by C. Hope Clark |
Writers research like fiends for their magazine features, novels, and how-to books. We often feel the need to travel great distances to get the facts right when we are wending a story. Writers seek grants, chunks of time away from family, vacation time from day jobs, and retreats, thinking where they are, living their routine lives, adds nothing to the spice they seek for a good tale.
However, sometimes we get the best details just going outside and sitting in the rain.
by C. Hope Clark |
Critique groups are banes or blessings, depending upon your experiences. I’ve endured both, but in the long run I consider a critique group an asset in a writer’s toolbox. They come with their good points and bad, their strong writers and weak, the arrogant and the fearful. And invariably you’ll find the one who deems himself the grammar police.
He (or she) will don a green, red, or other colored pen and commence to circling passive voice, noting Oxford commas, crossing through the use of HAD and THAT, underscoring your split infinitives, and chastising you for beginning a sentence with AND or BUT. Heaven help you if you end a sentence with OF, TO or AT.
And invariably a writer will stand tall and profess that he writes from the soul, the heart, or some other part of their body, and that strict adherence to grammar rules handcuffs a creative spirit.
