Editing and learned that, though his name was well-known, Mr. Oxford was kept on a short leash at the most high-brow of functions.

The key, I’ve found, is moderation. There are these cutesy, pro-Oxford comics going around, like the ones below, and I just can’t agree. Unless one is writing in a very surreal voice, the reader should be able to figure out whether, for example, the strippers a writer is referring to are JFK and Stalin.

While technical writing benefits from the clearest voice possible, which often means including the Oxford comma, creative writing is enhanced by giving the reader the benefit of the doubt. A creative writer shouldn’t have to hold the reader’s hand — readers want to be mentally stimulated. If that means envisioning orange juice-covered toast for a split second before realizing that it wasn’t (or was) the author’s intention, so be it.

Edit to add: It’s possible that I’ve been talking about commas too much lately…

A Walk into the Unknown

I started a new novel! I’m really excited about it. It’s all fresh and new and (mostly) flawless. It’s like a brand new computer with no features that annoy me yet because it hasn’t even arrived in the mail.

This novel is the one I meant to write for NaNoWriMo, except that I got distracted with finishing my former manuscript and never got around to starting it in November. Also, this is a different novel. The story I planned to write in November is pretty well fleshed-out and I still plan to write it one day, but it’s dark and angst-ridden. My shiny new idea is more sentimental. That’s a good thing, because my veins are pumping with pregnancy hormones. I’m crying over mushy holiday commercials and motivational NPR stories. This is the novel to write in the third trimester of pregnancy.

I just started the manuscript yesterday and have only about 1,000 words so far, in addition to a vague outline. I’m thinking I’ll do what I can over the holidays, then do a JaNoWriMo (January Novel Writing Month) in the new year. The plan is to have a first draft done before the baby comes in March — wish me luck!

Is anyone else up for JaNoWriMo? January is the perfect month to write a novel! It’s cold, dark, thirty-one days long, and you’ll be pumping with New Year’s Resolve. It’ll be great!

In the meantime, I wish you all a fantastic holiday season! I hope you get some shiny new things of your own.

Image credit: A Walk into the Unknown, photo by Michael Golden

I’ve gotten to the point with my current manuscript where it just needs fresh eyes. I love/hate the whole thing. It’s like a kid sister ten years my junior, whose decisions I never approved of but who can’t help but make me laugh every time I see her. There are some parts I can’t bear to look at and some that make me think that, maybe, I can hack it as a writer after all.

The problem with fresh eyes is you need to find them. So far, everyone who’s read the whole manuscript is a friend. It’s great to have friends who are willing to take a peek, but I really need a stranger to read it. That’s one of the things I miss about my writing grad program (I’ve been taking a break from my program. I probably won’t go back for various reasons, not the least of which is the baby boy in my belly) — feedback from disinterested persons. Without grad school, I’ve got to find those eyes on my own.

So, I’ve been looking for critique partners. There are so many places to look: in-person writing groups, message boards, writing blogs. I’ve been trying them all, but I only just got around to asking outright. I’m a little shy like that. Hopefully, I’ll find some good eyes soon. Right before the holidays. My timing is fantastic.

If you’re reading this because you read one of my posts somewhere asking whether we can be critique partners, feel free to poke around and learn a little more about me. I’m a nice person, I promise, and probably, maybe, an at-least-decent writer. I think.

Image credit: http://cmcguire.com

One piece of advice I’ve heard a few times is that writers should believe all negative feedback and ignore the positive. In other words, don’t let compliments go to your head. In the world of constructive criticism, you never know what tidbits have been thrown in to take the sting out of what people actually want to tell you. It’s like when someone says, “That’s an interesting shirt.” (Hint: It’s not always a compliment.)

But, if you ignore all positive feedback, you never learn what’s working in your piece and can’t compare it to what isn’t. Really, positive comments should be taken with a grain of salt (or a heap of it, depending on the source). The point is not to ignore the negative comments, which many of us are prone to do.

I recently received some professional feedback from an excellent literary agent (see my previous post) on the first 30 pages of my finished manuscript. With the sweets thoroughly salted, I’m going to take her comments as encouraging. In short, she said that the writing was excellent and the opening scene was engaging, but that the action didn’t pick up fast enough in the subsequent scenes. There’s a lot of action later in the book, but I guess I focused a lot on world-building and meeting characters in the latter half of my sample pages.

Her comments totally make sense to me — a few months ago, I had the notion to throw in a random scene involving a wayward dragon (note: there are no dragons in my book) to amp up the action at the beginning. It looks like I’m going to have to come up with a way to do this after all — with or without actual dragons.

A problem with all this is that I’ve been working on revising this novel all week and have made almost no progress on my actual NaNoWriMo novel. I really would love to have two finished novels, ideally before my baby boy is monopolizing my time. I already have moments when I just sit around thinking how cute the cats are — I can’t imagine how often I’ll do that when there’s a baby around the house, not to mention the time it’ll take to care for him. Hopefully I can still make this work!

In the meantime, I’m considering dragons. Or goblins. Or, probably the wisest move, just moving some scenes around in the beginning. As far as NaNoWriMo goes, one finished novel is better than two in the hopper. Right?

Image credit: http://stephendeas.com