Skip to main content
On Wakeful Editing : How to bring a fresh eye to your work

(Reference: Editing Fact and Fiction, Leslie T. Sharpe 1997, Cambridge Press)

A creative writer is not "a language autocrat".

The desire to be right should never inhibit the development of voice, flow of usage, sensitivity to sound and simple common sense.

Graduates of the "I have learned a rule and will apply it" school, run the risk of "ignoring the niceties of stylistic variation and also changing the meaning of some sentences by shifting the emphasis."

Mastery of standard usage are not to be dispensed with, but unique style and original flavor arise from the kind of flexibility  that writers and editors  risk when they appreciate that language is not cast in stone and is a living, changing organism.

Above All,

Happy Writing,

JJ

Comments

Maureen Marks-Mendonca said…
I agree, Joanne!

Popular posts from this blog

UP A Tree, With a Good Book...

Think of your young readers this way: up a tree, with a good book and worried that the sixth book in the series marks the end, because then what will he do!  All 6 Island Fiction titles are available as e-books at: https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/  or jump to Time Swimmer by Gerald Haussman, one of my all time favorite teen titles: https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/timeswimmer.html Or why not kick start August reading with: Night of the Indigo by Michael Holgate which won a Silver Moonbeam Medal for "Teen Spirituality" https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/night-of-the-indigo.html Pictured: Battle of the Labyrinth, Percy Jackson Photo credit and copyright: J. Johnson What to read when Percy Jackson comes to an end? Now young Caribbean readers have a series rich in speculative fiction sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism. Check out all 6 titles of the  Caribbean's first-ever teen series with cinematic writing that even reluctant readers will

Mari Popova reviews: Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Living to Tell the Tale"

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ Read all: http://www.brainpickings.org "If you're going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones…After all, there are better ways to starve to death." Gabriel García Márquez  (March 6, 1927–April 17, 2014) is one of  the greatest authors of all time , and yet he had an unlikely path to greatness. His life-story is an emboldening antidote to the tyrannical myth that the crib is the crucible of creative genius...

Looking Up...

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ I am convinced we are all on a spectrum from "Wounded" to "Recovering" Creatives. Being creative and wounded seem to coexist as a part of our human condition. Observation reveals that even as functional Creatives, we collude, propagate and inflict wounding on ourselves and other creatives. Putting malice aside, (or perhaps even including it), if ignorance can be  simplified to the individual "ignoring what is within",  then who really can be 100% beyond its dark, sticky reach 100% of the time. With this in mind, it is a  life-saving effort for sincere 'working' creatives to expect, even anticipate resistance.  And at least, to include the work of having to transcend it. The more insistent we are at our creative endeavours, no end of obstacles will arise both from within our own complex unconscious and outside; from others in our range of influence, and beyond. SO, what to do with all these voices? Nay-sa