punctuation, grammar, spelling, capitalization and more!

[soniaamiller]

First of all, I do spell the English way; I was in an English boarding school when I was twelve, thirteen and fourteen, and these are the years when spelling gets set. After I had been made to write h-o-n-o-u-r, for instance, a hundred times on the a blackboard several hundred times, it was almost impossible for me to spell it h-o-n-o-r. The

Comments

[sunrising]

That was a delight to read. :-)

As far as your last (albeit rhetorical, I'm sure) question ... I think the climate surrounding writers making their own rules like Cummings has is very similar to popular musicians being able to play "their" music as opposed to what the Label wants them to make. You have to hit a certain level of fame (gods only know what that quantity is) before stepping away from the norm isn't immediately disregarded as a mistake to be corrected.

Not that I agree with any of it ... I mean, take our long-standing familiarity with Jason Mraz for example, he was doing his own thing for ages, got signed, had to make his music more "pop-y" for the label, and I think he's still working on getting back to his music. I dunno.

Whatever the formula for being able to be accepted as the artist you are, I hope it happens sooner than later.

that's funny

[soniaamiller]

I began reading your post twice on my cell phone and was interrupted as many times, so I only got to read the first paragraph.

Each time I was starting a counter argument with, "Yeah, but we both loved Jason Mraz from the moment we saw him at the 9:30 Club! His fans love him because of his unusual mix of musical styles! And he started out that way!"

And I *laughed* when I finally got to read the rest of the post. And I agree. There will - inevitably - have to be some packaging, or sanitizing done to the music or writing before it gets put before the public. My dear friend Raymond Carver rewrote several of his stories because his editor wanted super-minimal sparsity in words and Carver wasn't happy with the stories. But he didn't put the reworked stories out until much later.

But if you were to have them on an SAT test, would "publishing industry" be on the same side as "music industry" in an " ___ is to ___ as ___ is to ___" prompt?

[edinuk]

i like your new owl. he's sort of got the BAROO? thing going on.

[soniaamiller]

he does.

and here he is again, because at some point I decided that I needed to change the above icon.

oh the things I do to put off doing my work!

%P

[roque]

I often wish I could turn off my inner proofreader. I think my creativity would flow more freely if I weren't always aware when a sentence was running on too long. I can relax my rules a bit on the internet, but the place I should really be able to relax is MY OWN FREAKING FIRST DRAFT.

[soniaamiller]

how's this then?

write your drafts on the internet.

except, then you'd be writing your drafts on the internet, and that's just never a smart thing to do.

so i will just go to bed now.