My Two Cents: a.k.a My B.S. Center

Thanks for the Reminder I Suck

Thanks for the Reminder I Suck

                                                        ...Keeps Me Humble ;)

Grammar

You guys run me through the ringer with this stuff all the time, and I deserve it, I do. It's the only way I learn with this thick skull of mine.

It always a blast when a grammar whiz finds my stories though, and I receive twenty messages kindly reminding I basically suck at grammar. Yep, I'm aware.

I'm getting better, though. I have my comma use nearly perfected. And my independent, dependent clauses are coming along very nicely as well as my dry sense of humor toward grammar... Okay, the humor is still a work in progress.

That being said, I apologize for all the poor souls who read my older stories. They're pretty rough. I acknowledge that, and I have plenty of lame excuses that can justify my lack of editing. If you want to hear them, let me know.

1-The more you write, the better you are it. I don't nearly make the same number of mistakes as I used to. So if someone gives you a hard time, learn what you can for it and keep going. You'll see improvements with mileage.

2-PaperRater.com It's a basic, I mean very basic, free program that catches some errors. Not all, and sometimes, they corrections are wrong, but hey, it's one more set of electronic eyes catching your messes up. I run each chapter through it, before I post and it does find errors I missed.

3- Do your best, and accept it won't be perfect. If there's only minimal errors in a chapter, I count that as a success. In school, teachers rag on me for not "proofreading thoroughly," and I had like two grammar mistakes. That to me is a win, so mark me down and move alone, because I considered that's damn good.

4-Yes, I do know the difference between there, they're and their. That's its and it's are two different things. I well aware I write in past tense and forgot the "ed." Yeah, I'm sure autocorrect, got me a couple times, and I didn't catch it.

And now I will give you my excuse: I type 60 to 70 words a minute, so cut me a break, because when the fingers are flying things happen. Sometimes, two thoughts get jumbled together, and you get nonsense. Even I can't tell what I was trying to say. Though, it can be quite comical, and I laughed right along with you guys on a few of them. I'd had some pretty good autocorrect fails in my day.

5-Rewrites; I hate editing. I find it boring beyond belief. They're a very select few people who like combing through paragraphs looking for rogue commas, and they're called Copyeditors! They make a living at it, and they earn every penny.

But rewriting a story, that's a whole different thing. So if you're like me, rather than worry about the little errors, finish the book, and go back with the mindset of rewriting it. It's ton more enjoyable.

6-Avoid Text Talk. This could be just me, but I don't like novels that have this weird switching of letters like the "s" replaced with "z"  or making words sound like 'baby talk.' If you want to take writing seriously, you have to write seriously. It's hard, but I'm suffering right along with all the grammar rules.

Fun fact: In personal messages, I'm the extreme the other way. I write too seriously. If I don't end it with a "lol" or emoji, people think I'm mad at them thanks to my dry, sarcastic sense of humor making things unclear.   

Fun Fact #2: My parents are anti-cell phone. I didn't get one until I went to college-Child abuse right. So I never did the text talk, and I have to go to urban translator to figure out what all the abbreviations mean you guys put in messages sometimes.

Story of my life, and what a sad one it is at that.  

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Grammar and I will always be mortal enemies. So if it's not your forte, hey you're not alone. But as I said in my werewolf post, if you have a strong storyline, I'll overlook the little errors. It's how I return the favor for people putting up with all my mistakes.

I'm prepared for someone to go through this post and point out all my mistakes. I'm sure there are plenty.