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General Musing, Writing and Editing

Is Pointing Out Errors in English Just Plain Rude?

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I hate to admit to such poor taste, but recently I was watching a certain TV show in which brides try on wedding dresses before an entourage of friends and family members who often seem all too eager to rip their self-esteem to shreds. If there’s anything good to be said about this show, it’s that it provides valuable lessons in how not to behave. All that aside, I was horrified the other night when the mother of a hapless bride criticized her dress, saying that it needed more embezzlement. “Embellishment!” I shouted to the screen. “Embellishment, not embezzlement!” The usage crime went unnoticed by the bride or anyone else for that matter, and I wonder what I would have done if, God forbid, I’d been sitting in that bridal salon with that unpleasant family. Although I wouldn’t have shouted the way I did to the TV, I would have been awfully tempted to say something, even a meek and mild “Um, did you happen to mean embellishment, perchance?”

Outside the context of teaching or editing, is it ever all right to point out errors in English? Being a polite Canadian, I seldom do it. But being an editor, I’m always dying to. Honestly, I hate to see the English language abused, and I think it’s vital that people make the effort to speak and write correctly. If I didn’t think this way, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. As well, when you edit people’s writing for a living, it’s sometimes hard to fall out of the habit of pointing out mistakes. And so my polite Canadian self is invariably at war with my editor self, generating a lot of inner turmoil whenever I hear someone mangling the language. Of course, in this matter of correcting versus not correcting, context is everything. I’ll tactfully point out errors to my Russian friend at the dog park because she’s told me before that she wants to speak better English. She’s never taken offence, so no harm done. But you’re really putting your neck on the line when you choose to correct people you don’t know all that well, no matter how politely you do it.

Recently, I attended a networking event and was sitting beside a woman I’d chatted with perhaps once or twice before. She was promoting a book she’d written and showed me a postcard that summarized the plot. She knows I’m an editor, and she pointed out an error in the postcard to me. I read the rest of it and noticed an ungrammatical, wordy sentence that was actually much more of a heinous crime than the typo she’d noticed. Hesitantly, I told her it was ungrammatical and then went on to suggest a better sentence she could use in its place. With this act, I extinguished all joy. She just looked at me grimly, and a profoundly awkward silence passed between us. In her mind, I had committed a serious faux pas, and we barely spoke another word to each other for the rest of the event.

The way I see it, by pointing out the first error, she opened the door for me and I merely walked through it. And I said what I did in the spirit of helpfulness; I could see how the postcard could be improved, and thought I should take the opportunity to tell her how to do it. But perhaps I’m wrong about the appropriateness of my actions. What would you have done if you’d been in my situation? Have you ever pointed out someone’s error to his or her face, only to have it backfire? Is it ever right, outside the context of editing someone’s writing or teaching them about the language, to point out errors?

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Freelancing, Writing and Editing

Five Years of Freelancing

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It dawned on me yesterday that it’s been exactly five years since I left my full-time job as an appraiser and cataloguer (and default catalogue editor) for a Toronto auction house. I remember the day very well: after enjoying a hearty Indian lunch with all the staff, I made the rounds to say my goodbyes. When I’d exhausted my words and there was nothing left to be said, I headed out the door and waited for the King Street streetcar. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and a barely perceptible hint of fall in the air heralded changes to come. As I boarded the streetcar and watched my workplace recede from view, I rode out of my old life and into a new one. I was bombarded with a mixture of emotions unlike anything I’d ever known: elation about the new possibilities that were unfolding before me and the freedom that I would have being my own boss; fear that I was entering an unknown realm and would find myself out of my depth; and sadness that I was leaving behind both my safe zone and all the friends I had known there. It was my choice to become a freelance editor, but that didn’t mean that the tears didn’t flow on that ride home.

As with any new venture, it took me a while to find my feet. In the beginning, I found it almost impossible to establish a daily routine, as I was so accustomed to going to an office every day where things would just fall into my lap, demanding to be dealt with. Now I had to generate work for myself, which was not something I’d ever had to do before. I did feel that I was cut out to be an editor. I’d always had the required persnicketiness–everyone said so. But I was worried: I didn’t know if I honestly possessed anything resembling entrepreneurial smarts or good business sense. And I certainly missed being surrounded by other people; now it was just me sitting in front of the computer, trying to drum up work when I was a complete unknown in the field. How utterly alone I felt.

What saved me both personally and professionally was meeting other editors. I joined the Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC), attending both monthly meetings and seminars so I could listen to speakers, sharpen my skills, and network in my rather introverted way with other editors. Gradually, I began to find my tribe: a group of editors I could trade stories with about the delights, frustrations, and occasional horrors of working in our field. Through these editors, I began learning more and more about the business of being an editor, which was something they don’t teach you much about in night-school editing courses. Furthermore, I began to find real work opportunities through my contacts–even more so when I joined Facebook and found not only the editors I’d met at Toronto branch meetings and seminars, but also EAC members scattered across the country. The important message I’ve taken away from all this is that you just can’t get anywhere without developing a network. You need your tribe.

Five years after that streetcar ride, I find myself in a pretty good place. The work is steady, and I feel confident in my abilities as both an editor and a businessperson. I enjoy my clients, some of whom have become friends, and they seem to genuinely appreciate what I do for them. Most of all, after five years, I have finally become that person I was meant to be.

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Writing and Editing

The Pros and Cons of Writing Dialect Phonetically in Fiction

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In 19th-century novels, it’s not at all unusual to come across dialect that is written phonetically. Consider the following, an exotic bit of Yorkshire dialect from a servant named Joseph in Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1847: “There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ‘t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.” Taken out of context like this, this snippet is nearly incomprehensible; it’s almost impossible to know precisely what Joseph is getting at. (All I know for sure is that he’s telling Heathcliff’s tenant, Mr. Lockwood, that the mistress of Wuthering Heights is not going to let him in). It’s not just the bizarre vocabulary (those pesky flaysome dins) that makes it hard to comprehend, but also the peculiar spellings of familiar words, such as shoo’ll for she’ll, and neeght for night.

Would 19th-century readers have understood any better than we do what Joseph was saying? It’s difficult to know for sure, but I would imagine that at the very least, they would have expected to see phonetically written dialect in novels. After all, such a detailed and realistic rendering of speech would have functioned to clearly convey the speaker’s social standing and level of education, which were important preoccupations at the time, especially in England. But does such dialect have any place at all in 21st-century fiction?

Many contemporary authors, particularly in fantasy and historical genres, continue to attempt phonetically written dialect. I’ve edited about half a dozen such authors over the past year or so, and I continue to puzzle over the question of how much is too much. Current authorities on writing fiction feel strongly that any at all is way too much, and that words like ye and yer, and even dropped gs, should go the way of the dodo. The trend is to shun what Renni Browne and Dave King, authors of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, call “trick spellings and lexical gimmicks.” Instead, writers are advised to concentrate on adjusting word choice, grammar, and syntax to convey a person’s social status through speech. There is no question at all that this is excellent advice.

The main argument against phonetically written dialect is that it’s simply too hard to read, and naturally it’s impossible to be in favour of anything that destroys clarity in writing. Readers should never get bogged down in dialogue and feel that they have to translate it into English. And if they have to read it multiple times to get the gist of it, then the lexical tricks are clearly overdone. However, is it fair to eliminate all phonetically written dialect? If it was good enough for a literary giant such as Emily Bronte, shouldn’t it be good enough for contemporary writers?

Although I usually advise clients that phonetically written dialect is out of fashion, many still insist on using it because they feel it adds the right note to their work, particularly if the novel takes place in a bygone era. I ask them to consider the tastes and expectations of their audience and sometimes ask them, “Would your readers have trouble with this?” One of my clients gave her novel to several readers to evaluate (a practice I highly recommend). Many of them had read widely in the genre she was writing in. She made a point of asking them specifically whether they could understand the dialect, and most were fine with it.

If your book’s audience has little or no difficulty with phonetically rendered dialect, I see no difficulty in using it. The editing becomes a matter of making the dialogue more readable by eliminating what doesn’t work and maintaining consistency in particular dialect spellings. I tend to toss out particularly wacky spellings that seem distractingly bizarre or vocabulary that I feel most contemporary readers wouldn’t understand. To my mind, authors should err on the conservative side and remember that just a little phonetically written dialect goes a very long way. And if it really does add a little flavour and colour to a book, then that’s hardly a bad thing.

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General Musing

Summertime . . . and the Livin’ Is Easy

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This post has absolutely nothing to do with editing or writing–mainly because last week’s adventures on the shores of Lake Huron had absolutely nothing to do with editing or writing either (but plenty to do with reading novels of the page-turner sort). I’m not ashamed to say that I really ought to title this What I Did on My Summer Vacation, and I’ve even included nice photos designed to make you wish you’d been there enjoying the sights with us. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about what to expect.

Below is the cozy, wee cabin we stayed in for a week in MacGregor Point Provincial Park. Yes, it’s completely adorable and bursting with cottagey charm, and I love the spacious deck, the fact that one of the bedrooms had bunk beds (just seeing them made me feel like I was ten again), and the assortment of mismatched but homey mid-20th-century dishes in the kitchen. We do not own the cottage but were renting it. The park has a number of beachfront private cottages within its boundaries, as well as hiking trails in the woods that are not exactly taxing for non-athletes like me.

The beaches of Lake Huron are quite rocky and rugged, as you can see below. Unfortunately, due to lack of rain, the waterline was disturbingly low, and no matter how far I waded out, the water would not come up much above my thighs. I envisioned having to walk halfway across Lake Huron in order to be able to swim, so lacking sufficient ambition, I gave up on that idea and contented myself with wading close to shore and wandering the beach to watch herring gulls, turkey vultures, common terns, and double-crested cormorants in flight.

Apart from my meanderings along the park trails and across the beach, my entertainment consisted chiefly of lazing in the sun on the deck and watching the ruby-throated hummingbirds jostle each other for the best position at the feeder. I also passed the time by reading suspense thrillers by Peter Robinson and Nicci French in a delightfully dozy fashion, my facial expression no doubt resembling that of our dog Trinka below as I nodded off now and then.

Occasionally, we went into town (the town being Port Elgin) and drank strong coffee, and one day we drove north to the picturesque, touristy town of Southampton, which boasts its own lighthouse on nearby Chantry Island. Once there, we met a dear old friend for lunch, which consisted of curry wraps followed by a luscious slice of homemade lemon poppyseed cake. Every night, we had a barbeque on the deck; I can still taste the mouth-watering halibut steak with blueberry and mango salsa that I enjoyed. Then we watched the spectacle of the sun going down. The shores of Lake Huron are famous for dazzling sunsets worthy of the pages of National Geographic, and I was not the least bit disappointed by the sun’s glorious performance.

Nothing much really happened up at MacGregor Point, but that was precisely the idea. In the end, I couldn’t have asked for a more relaxing escape from reality. I even rediscovered that almost forgotten artifact of my past, the afternoon nap. And after enduring several weeks of apartment building destruction/construction–not to mention a painful root canal procedure I had just before we went away–a whole lot of nothing was the very thing I needed. I highly recommend it.

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Freelancing

Rattled: When the Home Office Becomes a Construction Zone

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Until recently, I’ve always loved working at home because it’s so blissfully quiet here. Our apartment backs onto a ravine, so we don’t hear much more than the birds singing and the wind gently rustling the leaves. (It’s a far cry from living next to a nightclub and enduring the rants of belligerent drunks, which we did for a couple of years.) My office window looks out on the rest of our building, a beige-brick low-rise built in 1956. It’s the kind of building a friend calls “a granny building” since the residents stay for decades. The only excitement to be had is the occasional neighbour coming out to water the plants on a balcony, or birds flying back and forth to feeders. It’s an ideal set-up for happy productivity–at least it was until balcony reconstruction began the other day.

I don’t particularly mind strange men on the balcony, and I can tolerate the sounds of sawing through metal railings. But I cannot bear the jackhammers. The men started drilling through the concrete last Thursday, and as soon as they began, I thought I would fragment right then and there. It was not just the noise, but also the vibrations, which were enough to send a glass bottle flying out of a cabinet (I have since moved my glass and pottery collection to safer realms). The noise and vibrations combined threatened to reduce me to a useless, incoherent, quivering mass of jelly. And our rescue dog Trinka, who has always greeted disturbing noises such as fireworks and thunderstorms with equanimity, was whimpering in distress. I grabbed her leash and whisked her away to the safety of the nearest dog park.

Now, I certainly don’t mind whiling away an hour or so in the dog park on a nice summer day, but not in the middle of an extreme heat alert. Temperatures were soaring to 34 degrees C with a “real feel” of about ten degrees more. Fortunately, we found refuge in that rarest of establishments, a Toronto cafe that allows you to take your dog indoors, Williams at PawsWay. From there we visited family in a nursing home. Mercifully, the following day was cooler, so I spent more time honing my lady-of-leisure skills by lounging at both the park and on the patio at Starbucks, where in a fit of nervous tension, Miss Trinka chewed through her harness. I could hardly blame her, as I felt like gnawing on something myself.

What I really should have been doing instead of drinking lots of green tea was working, but the construction nixed any chance of being productive. Unfortunately, I’m incapable of working in cafes or even libraries, since I get distracted by just about anything; as my concentration suffers, my frustration level rises accordingly. Since I am already at the mercy of the strange men on the balcony, I have decided to work around their Monday-to-Friday, roughly nine-to-five schedule. I start work at 7 a.m. so that I have a solid two hours before they begin their daily assault on my senses (although today they began early, which made me want to bark at them, just as Trinka did). When they finish sometime between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., I can work again. It’s possible to get in about four to five hours of editing each day by following this schedule. And then I work on the weekends to make up for additional lost time.

As I write, the men are working late, and there are chunks of concrete literally raining down from the third floor onto what remains of our balcony. I keep imagining one of the chunks whizzing right through the window, and although the jackhammering is now further away than it was last week, my ears are buzzing and my nerves feel not just frayed, but shredded. It’s definitely going to be a long, hot, most aggravating summer.

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Virginia's Ghost, Writing and Editing

The Fine Art of Reading Your Work in Public

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Recently, I signed on to read an excerpt from the novel I’m writing, Virginia’s Ghost, at the July 21st meeting of the Writers and Editors Network (WEN). It’s been eons since I’ve read anything before an audience. I’ve often thought that apart from dealing with the inevitable frayed nerves, reading in public seems straightforward enough. You don’t have to memorize anything, so mostly what you need to do is just get up there and read as expressively as you can, right? Is that really so hard?

I learned how woefully ignorant I was about public-speaking techniques this past weekend when I attended a workshop given by Heather Dick of the Sirius Theatrical Company called Speak! Capture! Empower! The day-long workshop is specifically designed for authors and other speakers who read in public. The goal is to discover how you can best grab and hold the attention of your listeners. When Heather first told me about the workshop, I was eager to sign up and learn how I could “lift the words off the page” (as she likes to say) and successfully avoid prompting my listeners to catch up on their sleep.

Heather Dick of Sirius Theatrical Company

I instinctively knew that Heather’s workshop would be well worth my while. She is a vibrant woman who sparkles with energy, humour, and confidence, and if anyone could transmit public-speaking smarts to me, it would be her. I also knew that she seriously (or siriusly, if you’ll pardon the pun) knows her stuff. After all, Heather has acted in, directed, or produced more than seventy shows across Canada, has numerous film and TV roles to her credit, and has been teaching acting for twenty-five years. And in 1989, she started the Sirius Theatrical Company.

One of the things we talked about in Heather’s workshop was freeing our voices. Stress and other factors that have accumulated throughout our lives limit our voices, so it’s no wonder they often sound weak and strained. What to do? We learned a series of exercises designed to free our muscles so that we can in turn free our voices and realize their full potential. We also learned how to breathe naturally and to balance ourselves properly to support our voices. We practised our diction by reading Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics, and learned how to interpret text by reading poetry, employing many tools that would increase the power and expressive quality of our words. As well, we reviewed the texts we’d brought to read, marking them up in ways that would aid our reading.

Then the time came to take the stage and practise our text before a small audience of workshop participants. But first, we learned how to cope with both a microphone and our pages of text, which was not as easy as it sounds. Next, Heather reviewed how to best make the sort of entrance that would immediately engage an audience, which was something I’d never given any thought to before. As well, we learned how to make a gracious exit.

When I got up to do my reading, I felt the tension tightening in my chest and the butterflies fluttering in my stomach, but I remembered Heather’s instructions about what to do before starting, and gradually the stress dissipated. I know that my voice faltered here and there, and that I read some passages too slowly and didn’t always manage to convey the depth of feeling I was after, but I certainly did much better than I would have without Heather’s instruction. And what’s more, once I got rolling and fell into the rhythm of my words, I was having a blast. Even better, I now have an array of wonderful, shiny new public-speaking tools at my disposal that I can use when practising my text for the big day. When July 21st rolls around and I’m called upon to take the stage, I’ll definitely be ready.

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Writing and Editing

Seeing Editors as Allies, Not Enemies

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I belong to an online writers’ and editors’ group, and when time allows, I entertain myself by catching up on the discussions in the forums. People generally behave themselves admirably, but the writers, most of whom are self-publishing, do lash out at editors from time to time. One day, I saw an author complaining that she’d been ripped off to the tune of three thousand dollars by an editor. Other forum participants were quick to become indignant that any editor would even dream of charging her such an amount to edit her book. What an outrage!

Feeling profoundly irritated, I wrote that it was ridiculous to consider the cost outrageous without knowing the facts–after all, the author hadn’t even mentioned what the word count was or told us anything about the nature of the book. Nor had we seen a sample of the writing. Without this information, no one could possibly know the extent of the editing required. And had anyone even considered the question of what the author actually received for her money? As she later revealed, the answer was nothing–she paid three thousand dollars to the “editor,” who never delivered any work at all. The unsuspecting  author had not been dealing with a professional editor–she’d fallen victim to a smooth-talking scam artist.

Apart from the author’s misfortune, what bothered me about this whole exchange was the readiness of the writers who were commenting to believe that editors are taking them for a ride. Apparently, some writers still don’t see the value in what editors have to offer. I suspect that those who feel this way have never actually had their own work edited, so they can’t even begin to understand the invaluable contributions an editor can make to a manuscript. As well, such writers fear criticism, as most of us do to one degree or another, but rather than being able to perceive it as helpful and constructive, they feel threatened by it. And so they insist on standing in their own way, and the book suffers as a result.

I still occasionally meet people who think that all editors do is correct typos; they confidently assert that they can do their own spell-check and grammar check, thank you very much–as if spelling and grammar were all there was to it. But editors are involved in shaping the entire manuscript, and they cover the broad strokes as well as the fine details. A good editor will diplomatically call attention to a plot that doesn’t even get off the runway, loose ends that dangle messily, a protagonist who bores readers to tears, or a character who talks like he’s a nineteenth-century British aristocrat instead of the twentieth-century American student he’s supposed to be. Furthermore, a good editor offers constructive advice for fixing these problems.

I believe that writers who don’t appreciate what editors can do for their work are in a small and ever-shrinking minority. But often the writers who need editorial help the most are the very ones who are most resistant to receiving it. It’s time that such resistant writers began to see editors as allies who can help them create their best possible work, not as enemies who will either take advantage of them or belittle them. All editors contend that every writer needs an editor, and most writers I know wholeheartedly agree with this contention. And as an editor who also writes, I know that I’ll need an experienced and eagle-eyed editor to help me with my book before I publish it; I wouldn’t dream of skipping this essential step. Even for the best writers, the choice is clear: if you’re putting your book out there for public consumption, hire a professional editor.

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General Musing

What I Love about Old Books

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Eleven years ago, I went on a road trip to the Finger Lakes district of New York with two friends. Happening upon a dusty second-hand bookshop in Ithaca, I discovered a 1919 copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, a novel based on the life of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. I’d read the book a number of times before, but the price was a mere six dollars, so how could I pass it up?

It isn’t a fancy edition by any stretch of the imagination, but in its simple way, it’s a lovely object. I love the bold graphic of the palm trees on the cover and the graceful illustration of the Tahitian beauties on the inside cover. I adore the way the title of the book has been designed, with the linking o‘s in Moon. A fascinating little detail is the embossed publisher’s insignia on the front cover that features a peacock (visible in the bottom right of the photo).

My edition of the book is battered, so it’s not worth any more than I paid for it. One corner has been banged up, water spots speckle the cover, and the edges of the pages have yellowed over time, but this just shows that the book was read and enjoyed by many people over time, as any good book deserves to be. As well, there’s the intriguing inscription, which appears to be as old as the book itself, in well-formed script inside: “Happy Birthday Hugh. Frances.” I can’t help but wonder what Hugh’s relationship to Frances was. Were they siblings? Lovers? Husband and wife? Was she trying to impress him with her good taste in literature? I can’t help but wonder if he liked the book. What happened with the two of them after he received it? There’s a story there that we’ll never know, but we can always invent something.

With old books, the story within the covers is augmented by the story of the book as a physical object, passed from one person to another over time. Of course, there’s a lot of mystery about a book’s previous owners, hinted at only by things like inscriptions, notes in the margins, and passages underlined. And what does such a book say about the time in which it was produced? To me, my copy of The Moon and Sixpence speaks to a more elegant and serious time in which books were considered objects of beauty and thought of as items to be treasured for generations.

I have quite a number of battered volumes that bear the stamp of my grandfather, Jesse Kaiser, a World War One veteran who died when I was just eight years old. I have only vague impressions of him as a kindly but sombre man. Photographs of him, and his collection of books–mostly war-related novels and poetry from the teens and twenties–are just about my only link to him and hint at a preoccupation with events that were undoubtedly burned into his psyche for the rest of his life. Having his books gives me a sense of connection to him and to the past that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

In our world of disposable culture and e-books, hard-copy books have lost the sense of being significant objects in and of themselves, and I think this is a shame. Although I have an e-reader and find it handy for travelling, I still much prefer curling up with something made of paper than with a cold, hard, electronic screen. But I wonder how many people like me still roam the earth. Although I may be a dinosaur, give me my old books with their dog-eared pages and their whiff of the past any day of the week.

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Interviews

New Book Release: The Infinite Knowledge of J.T. Badgley by Tiana Warner

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Tiana Warner has just released her first novel, The Infinite Knowledge of J.T. Badgley. The 23-year-old author hails from Abbotsford, BC, and works as a software developer. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of working with the gracious Tiana on her book, a young adult science fiction novel. But The Infinite Knowledge is really so much more than this genre label suggests. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Tiana about her book, and hope you will enjoy our interview.

CK: What was it that prompted you to start writing The Infinite Knowledge of J.T. Badgley in the first place, and how long did it take you to write the book?

TW: I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. When I was 5 I would write stories and staple the pages together and sell them to relatives. I started writing The Infinite Knowledge near the end of high school, when we studied classics like Gulliver’s Travels and 1984. I knew then that I wanted to write a book with a purpose—so I started with the topics I feel passionate about, and everything else followed. It took me six years because of university, but in the end I’m glad I was patient.

CK: In the book, the unsuspecting protagonist Jake (J.T.) plummets via a portal through space and lands on the planet Zielaarde, a planet very like our own in some ways. Through your portrayal of Zielaarde, what kinds of things were you trying to say about Earth and its inhabitants?

TW: I want the reader to interpret much of it for themselves, but I will say that I had a fun time exploring certain contemporary issues. Some of these issues are more light-hearted, while others I take more seriously and feel strongly about. The inhabitants of Zielaarde often reflect the way we humans regard the environment, technology, and each other.

CK: The book is an excellent read—it’s dramatic and suspenseful, and I wasn’t sure how it would end until it actually did end. As well, it’s often funny—the reactions the Ziels (inhabitants of Zielaarde) and Jake have to each other were quite amusing. But the book is also very thought-provoking and serious. Ultimately, what thoughts or impressions did you hope to leave readers with?

TW: I hope readers come away thinking about said contemporary issues, but I also hope they think about their own roles and abilities in this world. The book is primarily written for teens, so when I was writing it I wanted make sure I avoided telling the reader what to think, and focused on simply provoking them into thinking. Jake faces the same identity-crisis problems that so many teens face around the time of their high school graduations, and he’s at an age where he starts to gain awareness and scepticism of philosophy and religion. He is forced to gain a stronger sense of self in the book, and I hope Jake’s self-exploration also encourages such thinking in the reader.

CK: One thing I enjoyed about the book was your ability to really get inside Jake’s  experience. He suffers immensely, and the reader is keenly aware of his every thought, sensation, and emotion. Was it difficult to write in this intense sort of way?

TW: It certainly took more than one draft before I was able to fully portray Jake’s thoughts and emotions. It takes a lot of focus and imagination to pretend you’re an entirely different person in an entirely different place, and then to describe exactly how you feel and what you’re thinking at that moment. I find that it helps to imagine a situation using all of the senses.

It’s interesting when you’ve been pouring out the deep thoughts and emotions of a character for years, and then it comes time to actually let other people read it. It feels too personal, like they’re about to read into part of your soul. I guess that’s how you know you’ve really put everything into a character.

CK: Tell me about your fascination with astronomy and how you’ve brought this into the book.

TW: It’s funny, because when I was a kid I hated learning about space. I was afraid of it and tried to avoid thinking about it, because I couldn’t understand how space and time were even possible. I still can’t understand it. I guess writing this book was a way to overcome that. I pushed my own fear and uncertainty onto Jake. When you pick a topic that you feel very strongly about—whether that feeling is of love or hate or obsession or fear—you write about it more passionately. What strengthened the passion was when I decided to take an introductory astronomy class in my last year of university. It was without a doubt one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken, and also a very sobering one because it makes you realize how small we are in such a vast universe. By the time that class was done I had already written most of The Infinite Knowledge, but I was still able to apply some of the science I learned to the story. It’s fun inventing concepts when you write science fiction, but what’s more fun is when you can relate your made-up concepts to real science.

CK: Your love of animals was really obvious to me in the way you portrayed certain creatures in the book. Can you tell me a bit about this love, and how it informs the book?

TW: There’s never been a time in my life where I’ve been without a pet, and I think a dog will always be my perfect companion. It takes owning a dog or a horse to really understand the bond you can have with one. As Betty White once said, “Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.” I tried to portray such human-animal friendships in a couple of ways in the book. An important, loyal character doesn’t always need to be a person.

CK: Which writers do you like to read, and which have been most influential on your work?

TW: My favourite author of all time has to be J. K. Rowling. I’m a Harry Potter superfan. In general, I tend to enjoy a wide variety of books and authors, although I mostly find myself reading YA. I wouldn’t say any one writer has influenced my work, though. Everyone has a writing style and I tried to distinguish my own, as well.

CK: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

TW: I think a person has to have a certain level of obsessive passion in order to write a full novel, so my advice is “Don’t hold back.” The best part of writing—and especially sci-fi—is that you get the freedom to create whatever you want to create. It’s your book and you control everything inside of it, so do what you want with it! Immerse yourself in your book’s world. Tape outlines and photos and maps to your walls, write down ideas in your cell phone as they come to you, make a playlist that inspires your characters, get those Crayola window crayons and write inspiration on your mirror—whatever it takes for your book to materialize. Then, when you write your first draft, don’t even pause to think about the format or spelling errors. Just let those creative juices fly, and do your editing later.

CK: Are you currently working on another novel? If so, can you tell us anything about it?

TW: I’ve been harbouring an idea for about a year, but haven’t had the chance to give it a good go. I’m very excited about it. It’s different from The Infinite Knowledge, however, and has a more mature theme. That’s all I’m going to say, since I’m still outlining the plot at this point! I’m also trying to convince a friend of a friend to let me write a story based on his very interesting life.

For more information about Tiana Warner and The Infinite Knowledge of J.T. Badgley, please see the author’s website: http://www.tianawarner.com.

 

 

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Writing and Editing

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess: The Irritating Art of Exaggeration

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Over the virtual water cooler of Facebook, my editor friends and I sometimes discuss irksome little things we frequently come across in manuscripts, and I’ve noticed one thing that comes up a lot. Writers take note: if you happen to feel like irritating editors, one of the best ways to go about it is to be overly dramatic and exaggerate in some fashion. Unsubtlety in your writing can take many forms, many of which are dead easy to pull off and have nothing to do with actual word choice.

Take punctuation, for example, which is probably the simplest tool for exaggeration at your disposal. Many writers make a habit of using more than one exclamation mark. They think that to do so automatically makes what they have to say that much more exciting!!! Why use one exclamation mark when you can use two (or even three)? Two exclamation marks will surely make what you’ve written twice as thrilling, won’t they? Well, you probably already know what my response to that is. Use just one. I really must insist. And for heaven’s sake, if you have dialogue, don’t punctuate it with an exclamation mark and then add the dialogue tag, “he exclaimed.” To do so is redundant, because we know he’s exclaiming from the exclamation mark.

But multiple exclamation marks aren’t the only type of punctuational (if I may say that) excess. To convey extreme, possibly life-threatening astonishment from which we are unlikely to recover, many writers use something popularly known as the interrobang, which looks like this: ?! You might use it in a sentence such as the following: “Seriously, can you really believe that Caroline is dissing the interrobang?!” Yes, I am dissing it, for it is not something that serious writers ought to use. It is not even a standard punctuation mark. Use it in your social networking if you feel you really must (but please don’t tell me that you did).

Another form of excess that must be avoided is too much capitalization. Have you ever noticed how some Writers attempt to give their Precious Words a sort of Earth-Shattering Significance by capitalizing them? Need I say more? The effect is generally pompous at best. Unless you’re a pompous individual and would like to advertise that fact, don’t capitalize to excess. Capitalize only those words that really need it by virtue of their being accepted proper nouns.

Similarly, don’t shout in your writing, as shouting quickly becomes wearisome to those on the receiving end (your readers). Think of an obnoxious drunk person yelling at you repeatedly and you’ll get the idea. Shouting in writing takes a couple of different forms–namely using all CAPITAL LETTERS or bold type. AND THESE SHOULD NEVER, EVER BE USED IN COMBINATION, ESPECIALLY WITH TOO MANY EXCLAMATION MARKS–OR INTERROBANGS!! DID YOU HEAR ME?

If you wish to emphasize something, you can do so in an understated, tasteful way by using italics. But always use them with a light hand, saving them for when you really need them. For one thing, they are more difficult to read than regular Roman text. And when you give added emphasis to too many things in your writing, not much of anything seems important after a while. As well, the reader tends to either get tired or develop a migraine, and you don’t really want to be responsible for that.

Do your readers–and editor, for that matter–an enormous favour by sparing them the above excesses. Trust me, they will thank you for your consideration.

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