Thoughts on Writing
#02: Your Grammar Is Eating The Neighbors
by Seanan McGuire
Welcome to the second of what looks dismayingly like it's going to be a
series of fifty essays based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Because, y'know,
it's not like I was doing anything else
with myself in my copious amounts of spare time. Except for the part
where, oh, wait, I DON'T HAVE ANY. Clearly my brain is trying to kill
me. Please send help. If you can't send help, please send pumpkin cake,
as it is direly needed. If you can't send pumpkin cake, well, enjoy
today's topic. Namely:
Thoughts on Writing #2: Your Grammar Is Eating The Neighbors.
...what's sad is that this is actually nicer and less snarky than the
first entry in this series. Just in case you'd wondered
whether I was actually mellowing. The original thought:
The
rules of English grammar were devised by an evil linguist who had a
bone to pick with the adherents of the more traditional schools of the
written word. They laughed at him in the academy, and we bastards are
still paying today. You don't need to have a perfect grasp of the
seventeen thousand (occasionally conflicting) rules to be a writer;
that's what editors and proofreaders are for. At the same time, you
can't just throw a bunch of words at the page and expect to have all
your work done for you. Learn the basic rules of punctuation and
grammar before you subject other people to your work. They can squabble
over the Oxford commas at their leisure.
Ready?
Let's begin.
English Is A Monster.
Those
of us who grew up with English may not be consciously aware of what
every 'English as second language' person in the world knows full well:
English is hard. Our grammar is needlessly
complicated, full of
pit-traps and sneak attacks. Constructing a sentence in English is sort
of like trying to snatch six specific garter snakes out of a nest. The
nest has been buttered. Also, the snakes bite. Now, once you've been
juggling garter snakes -- or speaking English -- for a few years, you
can generally get the six snakes you want with a minimum of trouble.
But they'll always be buttered, and they'll always have teeth.
We
have a language built on the stolen bones of other languages. The
people responsible for 'creating' English were basically playing
Frankenstein, using spare parts to make something capable of smashing
the local village. I use the term 'creating' loosely, because English
wasn't created as much as it just, well, evolved. People looked up one
day and realized that they were speaking this weird new language, and
by that point, they were used to it, so they didn't stop. I mean, the
nice thing about Frankenstein's Monster is that it's big, flexible, and
pretty damn difficult to kill. You can always bring it back with a set
of jumper cables and a car battery, and that's a useful trait to have
in a monster, or in a language. The big thing to remember is that, at
the end of the day, it may be friendly, but it's still a monster.
There's always the chance that it's going to kidnap your wife, crush
your neighbor, and go rampaging off down the street.
It is
easier to be unclear in English than it is in almost any other
language, partially because of its innate flexibility. There's a
running joke on NCIS -- a television procedural --
about a
foreign-born character misspeaking and mangling her idioms, because, ha
ha, English is hard. Well, guess what? English is
hard. Anyone who tells you that English isn't
hard is either delusional or trying to lull you into a false sense of
security. Possibly because their own personal monster of English is
getting hungry...
Right, Get The Torches.
Put down
the torch, hotshot: English may be a monster, but it has its uses. As I
said before, it's big, flexible, and pretty damn difficult to kill. And
it can express almost anything you want. This is a language that has so
many wonderful words that we regularly allow old ones to fall out of
common use, replacing them with shiny new words, like buying new parts
for our monster. This is a language that we can use to knock down other
people's villages. We just need to be certain that we know how to
control it.
Now,
I could pretend to be all-knowing and give you a lot of instructions on
how not to split an infinitive and how to avoid overly complex
sentences, but let's get real: I am not an English teacher. I'd just be
parroting information out of books, and while I'd like to think that my
parroting would be amusing, it wouldn't be any better than what's
already out there. I do recommend that you pick up On Writing,
by Stephen King, and Strunk and White's Elements of Style.
One book will teach you basically everything you need to know about the
strict rules of making your monster do what you want it to do. The
other will teach you some handy tips about making your monster dance
the hokey-pokey. Both are good things to know, and both are going to be
a lot more useful to you than all the parroting in the world.
If you're really
confused about the way that grammar works, take a class! Most community
colleges offer basic English courses. Note that I'm not saying 'take a
class that teaches you how to write' -- you'll do that, or you won't do
that, based on your own needs and what you personally feel will help
you grow as a writer. I'm saying 'take a class that teaches you about
the language.' English grammar is the way it is
because its
creator was laughed at in university. Maybe if you go to university,
you can learn how to stop laughing and start understanding why it felt
the need to smash your barn.
I'm really enjoying this monster metaphor. Can you tell?
But My Grammar Is Good Enough For Teh Intarwebs!
...ow, my brain. Look: everything
is good enough for 'teh Intarwebs.' That is, really, the beauty of the
Internet. With the click of a button, you can become a published
author. When I finish this essay, I'll be able to put it right up
online. Bam. Now, being as I'm me, I'm going to proofread it and run it
by a few people first, but I could publish it the
second it's
finished. No one's standing over my shoulder saying 'I think you
spelled that wrong.' No one's going to smack me for splitting an
infinitive, or for constructing a sentence so convoluted that my point
gets lost in a forest of modifiers. Well, Brooke might, but that would
be after the fact; the post would still be made, the words would still
be out there. No one is grading the Internet.
The thing to
remember here is context. Vixy and I regularly have entire
conversations in LOLcat, and Shawn and I mostly just make incoherent
dinosaur noises at each other via IM. That's totally fine. But I'm not
going to read a novel written in either of those styles. 'Good enough
for the Internet' doesn't actually mean that your grammar is any good;
it just means that your personal equivalent of Brooke has not yet
smacked you on the head and dragged you off to the Lagoon for a little
remedial education.
I am very loose with language in my
blogging, because it's my blog; I can be loose with the language if I
want. I abuse punctuation freely and without qualms. I insert random
capitals in the middle of my sentences for emphasis. I make up words. I
use really big words without necessarily giving the surrounding context
to avoid confusing my readers. Periodically, I devolve into LOLcat for
no reason beyond 'I wanted to.' Now, the more I learn about grammar and
punctuation, the less I do some of these things, just because I'm
training myself out of bad habits. At the same time, there are things I
used to do carelessly that I now do on purpose. I see the rules. I just
choose to let my monster smash them.
When I'm writing fiction,
or even serious non-fiction, I get a lot more careful with the way I
word and structure things. I don't want to risk confusing and
alienating people by mistake; I want to do it on purpose. I have people
read and review me, and when I get the same critique from multiple
sources, I tend to take little crash-courses in the way to make my
monster work for my benefit. Nothing says 'learn how to control your
monster' like being told exactly what it's doing wrong.
The Internet is where you can let your monster rampage. Everywhere
else, you may need to give it a little training.
So I'm Basically Screwed.
Yes
and no. No matter how much you train your monster, it's always going to
be a monster. Nothing you or I or anyone else can do is going to change
that. You could try writing in a different language, but that's going
to raise a whole new set of problems.
At the same time, you can
learn to control your monster, at least well enough that the people who
do this professionally can recognize its potential and guide you along.
Maybe you'll never develop a consistent approach to the Oxford comma,
but if that's the only mess your monster's making, your line-editors
are really unlikely to care. No one expects perfection. They just
expect the house to still be standing when you and your monster leave.
Good luck, and remember, stay away from the castle.
© 2008 Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire is an author, poet, and musician who lives in the San Francisco Bay area with two cats and a small army of plush dinosaurs. Her first studio album, Stars Fall Home was released last year, and her fantasy novel Rosmary and Rue will be published by DAW in 2009.
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