Save the Commas!

I think that it was in eighth grade that we, as an English class, were given the assignment of following the outline of a certain poem but changing the meaning. I can't remember what it was called, but it started out (or had this in it) like so: "My pwoblems, who knows, maybe evewybody's pwoblems, is due to da fact, to da aweful twoof, dat I am Spidoman." Or something like that. All I remember was that it was written with this weird childish slur to it. It was a pretty cool poem. Anyway, we had to change it from Spiderman to something else. I changed it to being a writer. Or a wannabe writer, whatever. Sometimes it's really frusterating to have all these ideas in my head. I have so many separate plot lines that I'm going insane. Even when I like all the plot lines and I enjoy writing them, it's hard to keep the character personalities defined and keeping the rules of different fantasy places where they belong gets tedious. But that's not even the worst of it. I didn't become the extreme grammar/punctuation freak that I am until after I started editing other people's writing. They all assumed I could edit them because I wrote my own stuff. And now I can't even read published books without reaching for my red pen! My most recent issues have been these: In one book I was reading they used "our" where I'm sure they meant "out" and in Harry Potter 5 I keep finding dialogue where Rowling abuses commas heinously. It detracts from the story, it does. I wish I could find an example so I could stop all you from shaking your heads and saying, "She can't be right about the commas thing." It's really and honestly true. Next time I find one I'll post it. But she has these incredible run-on sentences. I could cry. You'd think that by the fifth book she could have found somebody that would catch them all. I mean, once or twice is one thing, but it's a repeating mistake! She needs to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. Apparently it was a bestseller over in Britain; she should have seen it by now. And it's not a boring punctuation book! It's fun. Anyway, you're probably all bored with my grammar rant, but that's what was on my mind right now...

In other news, I just wrote the longest two-person conversation that I have ever had in my stories! Or maybe not, but it was very close and I had no idea where it was going when I started it. Dialogue is not my forte, but I think I'm getting better. Maybe.