Grammar

"Ain't that like the woman who married your granddad?"

Actually, no. Here’s a recommended read. Lynne Truss did the world a favour when she wrote Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It should be required reading in schools, places of employment and left in waiting rooms up and down the country.

Don't they teach grammar in schools anymore? I'm not saying the old (and somewhat boring) grammar teaching methods were any good but they were surely better than not teaching it at all. My first school didn't even manage to teach me to read. You were stuck with the same book until you 'could' read it and tutted and shouted at when you made no progress (on your own). I developed a terrible stutter when reading as I became so afraid to stand up and read in front of the class or even the teacher -- a certain woman who shall remain nameless unless I ever have the misfortune to meet her face-to-face again. My mother cured that. She heard me read one day and was appalled. Books at my school were graded 1 star to 5 stars. In three months she not only cured my stutter, she took me from a 1 star book right through to being able to read a 5 star one, but the teacher wouldn't let me jump the grades. She said it was impossible and wouldn't even let me read to her to prove it. Talk about hold children back or maybe she just didn't want to admit someone else had done something she couldn't.

I'm not saying be devout about this. There are times when I make a typo just like everyone. There are words I don't know how to spell but I at least take the time to look them up. Yes, there is an actual 'Dictionary' in the house! I firmly believe that writing should reflect its purpose. When writing informally to a friend, you can be a little more causal. It’s a friend, not your bank manager after all. When writing a formal document or a letter of complaint, then do your best to put all those irritating squiggles, curls and dots in the correct place.

I heard a newscaster the other day say he would ‘try and go’ and I almost screamed at the television. You don’t ‘try and’ anything. You ‘try to’. You don’t get 'off of' something, just 'off' and I won't even discuss how many people get those two words confused. Other incorrect spellings that drive me crazy is 'know' for 'now' and 'dose' for 'does'. Yes, I've seen them all. It’s not ‘can I leave the table’, it’s ‘may I leave the table’.

I have to say though that I was very heartened to hear from a US publisher who accepted a story of mine. I always write in British spelling but I do offer to change it for the US market if the publisher wishes. He told me he would expect his readers to be literate enough not see my spelling as mistakes but to know the difference!

Slava's Snowshow

I’ve never liked clowns -- too creepy. I think I just found some clowns that I like, though it took me a few days to reach this decision. Slava Polunin, considered by many to be the best clown in world, came to my attention when we booked to see Slava’s Snowshow on its first major British tour.

The truth was we were a little disappointed, though in retrospect I think this was not a fault of the show but down to one of those attempts to oversell something that didn’t need selling. I had seen it billed as the most beautiful thing I could ever expect to see, and this set my hopes so high and my imagination alive that there was no way it could live up to such expectation. The show, from a theatregoer’s point of view, is also undeniably short. Yet none of this made me sorry that I went. The moment the clownish figure, Assisyai, in his puffy yellow suit and red fluffy slippers appears on stage, children and adults are delighted, though in the adult’s case I’m sure a little perplexity clouds some of the enchantment. There were times when I wondered what on earth was going on. Possibly some of the humour does not translate well from Russia to the UK. However, there were also times when I thought someone doing a funny walk, for example, really shouldn’t have me laughing as much as it did. I felt almost guilty.

There are equally moments when you gasp in odd delight to see the audience below (I sat upstairs) covered in a great web, splashed with water, or buried in a snowstorm, though the snow is actually thousands of small pieces of paper. Incidentally, if you sit upstairs don’t expect to escape entirely unscathed!

If you look up the story, you’ll see comments such as ‘rhythm of verse’, which sounds peculiar when referring to what is a pantomime play until you see it. The joy of creating fake snowballs to throw at each other during intermission seems to overtake the audience no matter what the person’s age. There’s something oddly magical about the show and in that it’s also a little disturbing, which in turn is part of its magic. Strangely, it grew on me very much ‘after the fact’. I wouldn’t have paid top price tickets to see this and I left the theatre feeling a little puzzled because I couldn’t decide if I’d had a great time or not, but now I’m very glad of the experience. This is one clown I can happily live with.

Read my Smooch at CataNetwork

Read my 'smooch' excerpt from Uly's Comet (The Swithin Chronicles 1) posted at CataNetwork.

http://ecataromance.com/books/250-smooch_of_the_day?type=&id=1198

To-Do List

We all have them but for a writer it seems especially significant that the moment I cross something off, I find two things to add. I did manage two things in the last couple of months. I joined myspace and created a newsletter. The first because many people I know are hanging out on there and anyway, why not. Some people love it, some loathe it, and I don't mind either way. So far it's been no trouble at all though I dithered over how to 'decorate' my page. In the end, I almost changed my mind over the background but others outvoted me. 'He's nice', they said. We want him to stay. So for now at least, the 'serenity' angel remains.

As for the second, well, I ended up with a mailing list and didn't know what to do with it. I also had people ask me if I had a newsletter so I grumbled a bit and thought how will I find the time. Some authors produce one every month and I just can't manage that, not and make it interesting and if I couldn't make it interesting, I didn't see the point. The answer was to compromise. I'll shout if I have something to scream about but I've a quarterly newsletter now with the Autumn one already out and the Winter one... on my to-do list.

Out with the old

You'll have to excuse me. I've been away for a few days visiting family. Not only that, I bought a new desk and decided to move everything in the house around. Half way through I started to think 'Whose bright idea was this?' then I remembered. Oh yeah. Mine. Now that the work is 95% complete, I have to admit I think it was a good one. No matter how many years you live in a place, I think you continue to learn how to make the available space accommodate your growing needs. Necessity equals invention, I guess.

As for the desk, well, as you may have read, I had a picture come down and break part of my old desk and the poor thing was getting weak anyway. I decided I really couldn't continue to work on something so wibbly-wobbly. Yet, isn't it odd how one can become attached to inanimate objects. Right now, the remains of my old desk sit in a pile outside the house in the front garden, ready to go to the dump at the weekend. I had to say a fond farewell. I kept thinking, this is where I sat and wrote my current novels, where I wrote that short story or that letter to a friend. Every little ugly knock told a tale. It spoke of endless cups of coffee, scribbled ideas and even headaches when I've stared too long at the screen because I just needed to 'finish this bit'. It felt very much as though I were saying goodbye to an old and trustworthy companion. Still, make way for the new and with it possibly more and new books in time. Right now, I feel a little odd and displaced. I have to remember where everything is so it’s difficult to believe that in a few weeks I’ll get used to a new routine and how to lay my hands on just what I want when I want it. I’m secretly wishing that I could lay my hands on ideas so easily.