{"id":919,"date":"2015-04-17T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=919"},"modified":"2015-04-16T07:11:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T14:11:16","slug":"cotton-hay-and-rags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2015\/04\/17\/cotton-hay-and-rags\/","title":{"rendered":"Cotton, Hay and Rags"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is one of those days when I probably shouldn\u2019t be allowed access to my keyboard without having a minder keeping watch over my shoulder. \u00a0My head is, as Professor Henry Higgins would say, “full of cotton, hay, and rags.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Usually when I\u2019m in one of these moods, I can at least summon up a bit of umbrage over the state of things grammatical, but today I can\u2019t be bothered with the fact that the words \u201cfast forwarding and other functionalities may not be available.” \u00a0FUNCTIONALITY? \u00a0Wouldn\u2019t the word functions actually fit the bill? \u00a0And then there are the sports announcers who rattle on about the PHYSICALITY of the game. \u00a0Maybe they think that adding a syllable or two on the end of a word will make them sound more sophisticated. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t work. \u00a0If it did, this would be a day when my WRITERALITY had lost its FUNCTIONALITY!<\/span><\/p>\n

But for today, those English language usage issues are not my issues. \u00a0My editor looked at the work I did on Dance of the Bones and liked it. \u00a0That means the manuscript has been sent to production, and the next time I see it will be at the copy editing stage. \u00a0That also means that if I\u2019m done with the creative part of that book, I need to move on to STARTING the next one. \u00a0Maybe that\u2019s why my writerality is currently AWOL. \u00a0Starting a book is a daunting task. \u00a0Even if I know the title. \u00a0Even if I know the first sentence. \u00a0It\u2019s still more than I can do today.<\/span><\/p>\n

So here\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do. \u00a0It\u2019s what I\u2019ve done for every vacation in my life from Second Grade on. \u00a0I\u2019m going to read a book. \u00a0Or maybe two. \u00a0Or even several. \u00a0I\u2019m going to read something where the plotting and dialogue are someone else\u2019s problem. \u00a0And if there happens to be a typo, I will not sit down and send out a letter berating the author\u2019s general incompetence. \u00a0I will simply say to myself, \u201cWell, obviously the editors missed that one,\u201d and keep on reading. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And if I happen to be disappointed in a book\u2014as I was earlier this week\u2014I will not whip off a note of complaint to that author, demanding to know, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you? \u00a0Couldn\u2019t you write a better book than that?\u201d \u00a0You see, I happen to know, from the inside out, that what\u2019s going on on the outside of an author’s body or in an author\u2019s life impacts what goes into his or her creative process. \u00a0I also know that every author, including this one, does the best job he or she can on every book. \u00a0Each of them does the best job possible in terms of writing and in terms of editing. \u00a0I will simply take a page out of Thumper\u2019s father\u2019s play book and resort to the following: \u00a0If you can\u2019t say somethin\u2019 nice, don\u2019t say nothin\u2019 at all!<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, it always tickles me that the people who are most arch in their criticisms of my work often do so in e-mails that are rife with errors of their own making. \u00a0It might be fun to point those errors out to them, but usually I don\u2019t bother. \u00a0I know how it feels when someone tells me I\u2019m stupid. \u00a0There\u2019s no point in dishing out the same kind of treatment to someone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now back to my book. \u00a0My WRITERALITY may be broken, but I hope my READERALITY is not.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of those days when I probably shouldn\u2019t be allowed access to my keyboard without having a minder keeping watch over my shoulder. \u00a0My head is, as Professor Henry Higgins would say, “full of cotton, hay, and rags.” Usually when I\u2019m in one of these moods, I can at least summon up a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-eP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}