How to Spell "Fellatio"

Hi folks.  Sasha here.  I've been hearing some stories around town, and I'd like to set the record straight.  I admit it; I was a bit of a brat when I was young, but it was innocent, usually.  I can't tell you how many times I've said "It seemed like a good idea at the time." 


Like the incident with the CN Tower.  I was only about 8 or 9, yet Dad brings up the story every so often, usually when he's trying to talk me out of something... or when the cops bring me home.  He usually pops a couple of Rolaids right after telling the tale. 


You see, I was just a kid, and Dad took me and Shane to see the Canada Day fireworks.  I can't remember where we were exactly, but the CN Tower blocked part of my view of the fireworks and I was mad.  The next day, I posted handmade signs - written in purple crayon - all around town offering to sell the CN Tower for $25 dollars.  I guess to a kid $25 is a lot of money.  The signs didn't work, so a week later I made new signs offering someone the right to blow up the CN Tower for $25 dollars.  The Police and some angry city officials had a rather stern talk with my Dad.  They suggested that I have more rigorous supervision.


Then there was the time in grade 5 or 6.  I was in the semi-finals of the city-wide Spelling Bee. 


I hijacked the word list before the spelling competition.  When the judges called me to the microphone, they asked me to spell the word "fellatio".  Most of the parents gasped, and a few of the kids snickered.  As per the Spelling Bee rules, I asked the judge to use the word in a sentence.  I wish I could remember what she said.  I know she turned beet red.  Whatever it was, there were several muffled guffaws from the parents in the audience.  I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. Then I asked if the judge could mime out what the word meant, and my teacher, Mrs. Dumbrowski, immediately hauled me off stage.   I still don't think it was fair to give me a month of detention. 

Wirting and Confidents and Grammer

I may come off as slightly cranky with this post, but I must comment on something I have seen a lot of lately, especially in Cyber Land.

Poor grammar and spelling. 

Spelling poorly (at least in the writings I've noticed recently) is usually the result of lazily depending on spellcheck.  Spellcheck corrects the wrong word for you, so words like inconvenience become incontinence!  Other frequent occurences include confusion between:

• accept/except
• advise/advice
• effect/affect
• your/you're
• there/their/they're
• ... and so on...

The crimes against grammar usually include:

• run on sentences
• apostrophe plurals (argghhhh!!!)
• vague pronoun references
• misplaced modifiers
• verb conjugations (especially irregular past participals and perfect tenses)
• semi-colons and colons used incorrectly (argghhhh!!!)

Studying grammar is about as much fun as watching paint dry, but it's a must!

When I first started creative writing, I had been teaching grammar and composition for so long, I felt confident in my ability to at least write clearly and correctly.  In some ways, that was half the battle right there. 

I realize that online communications are often informal, and are often done on the fly.  Plus, I must confess I've had my share of typos and grammar goofs, but things are rarely perfect.

However, if you want to get published, and maybe someday quit your day job to be a full time writer, it's a good idea to develop good habits and use them 99% of the time. 

I think the point is that you must know what the rules are before you decide when and where to break them.

Guest Speaker & Grammar & Writing

So, last night I was a guest speaker at a Creative Writing class at a local college. It was pretty cool to talk with the students about writing and my experience with being published for the first time and all of that cool stuff.

It was interesting to see their reactions when I talked about GRAMMAR!!! Ugh, of course, not an overwhelmingly fascinating topic, but a necessary one. One student asked if it was okay to skip/overlook/ignore grammatical errors (and/or punctuation and spelling), because the editors/proofreaders and others at the publishing house could/would catch them and fix them.

No. No. Nonono! And no!

First of all, you have to know the rules before you break them. Second of all, you want to send them the best product you can. Thirdly, you don't want to create extra or unnecessary work for them. Think of it this way: if you were a publisher would you want to take on a manuscript that needed little work or lots of work before it were ready to go to the printer?

As for the remark above re: rules and breaking them: Well, no, your book doesn't have to be 100% to-the-letter, grammatically perfect. Write a sentence fragment, if it is effective. End a sentence with a preposition, if it works. Let characters say things like "I ain't going nowheres" if it suits them. But... know what the rules are before you take creative liberties with them. It will result in a much better final product!

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University is a very helpful grammar resource.