Comments | seanan_mcguire: Thoughts on Writing #48: Step Away From the Pen.

seanan_mcguire

Thoughts on Writing #48: Step Away From the Pen.

Dec 25, 2014 17:42

Welcome to the forty-eighth essay in my fifty-essay series on the art, craft, business, and occasional weirdness that is writing. All fifty of the essays in this series are based around my original fifty thoughts on writing, which means I only have two more essays to go. Almost there! Our thought for today:

Thoughts on Writing #48: Step Away ( Read more... )

contemplation, writing

Comments 13

livejournal December 26 2014, 03:27:56 UTC

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seanan_mcguire December 26 2014, 22:26:31 UTC

That's beautiful.

offcntr December 26 2014, 22:02:03 UTC

But can I still complain when (author name redacted) says palatable when s/he means palpable?

seanan_mcguire December 26 2014, 22:26:47 UTC

Yes. Absolutely.

archangelbeth December 27 2014, 04:30:19 UTC

I am a 100% weird mutant, because my editor-brain has turned on pretty much permanently*, but when I can get the fool original characters in my own head (and one or two fanfic ones) to SHUT UP and let me read something else**... Only really bad grammar/punctuation makes me chuck books. I'll just be highlighting all the typos (in ebooks) so I can move on.

(* ...though not necessarily for journal posts, so much. Huh.

** I swear, sometimes the only way I get to read a book is if I'm beta-reading -- and proofing -- someone else's chapters.)

But then, I am a strange, strange creature. Who needs to go edit like three things, soon to be four, after catching up on LJ. (Can I borrow the chainsaw? I need to get rid of about 1,500 more words from an 8,500 word work that was 10K words when I started.)

seanan_mcguire December 28 2014, 22:09:24 UTC

I've become very forgiving since I started putting my editor brain aside. I still notice, I just don't care.

calico_reaction December 27 2014, 16:01:22 UTC

Good advice! And it's one of the main reasons I closed my book review blog.... reading critically for every book meant I enjoyed reading less and less, and it made it impossible to write.

seanan_mcguire December 28 2014, 22:09:58 UTC

That makes absolute sense.

I think that, sadly, some things we can't turn off. There are books I used to love that now I'm like "wow, that is SUPER sexist" about.

calico_reaction December 29 2014, 12:22:06 UTC

I'm curious which ones those are. ;)

thedragonweaver December 30 2014, 00:32:35 UTC

I don't know which ones she's talking about, but I got rid of my Stainless Steel Rat books because while they are good caper novels, the early ones are so sexually stereotyped that I can't handle them anymore.

There's also the fact that Bujold does it better. :)