Six Common Errors in Punctuation

One of the greatest stumbling blocks to the new writer is punctuation, and this is a pity, because punctuation can make or break the way your writing sounds to the inner ear. It is necessarily so, because the real function of punctuation is as a kind of 'pointing'; it tells you, when you are reading aloud, where to pause, what inflection to give a phrase, and what tune to use for a sentence. Without it, assuming your inner censor doesn't supply punctuation as you read, you will sound like Eliot Goblet.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the issues I most frequently see in independent fiction. 

Give It Some Space

Every punctuation mark, with the exception of opening quotes, apostrophes and the hyphen, must be followed by a space. Although most people have got this pretty well in hand as far as periods, commas, exclamation points and question marks are concerned, I often see this rule neglected with ellipses. 

Keep Your Marks Separated

With the exception of quotes, and occasionally apostrophes, no two punctuation marks ever appear adjacent to one another. Most people manage this most of the time, but dashes tend to be a problem. Think of a dash as another kind of ellipsis; both interrupt or terminate a passage, and each colours its sentence with a particular kind of shading. If you break off a sentence with a dash, do not follow it with a period or other termination mark. Similarly, if you use it to break in the middle of a sentence, do not also use a comma.

Initial Caps are Only For Initial Words

In dialogue, if the end of a speech does not coincide with the end of its enclosing sentence, do not capitalise the following word. You are still in the same sentence. The initial capital indicates the beginning of a new sentence, and as the terminating punctuation of the speech is enclosed within the speech quotes, it does not end the sentence.

CORRECT:  "That dog is going to vomit again," said Tabitha.

WRONG:     "That dog is going to vomit again," Said Tabitha.

Capitals Generally

Capital letters are used in three situations:

1) for proper nouns
2) for the first word in a sentence, as discussed supra, and
3) for title case.

Proper Nouns

This LOLCAT contains both a wrong (above) and a correct (BELOW) use of capitals.

When a noun is used as a name, it is a proper noun. This includes actual names: John, Mary, and so on, names of places: towns, streets, rivers etc., and anything that is used as a term of address: Mummy, Father, Boss, Destroyer of Galaxies, an so forth. It is important to distinguish between the 'borrowed' status of proper noun that is conferred on such words as these when they are used as terms of address and their natural status of common noun when they are used in the ordinary way.

EG:

"Your mother is a right old bitch," said Bob.
"Don't be such a bitch, Mother," said Joe.

"Your Mother is a right old bitch," said Bob.
"Don't be such a bitch, mother," said Joe.

Title Case

Above right, you can see Title Case correctly used

Title Case is so called because it is most commonly used for titles - titles of people (Protector of the Poor), books (Fifty-One Uses for Old Socks), and other works of art, organisation or engineering (Sydney Harbour Bridge, Blue Poles, Game Of Thrones). Because titles are a kind of name, this is really an application of the rule about proper and common nouns, discussed supra.  

Occasionally, one sees title case used in dialogue. This has rather fallen out of vogue nowadays, but it can be used with great effect to give a tone of dignified pomposity to a speech, e.g. "We Are Not Amused," said Queen Victoria. 

Verbs and Plural Subjects

If you ignore the spelling and the rest of the grammar, you can see the correct application of a present tense verb to a plural noun in the upper left

Something that I often see in recent years is a failure to give a present tense verb its correct inflexion when its subject is plural. This tends to afflict writers whose first language is not English, but there is a simple rule that in most cases can be relied on to avoid any stumbles.

A noun usually forms its plural by the addition of an 's' (yes, Virginia, there are many exceptions, mostly in words of Latin or Greek origin, but the overwhelming majority of English nouns do take 's' in the plural).

In a nicely symmetrical contrast to this, most verbs take 's' in the third person singular of the present tense, and are uninflected in the third person plural.

We can derive a rule of thumb from this. Consider it this way - in present tense there is always going to be an 's', either on the noun or the verb. If it is on the noun, you do not need it on the verb; if the verb then it is not wanted on the noun.

All your souls belong to me.
Your soul belongs to me.

Now don't go quoting me and saying I told you this was a rule of English Grammar. It is not; there are many, many exceptions to it: nouns that do not form their plurals with 's', and probably some irregular verbs that don't take 's' in the third person singular present, although I cannot think of any just now. What it is is an aide memoire that can help you remember what you need to remember, and will work in the majority of cases.

  

Place Commas Around Terms of Address

In Ancient of Days' first speech bubble, commas are correctly used around a term of address.

When a name or other term of address, as 'Mother', etc., is used in the middle of a speech, it will generally be best to bracket it with commas. This reflects the practice of English speakers of placing a tiny pause on each side of a name. If you listen carefully to people's conversations, you'll notice this. Punctuation goes a long way to give your dialogue a natural or unnatural sound; if the phrasing is off, your dialogue is going to sound stilted and unbelievable. 

Care must be taken, however, not to apply this as a blanket rule. You only want to place commas around a name or term of address when it is being used as a term of address.

CORRECT: The milkman woke me up, Mother, why does he have to make so much noise?

WRONG: My, mother, woke me up banging around in the kitchen.

The second sentence also illustrates another common error in the use of commas, but that's another story for another day.

English 102 - Some Basic Style Issues

Impeccable grammar is necessary. It is not, however sufficient, if you want your book to be any good. You also need to consider issues of style. The following is a selection of some of the more common style errors into which inexperienced writers fall. It is not exhaustive.

Monotonous sentence structures.

A long series of sentences with identical structures gives your work an air of horrible monotony. Of course, if that’s what you are aiming for, this can be a technique that can work well for you. The basic rule is like that about rudeness: you can do it, but never do it by accident.

Repetitive phrases.

We all laugh about “the wine-dark sea”, and “jostling sheep and shambling cattle with their twisted horns.” Don’t fall into the trap of constantly associating the same descriptives with anything. It looks extremely silly. No, Homer is not an exception to this.

Repeated words.

It is best not to repeat a word within a sentence. It looks very clunky. However, don’t fall into the trap of straining after synonyms.

For example, consider this passage:

VERSION 1 (BAD)

The dog crouched behind the dustbin. Tantalising odours wafted from the bin, driving the hungry dog almost mad with desire. The dog had tried to push up the lid with his nose, but it was on tightly enough to defeat the dog’s efforts. Sadly, the dog resigned himself to another hungry night.

In this passage the word “dog” appears five times in four short sentences. This is very poor style, and something needs to be done about it. However, there is a trap here. The semi-educated person may assume that the problem is one of vocabulary; we see this mistaken assumption often made by writers for women’s magazines, and it leads to dreadfulness like this:

VERSION 2 (UNSPEAKABLE)

The dog crouched behind the dustbin. Tantalising odours wafted from the bin, driving the hungry hound almost mad with desire. The mutt had tried to push up the lid with his nose, but it was on tightly enough to defeat the pooch’s efforts. Sadly, the pup resigned himself to another hungry night.

This is just gruesome and unbearably twee. And this problem is caused by the fact that the original problem is not one of vocabulary, but of structure. To fix it, what is needed is not to find nouns that can be substituted for “dog”, but to alter the passage to eliminate the repetition.

VERSION 3 (BETTER)

The dog crouched behind the dustbin. Tantalising odours wafted from the bin, driving him almost mad with desire. He had tried to push up the lid with his nose, but it was on tightly enough to defeat all efforts. Sadly, he resigned himself to another hungry night.

Toxic “While”.

“While”, like alcohol, is wonderful when used appropriately, but extremely toxic when overused. In order to use “while” responsibly, do not use the word unless it is actually necessary. Generally that will be when indicating simultaneity of two actions is necessary or desirable in your narrative.

 

EG: While he was waiting for the milkman, Fluffy passed the time catching fleas.

This is fine because the “while” indicates that the flea-catching is contemporaneous with waiting for the milkman.

However: The hollow under the steps gave Fluffy shelter from the rain, while the daily milk delivery provided emergency food.

Unless the daily milk delivery only ever occurred when it was raining, this “while” is a poor substitute for “and”.

Never, under any circumstances, say “whilst”.

Toxic “With”.

Like “while”, “with” is a useful word, but is very prone to be abused. Consider the following:

“I wish I could take you home, Rover,” said the boy, with a sad look on his face.

Now this would be all very well if we didn’t have adverbs, but we do have adverbs, and cases like this are just what they are for. “Sadly” has nearly the same meaning as “with a sad look on his face,” but with the added benefit of also colouring the speaker’s tone of voice.

“Drat that dog,” said the housekeeper, with irritation.

Here again, although an adverb won’t meet the case, an adjective will. “Irritated” is what’s needed here.

Never, ever use “with” to take the place of an adjective or adverb. Keep it for when you really need it:

“His fur would make a wonderful collar,” said Cruella, with a gay little laugh.

Active and Passive Voice

It is often said that it is best to stick to the active voice. However, you should not take an overly simplistic view of this question. It is true that simple narrative is clearer and has much better impact in the active voice, but in passages where you want to emphasise the helpless passivity of a character who is acted upon by events, rather than acting himself, the passive voice may be a better choice. Consider these two examples of how the strengths of each voice can be used to add to the power of your narrative:

ACTIVE: Rover seized the rat by the scruff of the neck and shook it once, sharply. He heard a satisfying snap! as its neck broke. He dropped the rat and pounced on another.

PASSIVE: Rover was dried with a towel, and given a bowl of milk by a woman in a white coat. He was lifted onto a table and had bright lights shone into his eyes, and his mouth inspected. He was stuck in the scruff of the neck with something sharp, and a stick was poked up his bottom. Finally, he was left alone in a small, dark room.

Ambiguous Pronouns

Pronouns are great. They’re one of my favourite things. But it’s important when you use one, that it is clear what the referent of that pronoun is. Consider the following sentence:

Rover told Spot he was smelly and full of fleas.

It really isn’t clear whether it is Rover or Spot that Rover thinks is smelly and full of fleas. This is one of the most common mistakes that people make with pronouns - after failure to agree, which we discussed last month. The best way to fix something like this is not to do it in the first place; otherwise, you will probably need to rephrase the whole thing.

Badly Positioned Pronouns

In a paragraph where you are going to mention a person several times, you do not want to keep using his name, or you will end up with something like this:

Rover turned the corner and froze, astonished. Rover could see right into the building, and it was absolutely full of meat! Rover took a tentative step towards the open door.

That looks terrible, and you know that you need to use a pronoun in place of Rover, Rover, Rover. But don’t do this:

He turned the corner and froze, astonished. He could see right into the building, and it was absolutely full of meat! Rover took a tentative step towards the open door.

This is confusing for the reader, especially in a long paragraph, because the sudden appearance of the character’s name half way through the passage suggests that the first “he” referred to someone other than Rover. Therefore, if a name is to be used once, it should be used at the beginning of the paragraph.

Commonly Confused Conjunctions - That and Which

Two words I often see misused are 'that' and 'which'.

When I say 'that', I am of course speaking only of 'that' when it is used as a conjunction. It is one of those words that may take form as many different parts of speech, and in that sense, it can be viewed as many different words, and a discussion of them all is outside the scope of today's article. We will be dealing only with 'that' in its conjunctive form, the form in which it is often confused  with 'which'.

The difference between 'that' and 'which' is a subtle one, for both are used to introduce a secondary clause. The difficulty is increased by the fact that most people are rather careless about the difference in casual speech. The difference is, however, a fundamental one, and is worth exploring.  

Look at the LOLCAT above. I made it specially for you! In the sentence at the bottom, we see 'that' in a typical conjunctive use. The base sentence - 'He's the one' - is modified by the secondary phrase 'that won the championships'. This phrase modifies the object of the base sentence.

Let's look at this in more detail. Suppose, for example, that I were to say to my personal assistant, 'Bring me all the books that have red covers.' I am telling him to make a selection out of the available books, and bring me only those with red covers. I think that's pretty clear, isn't it? In an ideal world, such a request would result in the delivery to me of all the red-covered books in the house. Of course, in the real world, if I asked my assistant to do this I wouldn't get jack, because he has an Attitude Problem. It's hard to get good staff nowadays.

This is my assistant responding to a polite request.

You see, what I am doing when I add that secondary clause is qualifying the object of my request. I am limiting its scope - restricting its application to only those books with red covers. If I'd said 'Bring me all the books,' I'd have been asking for every book in the house - or potentially, depending on the context, every book in the world.

Suppose I was asking for a particular book. I might say, 'Bring me Principles of Criminal Law - it's the one that has a picture of a fingerprint on its spine.' (For I'm sorry to say my assistant cannot read. It's a sore trial for a writer.) Hey, I'll still get jack. But at least he knows what he's not bringing me. In my request, I have narrowed the scope of what I want to the one book in my house with a picture of a fingerprint on the spine.

From this, we can derive a rule for 'that' as a conjunction. It is used to introduce a restrictive qualifier. Such a qualifier is generally a phrase, but can be a single word. E.G. - 'Throw all the refugees overboard and shoot the ones that float.' Of course, we hope our Prime Minister didn't really say that. But if he did, he'd be authorising the shooting of only some of his victims. A thrifty use of government assets, wasting bullets only on those who will not drown.

Which, on the other hand, adds meaning to its object. Consider the LOLCAT above. Okay, it is a hound, not a cat, but they are all LOLCATS to me. The base sentence is 'Fifi chose the glass on the left'. The secondary phrase, 'which had more bubbles', does not narrow the scope in any way, but rather extends the meaning attaching to the object. As well as knowing which glass Fifi chose, we now know that her glass had more bubbles than the other one.

Similarly, I could say to Ferret, my assistant, 'Bring me I'm Not Racist But...., which is by a man whose name I cannot pronounce.' The secondary phrase, starting with 'which', does tell us something about the book, although it adds nothing to Ferret's ability to choose it out of all the other books in my bookshelf.

It is tempting to draw an arithmetical analogy, and to say that 'that' is subtractive and 'which' restrictive, but this would not be entirely correct, as 'that' restricts scope while 'which' adds meaning. However, the basic spirit of the analogy makes a convenient hook on which to hang the detailed information.

Sentence Structure For Dummies

What is Sentence Structure?

Remember those wooden alphabet blocks we all had as tiny children? One didn't make words out of them, of course. One built forts, threw them at one's brother, chewed the corners. But you could have made words. If you hadn't been so frivolous. 

Now, imagine that instead of letters, those blocks had had words. Actually, you can buy blocks like that - you can get them here. Although it's only a set of eight, so the applications are fairly limited. Nevertheless, if you have a look at that link, you'll see illustrated in charming little wooden toys what sentence structure actually is. It's called structure because you build your sentence, from the bricks that are your words. And, just as when you build a wall, if you don't use the right materials and put them together properly, it will fall down, so with a sentence you must follow the rules of construction.

Why It Matters

At its most basic, the vital importance of sentence structure is that it affects meaning. 

Consider this example:

Joe hit Tom.

This is as simple as a sentence can be. Subject, verb, object. The meaning is clear and unequivocal. But look at what happens when you reorder the words.

Tom hit Joe.

Now, that's still a well-formed sentence, but when the meaning to be conveyed is that Joe hit Tom, it's a dismal failure, not only failing to convey the meaning the writer intended, but also conveying a completely spurious meaning. An Alternative Meaning, if you like. Word order really matters in English.

So, the fundamental requirement of sentence structure is that it not obscure, reverse or otherwise screw around with meaning. No surprise there; it's the heart of language, after all, the ability to convey meaning with symbols.

However, just as we expect more of a wall than that it stay up, so we expect more of a sentence than the mere transfer of information. A well-written sentence is a delight to the eye and to the mind. A poorly constructed sentence invites ridicule and loathing.

The Common Pitfalls

Assuming you know what you want to say, and who hits whom, and so forth, there are some common nastinesses that you will want to avoid. These bad habits are often the difference between a really nice piece of writing and something that makes your reader cringe and throw away the book. 

Sentence Fragments

In English, a sentence must have a subject and a verb, at the very least. If the verb is transitive, there must also be an object, but in no case may the verb be omitted. 

As a style choice, sentence fragments may occasionally be used in point-of-view narrative, and they really come into their own in dialogue, because typical English speakers use a lot of them, and if you don't, your dialogue will sound stilted and unnatural. 

In more casual forms of writing, too, such as emails to a friend, or this blog, you may relax the strict rules; these less formal things partake of some of the nature of dialogue, however care must be exercised. In order to make this kind of decision, you really need to start from a basis of knowing what is correct. 

Repetitive, Monotonous Structures.

Look at this example of what can happen if you don’t vary your sentence structures appropriately:

Rover was on the hill. The hill was covered with grass. The weather was cold and wet. The wind was chilly. Rover was hungry.

Seriously, people, it would be better to shoot yourself RIGHT NOW than to write something like that. Consider, on the other hand:

Cold and hungry, Rover shivered in the damp wind; the grassy hill afforded little shelter from the weather.

Strings of Modifiers

Some novice writers imagine that no noun is adequately presented without a string of adjectives. Of course you want your reader to see your characters and situation in vivid detail. Of course you do, and it's your job as a writer to make that happen, but hanging long, trailing strings of adjectives from every noun like Christmas lights is not the way to do it.

Consider this example:

Boris, our black, half-persian, overweight cat, sat on the intricately-woven Persian mat which my father had brought back from his diplomatic tour in the Middle East.

Seriously, you'd think this person was getting paid double for every adjective, with a triple score for the modifying clause. Writing isn't Scrabble, people! You've got a lot of information about the cat and the mat there, and the writer may have intended to set the scene and give the reader some backstory. But there are ways and ways to do this.

Now look at this example:

Boris had been on the rug again; the intricate patterns were blurred with drifts of black fur. Don't get a Persian, Mum had said. They're too much work with all that fur. But I'd fallen in love with his little black face in the petshop window. I'd better get the  fur up before Dad got home; he'd go spare. That rug was his big treasure, a souvenir from his time in the Saudi Arabian embassy, and Boris wasn't supposed to be in his study at all.

Do you see this? We've got in all the information about Boris that we had in the first paragraph, and we've even added more, for now we know his breed. We've shown a bit about how the family members relate to each other, and we've given all the information about the mat as well, including a bit more about Dad's job. The paragraph is substantially longer - six sentences and 86 words, compared to a single sentence of 26 words - but now you can read it without wanting to claw your eyes out. 

Conjunction Abuse

I spoke about this issue last month, but it bears repetition, because this is one of the most common errors I see in independent fiction.

As we saw above, an inappropriately structured sentence can completely fail to convey the intended meaning, as in this example:

Rover ate his bone when the big Doberman appeared and took it away from him.

The inappropriate use of simple, instead of continuous, past tense in the first phrase reverses the order of events and renders the sentence quite meaningless, causing it to say that Rover ate his bone as a result of having it taken away from him, which is a nonsense. This kind of error arises from a failure to understand the demands on a sentence that are made by the use of “when” as a conjunction. For more detail on this, see 'Pitfalls in Sentence Construction - the Toxic When', in this blog on 30 January, 2017.

Dependent Clause Incorrectly Attached

Another kind of problem occurs when you fail to be aware of the different components of your sentence. For instance, in this example, the writer failed correctly to identify the subject of a clause:

Rover knew it was useless to fight the rats; they would be hopeless.

In this sentence, the referent of “would be hopeless” is “to fight the rats”, but the mistaken use of the plural pronoun associates it to the rats, rendering the clause meaningless.

Dangling Modifiers

A dangling modifier occurs when a modifying word or phrase has as its subject something other than the thing it is intended to modify. I discussed this in greater detail in my post, 'Dangling Modifiers', on 27 January 2017, so I shan't go into great detail here.

EG:         Being so hungry, the dead rat was very appealing to Rover.

Few things make a writer look more careless and incompetent than a dangling modifier, and yet they are among the easiest mistake to make when one is writing at speed. My own first drafts are often sprinkled with them. Yet another reason not to let anyone see your first draft, if you needed one.

Punctuation

The wrong punctuation can completely alter the sense of a sentence, and even if the sense is not lost, poor punctuation can reduce it to a slag-heap of quivering slok. Therefore, you need to know the different forms of punctuation and how to use them.

Incorrect punctuation can result in this:

It was raining Rover wanted to find a dry place to curl up and sleep but there was no shelter as far as he could see he thought about digging a hole but in the end he just sat miserably watching the drops trickle off the ends of his whiskers how he wished he had not vomited on the carpet that fateful day.

or this:

It was raining, Rover wanted to find, a dry, place to curl, up and sleep but there was no, shelter as far as he could see he thought about digging, a hole but in the end: he just sat miserably watching the drops trickle off, the ends of his, whiskers how he wished, he had not vomited! On the carpet that fateful day.

instead of this:

It was raining; Rover wanted to find a dry place to curl up and sleep, but there was no shelter as far as he could see. He thought about digging a hole, but in the end he just sat, miserably watching the drops trickle off the ends of his whiskers. How he wished he had not vomited on the carpet, that fateful day!

Conclusion

This is not, nor is it intended to be, an exhaustive exposition of sentence structure. There is not space in a blog post to cover all the intricacies of this strangely neglected topic, nor am I sufficiently expert to do so. However, if I have alerted you to the main pitfalls, I think that's sufficient. Once you are aware of the issues, you will develop your own skills.

Don't Waste Your Life. Time Management for Writers.

This is my dog, Emily. Look at her beauty, her strength and grace. I love her more than I can say. And sometimes when I lie beside her and rest my face against her silky chest, I hear her heart beating, strong and steady. And I hate that sound. Because it is the sound of her life ticking away. Every beat one tick closer to the breaking of my own heart.

Our lives are made of time. We do not know how much time we have, but one thing is certain, and that is that it is finite. It naturally follows that any division we make of that time is also finite. There are sixty seconds in every minute, sixty minutes in every hour, and this will be the case right up until the end of your life.

I wrote yesterday about project management, and we talked about the four project variables, and went into a bit of detail about scope. I've left the last variable, time, until today because for a writer, time is the one variable that will make or break you. 

It's not about how much time you have. We all have the same amount, every day. It's about how you use it. It's about not wasting it, because when you waste time, you are wasting your life.

It's about time management.

Chaos is Deceptive

Let me tell you a little story from my own working life. I used to be the credit controller for a city law firm. One day, shortly after I had started in that job, I faced an appalling situation. I had a list of things I TOTALLY NEEDED to get done that week. My heart pounded and my mouth felt stuffed with cotton, because there was just more work there than could possibly be done in my three day work week. I hadn't been in the job that long, and the spectre of failure hovered over my head, gnashing its teeth.

Panic is never good, so after wasting the first ten minutes or so dithering, I made a list. Then I rearranged everything on the list into descending order of how likely I was to get the sack if it did not get done. I rewrote my list. This wasn't a conscious management activity - this kind of thing for me is in the nature of a comfort behaviour, like displacement grooming, or sucking one's blanky.

Then I started working on the first thing on the list. I went about it in my usual slow, plodding manner. I have it so deeply ingrained into my psyche that hurrying work is bad and dangerous. Pretty soon, I had finished that task. I crossed it off my list and went on to the next item. 

By lunchtime, I had finished every single thing on that list. I had two and a half days left in my week to plan, and design improvements to the system, and so on. This is a true story. It's not even exaggerated. I have shared it here to illustrate the immense power of staying calm and remaining in control.

Time Management

There have been thousands of books written about time management, probably more than there have been about management in general. There are thousands of courses too. I myself have been on dozens of them. My favourite one was in the 1980s. It ran for a whole week, seven days of luxury accommodation and unlimited free booze every night. It cost my employers about $3,000. I had a ball.

The extravagance of the Gordon Gekko decade aside, though, time management is not that complex. It boils down to:

• knowing how much time you have
• knowing what you want to achieve
• knowing what you are capable of
• knowing what you are willing to give up.

Time Management is Not About Tools

There is no end to the fancy stuff you can buy to help you manage your time. You can spend a fortune. There are specialist timers to go off after 25 minutes and 5 minutes to help you do the Pomodoro method. There are all kinds of electronic PDA devices. There's software for your iphone or android, and massively overpriced software for your computer. There are Day Runners and Filofaxes and Week At A Glance diaries. There are fancy calendars with sets of stickers to represent all your activities. There are coloured pens and highlighters and fancy sticky notes. You can have a wonderful time shopping for all this gear. If you're geekily inclined, you can even build your own. You can have a wonderful time playing with all your new toys, too. But once the party is over, generally about three days after you brought your new toys home, if buying the toys was all you did, you will be no better off than you were before you wasted three working days (or perhaps weeks or months if you took the geek option and wrote your own software) playing with stuff.

Time Management is About Knowledge and Decisions.

All the pretty tools in the world won't help you manage your time if you do not have a sound grasp of the relevant principles. Planning, and its necessary component, knowledge, is all that time management really is. Just a specialised kind of planning.

Effective planning, however, doesn't happpen in a vacuum. An effective plan is based on a great deal of detailed knowledge. In the case of time management, this will include self-knowledge: how you work most effectively, the kind of triggers that affect you, all that kind of thing.

Time Management for Writers

Now, I don't suppose you'd be reading this article if you weren't interested in learning something about time management. And as it happens, there is a course that I recommend for writers. 

The Writing Academy's course, Time Management for Writers, is available FREE for the month of February. This course is practical, down-to-earth, and starts from the point of where you are right now. It will take you through analysing your life and how you currently use your time, teach you how to use priorities really effectively, and place you squarely back in the driver's seat of your working life.

You can get this course free all through the month of February. Head over to The Writing Academy. You won't be sorry.

Project Management 101 - the Writer as CEO

We've all seen them. The overworked ones. The 'important' ones. Always rushing, always poking at their electronic PDAs, and they bite your head off if you offer to show them a picture of your new puppy. Sad little people with sad little lives. They are everywhere in the corporate world. They're usually middle or junior management, but you find people like this even among the lowest ranks. They exhaust themselves, they're awful to be around, and you know what? I can confidently say after twenty years of working with people like this that they are not super-productive.

You know what the really important people are doing as these PDA types rush about working up a sweat? They're enjoying their morning coffee as they gaze out over the city in their big corner offices. Or perhaps they're on the golf course. Who knows? One thing of which you may be sure, though, is that they aren't working up a sweat over how much they have to do.

Before you go off on a rant about the fat cats of Bourke Street, though, consider this. These are the people who have been successful, more successful than everyone else in their organisations. And they've done that largely by being in command of their lives. Okay, having an uncle on the board doesn't hurt. But there are plenty of people in the middle ranks who had similar advantages.

This is not a hymn to capitalism. Bear with me here; I do have a point to make, I promise.

YOU ARE THE BOSS

As a writer, you are the CEO. You probably don't have any staff, but be that as it may, you are the boss of your working life. It therefore falls to you to determine how that life is going to play out. And if you don't accept that role of command, your working life is going to be largely random, and you will be at the mercy of your messy desk, all the people who swoop down and try to take bites out of your day/week/month/life, and your faulty memory.

Now, as you're also the workers, the secretary, the janitor and the boy who makes the coffee, I'm not suggesting you get carried away with self-importance and sit about admiring yourself. Not at all. What I am saying is that as a self-employed writer, you consist of many roles. There's an executive in your head as well as a wordsmith. There may be an editor, a proofreader, a janitor, a research assistant... well, you get the picture. Sure, they're all you, but you need to invoke the right one. Don't be all edity when you're drafting. When a telemarketer rings up, don't start researching his life. You're supposed to be the security guard for that one. It's your job then to get rid of undesirables.

When it's time to command, though, that is when your Inner Executive needs to take over.

MANAGEMENT, WHAT

There have been thousands of volumes written on this subject, mostly by people with porcelain teeth. But because I am Tabitha Ormiston-Smith, I can condense the science of management into one simple sentence for you.

Management is about manipulating variables.

There are four variables in any project:

• Scope
• Quality
• Time
• Resources

The basic structure of any project can be viewed as a parallelogram with these four things as its sides. Try it with two pieces of string tied at both ends and four nails. One piece of string is the deliverables string - scope and quality. The other piece is the cost string - time and resources. If you wish to increase the scope of your project, for example, you can either increase time, resources or both, or you can decrease quality. This is the first painful lesson that every new manager learns. 

Now as a writer, you'll find these don't all have equal weight. You may, for instance, not see quality as a variable. I take no issue with this. That's a philosophical decision that one makes about one's career. You may consider it a given that you will publish only work of the best quality of which you are capable, or you may decide to churn out six porno romances a year, and never mind the quality. There are people who make a good living doing this. I am not judging you. 

However, what you must understand is that even if you do not accept that quality is a variable, it still is one. This means, for example, that if you rush your editing, your finished product will suffer. 

Resources is the other variable that has limited application for a writer. Okay, if you are super-successful you might have a team of people working for you. A secretary, a publicist, a research assistant, who knows what all. And those people are resources. So is your computer a resource. So is software. I use Word, Excel, Outlook and Microsoft Project. Those are my software resources. A lot of people use Scrivener or other purpose-built tools. Whatever your resources, though, they are not infinitely variable. If, say, you hire three more research assistants, that will not get your book written any faster unless the speed of research was what was limiting it. And two copies of Scrivener will not work any better for you than one. Trust me on this.

SETTING THE SCOPE OF YOUR PROJECT

Depending on how long you've been writing, the number of unfinished projects on your desk may be one or many. This is not a criticism. You can be much more productive with a number of things on the go at different stages. The more you have, though, the greater the importance of managing your work, and the greater the risk of falling into a shitstorm of fragmented effort.

A project is whatever the project manager says it is. The scope of it is up to you. You may consider each separate book as a project in itself, and there's nothing wrong with that. You may also divide your projects into timeframes, or into some other category. My own current project, for example, contains two short stories, two novellas, and two non-fiction books. The project scope calls for one of the non-fiction books to be published this year, and the other things are only to be got ready for publication or submission, as the case may be. That's my project for 2017.

Do you see what I did there? I told you about the scope decisions that I've made for this project. Yes, I have two novels partly written, a completed novella drafted and a bunch of short fiction that I haven't done anything with. But these things I listed above are the things that I've chosen to focus on this year. They are going to get done, provided I stick to the plan. Remember, a plan is like soap. It only works if you use it. Every day.

Do you see what else I did there? I told you the parameters of my project plan. It is my project for 2017. I decided up front to plan in terms of my year. That's how I like to work. You may be different; your plan may be scope-based. It might be all about finishing one book. That's fine too. The important thing is that you decide what it is. Because you are the manager, remember?

The Five Writing Myths That Will Destroy Your Productivity

Myth 1 - "Writers are Special."

We've all seen them. They are attracted to writers' groups like blowflies to roadkill. They make their presence constantly known with a barrage of memes, all starting with "You know you're a writer when..." and ending with some rubbish or other. And then there are the ones about how marvellous it is to be an introvert (funny how it's always the self-styled introverts who brag about this. I've never once seen an extrovert bragging about being an extrovert) and the ones that tell you you're extra-creative if you have insomnia/abuse drugs/swear a lot.

Leaving aside for the moment the questions that arise concerning a person's effectiveness at his job when he can't even tell what that job is without a meme, there is one thing that these memes all make abundantly clear, and that is that the poster is not a writer, or not in any real sense. What he is is a wannabe.

How can I be so sure of this, you ask. I'll tell you. Writers write. And a working writer nearly always has much better things to do than to sit around constructing pretentious memes and posting them around Facebook.

Aside from wasting the poster's time, these memes perpetuate a very harmful myth - that of the writer as special snowflake. We are, they suggest, more perceptive, more sensitive, attuned to a higher plane, etc etc than the common run of humankind. Different. Apart. Special.

What a load of cobblers. Writers are not special. We're not different. And as Mr Page has put it so ably in this blog post, if we were, we wouldn't be effective as writers.

Myth 2 - "Writing comes from your Muse/inspiration/your characters talking to you."

Bollocks. Writing comes from the action of sitting your bum down and writing. Period. If you don't do your work, your imaginary friends are not going to do it for you. As for 'inspiration', that's bollocks too. If you wait for inspiration to strike, you'll still be talking about being a writer and making memes (see above) when they lay you in your coffin. 

Myth 3 - "There is something 'cool' about having a filthy house, staying in your pyjamas all day, etc."

No. Just no. If you can't even manage to take care of basic hygiene and household management, a thing that people with IQs in the 60's are able to master, how do you think you can be a writer? People who can't even manage to keep themselves clean are failing on the most basic level. This is not something to brag about.

In fact, if the basic mechanics of daily living are beyond you, you've already descended to a level of non-functionality that will make it impossible for you to achieve much in the way of creative work. If you manage to ignore the filth of your surroundings, find your way through piles of trash to your desk, and crank out some words, then congratulations - you've done well. But think how much you could have achieved if you started from the position of a clean and orderly environment. It's like your physical health; in fact, your bodily health is just one aspect of your environment. Take care of your support systems and they will take care of you.

Myth 4 - "Creativity can be fuelled by alcohol, marijuana, pseudoephedrine, cocaine or some other mood-altering substance."

Rubbish. The time for drinking and other recreational drug use is after you have finished work for the day. Yes, I know people have told you they were super-inspired when taking cocaine, etc. That's because one of the effects of recreational drugs is to make you imagine you are being super-inspired, when you're actually producing work that would disgrace a six-year-old, and very little of that. There are no exceptions to this.

Myth 5 - "You quit your day job to become a writer, so you are now a Free Spirit. Not like those poor nine-to-five wage slaves."

Again, this is not only bollocks but very pernicious bollocks. Remember the mantra of management workshops in the 1980s? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Much as I detest mantras, there's a lot in this one. No large project can be completed in an effective and timely fashion without planning. That's a given, right? And once you have a plan, the plan only works if you stick to it. 

So no, Virginia, you're not a free spirit any more, not if you actually want to achieve anything. You'll have deadlines, and deliverables, and targets. Goals. The Daily Wordcount. And if you embrace these things in a positive spirit, one day you just might have a book.

What Now?

Now that I've destroyed all your treasured misconceptions about writing as a job, you may be wondering where to go next. I was lucky to have spent twenty years in the computer industry managing some very large projects, so project management was already part of my skillset when I went full-time with the writing, but we're not all that fortunate, and if your previous working life didn't equip you with project management skills, as most jobs do not, you'll be wanting some help with that. 

Never fear - help is at hand. I've just completed this whizz-bang short course by writer and ex-university lecturer Terri Main. It's called the No Excuse Zone. You think I talk tough - wait till you see this course. Main will not allow you any rocks to hide under, as the course title suggests. It's tough-talking, realistic and practical, and it will step you through creating a work plan that will see you achieving your goals like a Viking.

As I say, I've just completed this course myself; it was part of my Continuing Professional Development program this year. So I'm able to recommend it without reservation.

The pricing is very affordable too. For just $45, or three easy instalments of $15, you can do the premium level of the course, which gives you personal feedback from the instructor, entry to a discussion group and one-to-one communications about anything you have trouble with. I could not believe how cheap this was. I've done courses in the I.T. industry with less useful content that cost thousands of dollars.

Nevertheless, if this is beyond your means, there is also the "autopilot" option. With this option, you actually decide how much you want to pay for the course - you pay whatever you think it is worth. It gives you access on the web only to the lessons, and then you work on your own. A wonderful alternative for those who are really hard up, although I'm glad I wasn't doing this option. If I had had to pay what I thought it was worth, it would have cost me WAY more than the $45! You can find the Autopilot option for the course HERE.

But wait! There's MORE! One lucky reader of my blog will win a free Premium Level course. Reply in the comments below, and I'll choose the winner randomly after one week. Lest you wonder about the method of this random choice, I'll be using the RAND function in Excel.

Head on over to The Writing Academy; you won't be sorry.