Writing 101: The Debate for Irregardless

Irregardless is a hot-button word among grammarians, and that makes it confusing for writers. Is it a word, or isn't it? Should you be using it in your writing, or shouldn't you? It all depends on where you stand on this debate. Many wordsmiths either totally love it, or completely hate it.

It's a Word!

If you look up irregardless in the dictionary, you're going to find it. The Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary both have a listing for this word, which would seem to legitimize it. However, in both cases the word is listed as "nonstandard," and the Heritage actually defines the word as regardless. 

Doesn't that mean irregardless isn't a word? That all depends on how you view it. Because the word has been accepted into the dictionary and because it has found its way into the common vernacular and because it has a definite meaning (regardless), many passionately argue that irregardless is most certainly a word. 

Others feel just as passionately that it's not. 

No, It Isn't

If you break it down, irregardless just stops making sense. The ir prefix is negative in nature, but then so is the less suffix. Therefore, in the word irregardless you're actually saying something that more literally translates into without without regard. By itself, regardless already means without regard, and the extra prefix only emphasizes the negative...nonsensically. 

As any writer knows, double negatives just aren't allowed.

Irregardless is recognized in the dictionaries that set the standard for language as non-standard words, but the harshest definitions for the word are offered by Urban Dictionary. Of all wordsmiths, this online collection seems to have the worst opinion of the word. It's defined as being used only by the ignorant, which is a pretty harsh characterization.

In Writing

So, does irregardless have a place in your writing? What's the rule of bad grammar? Only in dialogue. It's okay, and sometimes quite proper, to use bad grammar or incorrect words if that's true to the way a specific character speaks. But since technically irregardless isn't an actual word (it's more of a slang term), you shouldn't use it in the rest of your narrative.

Writing 101: Don't Fall in Love with Your Work

I'm going to share a personal story...a love story. It's about me and a book. I started writing it around 7 years ago, after I'd been sort of half-thinking about it for several years. I worked on that book for over 2 years. Before I knew it, I had a massive file filled with research notes, pictures of maps all over my desktop, and an epic manuscript of over 300,000 words (that's massive). 

And love. I was filled with love for that book, which I started to think of (around chapter 9) as "my masterpiece." Some of you may not be aware of the true danger I was in at that point. It's for you that I have to share this advice: don't fall in love with your work. It could ruin you. 

Being in Love

What's so bad about falling in love with one's work? Doesn't loving your books make your writing better? You know what, maybe it does. Maybe that epic manuscript is the best thing I've ever written or will ever write -- but that isn't the point, and that certainly isn't the danger. I'm going to tell you about the danger. 

Being besotted with this particular story, I of course did what all ambitious and brave novelists are wont to do: I submitted it. I wrote my queries, hundreds of them, to literary agents and publishers. I refined my pitch and swung for the fences. Then I re-wrote the pitch and did it again. And again. And again. Hundreds of emails went out to hundreds of different professionals. I even engaged in a heated email argument with an agent, who tried to say my facts were wrong in one of my more interesting query letters (by the way, I was right and one of my sources was the New York Times). That's how passionately in love I was with my story.

It paid off. At last, a very well-respected firm sent me a letter, and it was everything I could have ever wanted. "Send us the entire manuscript," it said. And so I did. 

Now, two years had passed since I wrote the words "the end" on the book it took two years to write. At this point, I had four years total wrapped up in this book. So I was filled with excitement, and terror, when I mailed it off to New York. One day, a letter came back to me. 

It was five paragraphs, incredibly detailed, praising the book. The most personal response I have ever received, it was filled with uplifting words. I was told that the dialogue was great, the plot was engaging, the historical accuracy was amazing (of course), the narrative strong and true. My descriptions were great, my heroine was interesting, my story was wonderful.

But, the letter said, in a final paragraph comprised of two sentences at the end, it is quite long. And with the economy being what it is, and the publishing industry being what it currently is, they were sorry to have to pass on the damn thing anyway. 

After all that, this is how that letter ended. 

Having a Broken Heart

I couldn't really write another word for two years. I kept the letter near my desk at all times, and almost against my will I pulled it out to re-read it -- again and again and again -- all the time. I was working on a sequel for "my masterpiece" when I got that letter, and I haven't been able to bring myself to look at that manuscript since. I started about 5 other book projects and even tried to write short stories, but I lost interest quickly in every single thing I tried to write. Finally I stopped writing altogether for about a year. 

I had a broken heart. I had fallen in love with my work, and it let me down. It was everything I wanted it to be -- rich, epic, filled with history and plot-driven -- and all the reasons I loved it are all the reasons the industry hates it. It broke me, because I loved that book so much. I had to fall out of love before I could continue writing. 

One day, I finally did. 

It's Not Personal, It's Business

In the end, I think it was the right choice on their part -- the part of the letter-writer, I mean. I loved that book way too much. I would have cringed at every review, cried at every comment, winced at every single moment. I probably would have fought over the cover design, screeched about the price and spent every moment over-thinking that book from beginning to end. I would never have been able to discuss it sensibly, because I was a woman in love. 

Writing isn't about being in love. Good writers have to maintain a certain objectivity or there's no way they can survive in an era where every single reader has forums in which they get to sound off and air their opinions. As an author, you (and I) have got to be able to listen to (or read) that criticism with an open mind. Love clouds the mind and blinds the eye, and I don't care what the poets say but it's definitely got it's ugly side. I've seen how stubborn love can be, both in myself and in other authors, and it's just got no place in business.

Writing is a business. It's not personal. That book is never going to love you back. It did come out of your heart and your mind, your life experiences and your hard work. It's a part of you. But it's not you. If that book gets rejected or criticized, it's not you getting rejected and criticized. And here's something else you need to know: no one will ever be capable of loving that book the way you do. So you've got to be objective about it, and you've got to separate yourself from it. Once you wrap your heart, your love, your identity and yourself up in something you have created, you're in trouble with a capital T.

You want to know why? Because there's always another book -- if you're lucky, and if you keep your objectivity, that is. I was able to start plenty of books while I was still nursing my broken heart, but none of them went anywhere. I couldn't get into any of the plots and to date I still haven't finished any of them. Once I was well and truly out of love, however, my mind cleared up and the idea for the Deck of Lies series just came to me. Just like that. 

Don't get me wrong: I love the Deck of Lies series. I've loved writing all of the books, and I'll be sad when I finish up the fourth and final installment. But I am not in love with those books. I'll never fall in love again. Because in the business of writing, there's always more writing to do. If you fall too deeply in love with a book, you won't be able to start another -- because then you would be unfaithful to your true love. Get too tightly wrapped up in a single book or a single book project, and that's all you'll ever be. You'll never be able to create anything new. That's why love is dangerous, so stay out of it.

Writing 101: The Well-Crafted Character

I've blogged about the importance of creating a 3-dimensional main character before, but there are lots of other people who populate the pages of a book. Many writers develop a connection to their main characters, the hero or heroine who must go through all the trials and tribulations before they reach their happy ending...or tragic conclusion. But you should spend some time thinking about the supporting cast in your book, too, and make all of them as real as possible.

Who Am I?

With each and every character you create, take the time to think a little bit about who they are. I create a character sheet for all my books, with a brief bio for everybody who's going to appear. The bio tells me what the character's complete name is, what their nicknames are if they've got any, what they look like (and, in the case of the Deck of Lies series, which designers they prefer). But beyond this, there are other important details that writers need to include for many of their main supporting characters. If your main character is going to interact with these people, shouldn't they at least be interesting? 

• History. Did this person grow up in a wealthy household, or a poor one? Do they do well in school, or get terrible grades instead? Did something happen to them that shaped them in a significant way...or is this person special because nothing much exciting has happened to them at all? 
• Dialogue. This person might speak a certain way, depending on where they're from. Regional dialects are always important to observe, but a character's upbringing and history may also affect their speech patterns. The daughter of an English professor at Harvard, for example, is more inclined to speak quite properly -- or perhaps she rejects her parent's constant lessons in grammar and uses the worst possible slang instead. Louisa May Alcott made Amy, a supporting character in Little Women, stand out for the way she used dialogue. When it's done well, dialogue is a powerful tool for certain characters.
• Body language. Remember the "close talker" on Seinfeld? Some characters might have certain mannerisms, or use specific gestures when they speak. This makes the character much richer, and easier for your readers to envision.
• Flaws. Nobody's perfect. Does this character have any addictions, bad habits, major hang-ups? If readers spend a significant amount of time with any character, they should definitely pick up on some character flaws. Flawless characters aren't believable, and they just make everybody feel bad. 
• Motivations. What's this character's role? It's too easy to think about what drives the main character, and make all their actions clear, while forgetting that the supporting cast need some humanity, too. They're just there to play off your main character it's true, but you have to think about your characters as though they are real people. Real people never see themselves as a supporting character in someone else's movie, do they? Your characters should all have their own ambitions, goals and desires -- something driving them that's not necessarily wrapped up in whatever the main character is doing.

The well-crafted character is one who's fully realized in the pages of the novel, someone with a past and ideas about their own future, someone with current goals and former baggage. Make the supporting cast as interesting as the main character, and you'll make your writing even better.

Delving into the Deck of Lies

"I really enjoyed reading this book...it only got better towards the end." Another reader sounded off on Justice recently at Total Teen Fiction. Go read the full review to see what she liked, and didn't like, about the beginning of the Deck of Lies.

She's not the only one reading about lies, murder and family secrets this week. A new post on another book blog suggests that one reader may already be embroiled in a weekend Deck of Lies reading marathon. Visit Sarah Elizabeth's Bookshelf to see what she had to say about the beginning of Justice!

From the Trenches: In Love with Words, Afraid of People

Some writers are so afraid of being rejected or judged in any way, they won't even let others see their work. This was the case for one American woman who would go on to become one of the most celebrated poets of all time. It's only through a quirk of fate that any of us know she existed -- upon her death, she instructed that all of her writings should be burned to ash. 

Lucky for us, that's not what happened. 

Emily Dickinson lived in Massachusetts, and in her 56 years on Earth she barely saw any of the world. In fact, she barely saw what was going on outside her own room. This is where she spent most of her time, usually wearing white clothing, scribbling away furiously at her poems and her letters. Though she was a homebody who reportedly did not like to greet guests who came to the family house, she was a prolific letter-writer who maintained many close friendships through correspondence. 

But most of her time was spent writing poetry, usually on the topic of mortality (which seemed to fascinate her). Dickinson even put together collections of her own poems, binding them by hand. She never published those poetry books.

Meeting the World

During her lifetime, Dickinson published two poems...both anonymously. No one knows exactly why she was so reluctant to share her work, but some speculate that she received early criticism for her poetry early in life. More likely, Dickinson didn't publish for the same reason she didn't come out of her room -- she was painfully introverted and reclusive. Being an introverted writer is a bit like being a fish who wants to fly. But Dickinson could have been discouraged because her anonymous poems were edited heavily before being put into print; editors removed her dashes and changed some of her punctuations. 

In any time, Emily Dickinson's style of poetry was unique. She didn't exactly observe rules of punctuation or capitalization, her lines were short and her rhyming scale was strange. After she died in 1886, her sister Lavinia discovered a treasure trove of nearly 2,000 poems in Emily's room.

They, too, were heavily edited before they were published in 1890, where they met with rather ugly reviews for about 60 years. It wasn't until an unedited version of her poetry was released in 1955 that Emily Dickinson became recognized as the genius poet she truly was. Now, the critics can't praise her enough, and Dickinson's poetry is a must-read in high school and college classes around the world. 

They're always published in their original, unedited, style.

Emily Dickinson worked in the poetry trenches in private, keeping all of her beautiful words to herself out of shyness, or fear, or reasons we can't understand. But the woman who was always writing of death found a way to become immortal. Today, Dickinson's voice remains strong and her own singular style will be preserved in print for ever. She didn't share much of herself with the world, but at least she did share her words. Fear kept Emily inside her bedroom. The important thing is that it didn't keep her from writing.

Justice: Indie Book of the Week!

Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) has been selected as the Indie Book of the Week by the good folks at Bibliofreak.

Visit the site and click on the cover of Justice to read all the Amazon reviews and get your Kindle copy of the book!

Writing 101: Change Your Editing Approach

I went to the biggest middle school in my city, a monster of a 3-story building with annexes, outside buildings and yes, even an elevator. I went to this from a school housing maybe three classes per grade. The whole school building was one floor, and shaped like a big circle, so no student could possibly get lost. That middle school looked massive to me...until I went to high school for a while. Perspective changes everything, and the same can be said when you're talking about editing. You can't make your books perfect unless you change your editing approach, and change your perspective.

Changing Your Perspective

I've blogged about the logistics of editing before, so you already know how to edit your ebooks. But you're not going to catch all the mistakes (and everybody makes mistakes) unless you change your perspective. What does that mean? It means if you're only reading your book on your computer screen, you're not editing properly. 

Change the way you're looking at your words. If you've got an ereader, you can upload your book to the ereader before it's ever published live through any online bookstores. It's easy to do: simply connect your ereader to your computer using the provided data cable. Access the device through the computer (a screen should pop up for you once the ereader is loaded) and open up the folder where your ebooks are stored on the reader (on Kindles, the folder is called Archive Documents or something similar). Drag your ebook file directly from the folder where it's stored into the ereader folder; it'll copy itself automatically, so your book won't actually move from your computer hard drive. 

Once the file is on the ereader, you can view it the way your readers are going to be viewing it. And once you've changed your perspective, chances are good that you'll find a lot of mistakes you missed the first time around.

Editing...and Re-Editing

Yes, you should read your book the whole way through more than once. Even if you spend a lot of time editing and re-reading during your writing process, nothing can substitute for a good read-through of your work. When you're editing, you shouldn't just be looking for incorrect grammar mechanics and misspellings. You need to make sure you're not repeating yourself (or similar words and phrases) too often, you need to double-check that the plot is hanging together and you need to make sure that the whole book is smooth and cohesive throughout. When you're re-reading your work on an ereader, keep a notepad handy or use the device itself to make notes when you find mistakes, so you can go back to the manuscript file on your computer and make the necessary changes. 

If you make a print version of your book, you should absolutely buy a copy for yourself and read your work again. Things look different when they're viewed differently, so it follows that you'll find new mistakes when you look at your book in different formats. When you can read your book from cover to cover (or screen to screen) without finding a single mistake or something you want to change, then you're done editing.

Books on Film: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the best-known children's stories ever written, and almost 150 years later it still delights children and adults today. This book has been put on film many, many times since film was first invented, but today we're only going to discuss a single adaptation: the best one.

The Book

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most enduring and beloved stories of all time, and it was written by a very boring math professor. Commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland, the book was written in 1865 by Lewis Carroll, a pen name used by a professor who also published several ponderous volumes about math. Because of all the strangeness depicted in Wonderland, Carroll is credited with vastly influencing the entire fantasy genre. 

You probably know how the story goes: a little girl named Alice is sitting outside with her sister, and she's terribly bored until a white rabbit hops past. Alice chases the creature and follows him all the way through the rabbit hole, where she finds a strange refreshment table waiting for her. She drinks -- she shrinks. She eats, she grows big again. Things are dire. Alice begins to cry, because there's nothing else to do, and creates an ocean of tears. She fans herself and ends up shrinking again, only to be swept up in the sea.

This is her entrance into Wonderland, where things get "curiouser and curiouser" as she meets a strange cast of characters that include the smoking caterpillar and the mad hatter. 

Carroll's depth of creativity is fully on display in the famous novel. Alice in Wonderland is packed with amazing poems and intriguing characters, even a trial. It just doesn't get any better than this...unless you also watch the best film adaptation of the story.

The Film

The first film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland was made in 1903. It's been re-made in just about every decade since, but the very best version of the story ever put on film was released by Disney in 1951 (sorry, Tim Burton).

In this version, Alice has blonde hair and wears the blue dress that has been synonymous with the story ever since. Because it's animated, Disney isn't bound by physical laws or human ability: the Cheshire cat really does appear as just a smile, Alice really does shrink down and blow up in moments, mice actually talk and the Queen of Hearts doesn't look nearly as insane as she does in Tim Burton's much stranger live-action version.

It was made 60 years ago, but Disney's Alice is still the most iconic rendering of the heroine, and the animated movie is still the most popular and beloved re-telling of the tale. But if you just watch this film and don't read the book, you don't actually know the real story. 

I've said it before, I'll say it again: somehow, Disney always disappoints me. We all love Disney, but when it comes to changing stories (or history, or facts, or anything else that suits their fancy) Disney stands second to none.

What Got Adapted? 

Disney, in their inimitable manner, decided not to adapt just one book with their Alice film: they went ahead and changed two. Carroll's original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland actually has a sequel called Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. It's an amazing story involving a life-sized chess board, the red and white queen and all sorts of other fun stuff...including stuff that shouldn't have ever been adapted into the Alice in Wonderland movie.

In the film, Alice meets the memorable Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, who tell her all about the Walrus and the Carpenter. This didn't happen in Wonderland; it happened after Alice went Through the Looking Glass. The garden of talking flowers also did not appear until the second book, and the caterpillar never changes into a butterfly in front of Alice. 

You'll completely miss the story of the pig and the pepper, truly an entertaining little vignette, and nearly all of the dormouse's story at the tea party. The incident with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon are also left out of the film adaptation. Because of this, the entire meaning of the trial ("who stole the tarts?") changes in the Disney version. In the book, Alice isn't on trial -- she is only called as a witness for the Knave (Jack) of Hearts. The book's Wikipedia page has a surprisingly good summary of the entire book, but it's much more enjoyable if you read Carroll's original work. He was so outside-the-box with his writing, he actually invented his own words that we still use today. Among them are chortle, galumphing and sluggard. 

In any version (except Tim Burton's), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are frightening, exciting, strange and just as wonderful as the title promises.