Perception and misperception

I'll admit it.  I'm a bit of a grammar snob.  Okay, more than a bit, but seriously people, if the first impression you're going to make on someone is through the written word, would you mind proofreading what you're sending out before you hit ?  The source of my ire this evening is a tweet from a popular provider of literary services, a tweet that suffered from a case of plural/apostrophe confusion.  I'm sure they're nice people, but I certainly wouldn't want my work edited by someone who gear's up for things.  

Snarking aside, there's a reason people suggest time and time and time again that your cover letter--whether for a poem, short story, article, book, or whatever--should be perfect.  This is the very first impression that people have of you and your work.  And, perception being what it is, we tend not only to favour first impressions, but also to hang on to negative first impressions.  Not what you want to be doing, especially if your intention is publication.  

So while a typo might be an oversight, the resulting misperception on the part of the reader about your grammatical prowess (and thus your overall writing abilities) is going to be difficult to change.  Take the time to carefully proofread everything you send out, otherwise you might find yourself the victim of misperception.  

Self-editing for fiction writers: Editing practice

Editing is one of those things that's really hard to teach.  You kind of have to learn by *doing* more than anything.  An ear for language, a good understanding of grammar, and general nit-picky-ness help, too.

I've been dabbling in drabble of late, primarily because I don't seem to have a lot of uninterrupted time in which to write.  I have several longer projects on the go, but was looking for something I could finish in one to two sittings, so I'd at least have *something* done.

Writing drabble is an excellent way to practice your editing skills.  Why?  If you're like me, your first draft (and your second, and your third, and your fourth) will be way over the 100-word limit.  To get your story down to 100 words, you have to look at each and every single word.  Does it belong?  What does it do?  Can one word work where you've got several?  How much can you cut and still keep the essence of the story?  What is the essence of the story, anyway?

More interesting, at least to the grammar geek in me, is that writing in such a short form forces you to interact, on a very intimate level, with the words on the page, and with their underlying structure and function.  You end up engaging with your work so closely that you'll learn a lot about how you write and the types of things (whether literary conventions, words, or phrases) that frequently occur within your writing.  Regardless, I think it's an excellent exercise to expand your editing horizons.  Telling a story in 100 words, exactly, is harder than it looks.

Artistic integrity

I had an interesting Facebook conversation last night with author Eric R. Asher about artistic integrity.  It's an intriguing topic, one that has made me run screaming for the metaphorical hills on more than one occasion.

There are times I think "artistic integrity" is over-rated, times that usually occur when someone, for example, decides to single-handedly reinvent every single one of the grammatical and stylistic rules of the English language, then gets perturbed when I suggest that they might want to make their prose (and it's usually prose, rather than poetry) a bit more accessible to their audience.  This usually results in a conversation in which that someone pulls out the "artistic integrity" card and says, "I'm an artist, I can do what I want" (complete with obligatory comma splice).

That being said, I think that "artistic integrity" is important, most of the time.  However, it takes a certain amount of experience and talent to recognize when you're using true artistic integrity, and when you're doing the former.

As Eric said, it's a fine line between the two.  And I agree.  There's certainly something to be said for not following the rules (regardless of your artistic medium), but I think that, in order to do so, you have to be able to prove that you can totally rock the rules first.  And I think that's where the problem lies, when artists decide that they don't need to know the rules at all.

In writing, especially prose, the rules matter a fair bit.  And, I'll agree, rules are made to be broken, but I think that you need to understand the rules and why they're there before you go about breaking them willy-nilly.  If I can't make heads or tails of what someone's written, I'll likely seriously question their use of "artistic integrity."