Things I Fear

I have the weirdest irrational fears.

Well, I guess they're not all irrational.  But I feel like they are.

For instance: I'm scared of being completely alone.

Like last week, my mom and two siblings all went to the store together and I decided to stay home so I could write.  But the kitchen started making really weird noises and the dishwasher creeped me out.  I had to turn on my music at top volume to drown out my fears.

Another example:  Grammar Tests.

I should mention (you'd know if you've beta read for me) I don't have very good grammar.  Actually, that might not be entirely true.  I can tell when a sentence is written wrong.  Like, I'd never say "Were going into the Trials today.  Its going to be difficult.  They is going to win."

Grammar that bad just makes me shiver.  Yuck.

Not to mention, those are probably just about the three most boring sentences I've ever written.

But sometimes, here and there throughout my book, as my fingers type in perfect rhythm with my train of thought, sometimes I forget an apostrophe.  Or add an extra comma.  Or add in a poorly constructed sentence so I can hurry it up and move on to the next one.

The thing in grammar that scares me the most is all those words.

Yeah.  I'm a writer.  Words should be the LEAST of my fears.

But when I come across something like this:  "Name the direct object that's modified by the first adjective that comes before the predicate nominative and the antecedent."

 I have no clue what the heck that means.

That sentence probably doesn't actually mean anything.  That's just what all the questions sound like to me.

(Yes, this is my actual grammar textbook I've been using this year.)

What are you guys afraid of?  Do you have an irrational fear of grammar?

--Jess

P.S.

For this entire post, I kept spelling 'grammar' as 'grammer'.  Yes, with an 'e'.  Maybe I should add that I have the irrational fear of spelling too?

Great Weekend!

First of all, I'm really excited for no apparent reason. I'm coming down with a cold, too, but strangely I'm really happy! I got a ton of work done this weekend but a lot more to do, so I'll try to make this post short.

I heard back from a few of my beta readers and got a lot of good feedback. I knew having beta readers would help me a lot but I guess I wasn't aware of how much it would help. I learned a lot.

For example:

• The difference between 'farther' and 'further'. ('Farther' is used as in physical distance and 'further' is for metaphorical distance)
• That you're not supposed to use a comma before the word 'but' (yep, I did that about a thousand times)
• That I italicize words way too many words
•  I have too many "she says" or "he says" after someone speaks. It turns out, if there are only two people in the conversation, you hardly need those at all!
• There's still a ton of stuff about writing that I don't know.

So yeah, my issues are mostly grammatical and then there were some problems with the setting. But I think I finally fixed that... we'll see.

How was you're weekend?

--Jess