It's the first Wednesday of the month, and you know the drill. This is the day set aside for insecure writers across the blog-o-sphere to share all of our individual experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly. I can't say enough about this group or how encouraging they are to me. Reading and sharing our thoughts here once a month has made a tremendous impact on my writing life. If you are interested in finding out more, you can visit the Insecure Writer's Support Group Facebook page, or click here- on
Alex J. Cavanaugh's site to sign up.
A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter came running up to me, a hot little mess of boogers and tears. I couldn't imagine what was wrong, because I had only checked on her a couple of minutes beforehand, and she was right as rain, sitting on her bed, listening to music and reading her bible. What the heck could have happened? I was shocked when she started wailing, "I'm unclean!" She was pointing to the place in scripture where it says,
"Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth doesn't make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth is what makes him unclean."
My poor kid took those words straight to heart and couldn't get beyond them. I was torn between bursting out laughing or wailing right along with her. You see, I had come to the same conclusion about myself. I am an "unclean" writer. Yes, I've studied grammar and sentence structure. I have also read many books and taken extra writing classes to improve. But no matter what I do, I always, always, seem to screw up my tenses and/or throw in about fifty unnecessary commas. What's wrong with me? Am I too caught up in plot and climbing inside my characters' heads to focus on the details or is it because my mind is too thick to fully grasp all the rules? It doesn't matter, cause either way, I'm still stuck in the same wretched state, "unclean".
What about you? Do your CPs fantasize about bashing you over the head with an English text book? How many times can you edit your work before your eyes cross and your head splits open? Any suggestions on how I can improve?
