Writing 101: Calling a Spade a Spade

You can call me an indie author if you like, but you can also call me an autonomous wordsmith if you really feel like it. 

Or maybe you'd better just stick with indie author. When you are one, you'll find that often simple language is the best. So when you're writing, let's just call a spade a spade. It takes too long to look for synonyms for the word shovel.

Writing 101: Several Years' Worth of Punctuation Frustration

I often write about the writing problems that I encounter, and this is one that just won't go away. I have so much trouble when it comes to apostrophes and time, I'll usually find a way to re-write the sentence instead. The rule is confusing, and it's one that you'll have to memorize in order to get right. 

Punctuation Frustration

You can wait for a package to come for months, and you can wait for a month of Sundays. You can even wait a week's time for that package to come to your door. But when you have two weeks' worth of waiting piled up, punctuation gets totally flipping confusing. Yes, I'm about to come up with some better examples of how to do it correctly. 

Writing 101: Forums, What Are They Good For?

Reading writer forums was one of my New Year's resolutions, and for a few months I tried to stick with it. I added four new groups to my reader, and promptly hated my decision. After I started reading the forums, I fell even further behind on my review commitments and spent far too much time swearing at authors who will never know I scorned them. But the other day, I finally figured out a reason to really like reading the forums. I now know why this isn't the biggest possible waste of my time, or yours.

What I've Learned

I've made no secret of my forums frustration. I think would-be authors ask too many questions when they ought to be researching. I see the same questions over and over again. I groan and complain and roll my eyes, but I also know (now) that forums do serve a purpose. 

Writing 101 Redux: Single or Double Spaces?

Do you type two spaces after a period, or just one? It's a subject of some debate among the writing community and editors of all kinds. If you want to know where I stand on the issue (and maybe you can already tell), you have to journey with me back to 2012 and the beginnings of the blog. 

For Throwback Thursday, we're going to re-visit double-spacing in books...and why I have such a strong opinion about it.

Lust and Love with 'Song of the Sea'

 "The YA fantasy genre needs more books of this kind."

"The story of Brenna‘s search for her mother is inspiring and relatable.The writing is fresh and crisp. As a reader, I just fell in love with the female protagonist."

My newest book, "Song of the Sea," has been reviewed at Booklust. Go take a look at it before you buy the book at Amazon!

Writing 101: The FANBOYS Grammar Hack

I'd like to tell you about a grammar hack, For all writers can benefit from using tricks, And I like to talk about grammar. I'm not an expert, Nor am I a teacher, But I don't want to make mistakes. It's either make them, Or learn how to use grammar. Anyone can learn this, Yet many still get it wrong. Don't be one of them. It's time for you to learn how to use the FANBOYS, So you can always get it right.

Let's Hear it for the Boys

FANBOYS are a group of coordinating conjunctions. They're special because they all follow the same grammar rule. Do you know what it is? Read the first paragraph again to see if you can figure it out. 

Writing 101: Adjectives and Commas

One of the first lessons you learn in school is to put a comma between your adjectives, just like I'm doing when I say I'm truly, madly, deeply in love with commas. I'm lying, but at least I'm grammatically correct. But here's the problem: that lesson is wrong. You don't always put a comma between your adjectives. You only put them between coordinate adjectives. With cumulitive adjectives, you don't. Yes, I'm about to explain what that means. 

Little Brown Ball

You should always put commas between coordinate adjectives, which are descriptive words that are similar to each other. For example, if the painting is black, brown, blue and green, those adjectives coordinate because they're all colors. They all go together and fit in the same group. There is a simple way to test if adjectives are coordinating or not.

Writing 101: Decades Can't Be Possessive (Or, Why 1960's Is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong)

In all but the rarest of circumstances, the rules of grammar don't change. They stay the same all the time, for every word. This is why its so very confusing when people make decades possessive. If you write 1970's or 60's anywhere, for any reason, you are wrong. And I'm here today to tell you how to be right.

Apostrophe S

I cant seem to stress it enough: apostrophe s is there to show possession. This is Jade's blog. I'm using Blogspot's software.

Because the blog belongs to Jade, it's Jade's. The apostrophe s shows possession. And a decade can't possess something, can it?