SquarePeg Books

Have you ever written something that afterwards you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it?

This question does not speak to me.

I mean, I know I’ve written chapters and the like that have take me a month or more to get out and get it out in the right way. I’ve also overwritten a scene, let it set for a bit and then come back to trim down because “maybe that’s a little too intense for readers…”

But that’s about it.

Really, what’s irritating me right now, this moment, (aside from research, writing, and saving money, etc for future project) is this:

Whoever was and/or currently is, in charge of codifying grammar and punctuation for the English language, is a dick.

And not in a good way.

I can write a research paper and properly cite references any way you want, but how one codifies the way things are done for fiction writing is insane. And no, I don’t have the money to hire an editor, while the friends that I have who say they can edit for me, somehow never get around to it.

I spend hours looking up and making notes on the difference between em–dash, en-dash, and a third dash that I can’t remember right now, realize I’ve been doing it wrong for the last…oh, I don’t know…5-6 manuscripts. Then I go back and edit things to be correct.

Then someone reads a manuscript, frowns, and tells me, “I don’t know the rule about nested quotations, especially for a character that is thinking about someone else saying the thing, so you might want to look that up.

So, of course I look it up. And of course there are rules.

BUT NO RULES THAT PERTAIN TO THAT EXACT SITUATION!!!!!

5@#$&#^&&!!!!!

Okay. Maybe I just haven’t looked deep enough. Ah, another article. “Blah-blah-blah, MLA; blahblahblah, APA; ‘blah, blah,blah,’ Chicago, ‘blah, “blah,” blah’ Uk vs. US English; ‘but strictly correct is sometimes not the easiest to read or understand, so it is perfectly acceptable to simplify nested quotes in a fashion that communicates the quoted material clearly, without the use of nested quotation marks, so long as it is consistently presented in your writing.’”

So, technically, I could use italics inside a character’s speech, without nested quotes, so long as that’s how I always do it.

And before you say “no, katty. You can’t do that,” shut up. I spent three hours speed skimming several fiction books by different authors AND EVERYBODY DOES IT DIFFERENTLY.

*snarl…*

Check out the Insecure Writer’s Support Group to see more writers dish about their concerns, their solutions to various problems, or how long it takes to burn a hardback copy of the Chicago manual of style without the use of an accelerant (because I’m in a high-drought area).