Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling

Hello out there,

After having written my first book, I feel I can finally talk about this.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been horrible at spelling. Even simple things like, your or you’re, perplexed me for the longest time. I wasn’t paying attention or I didn’t really care. I could get across what I wanted with the bare minimum.

Luckily we have programs that will tell us or even automatically fix our spelling for us. It’s saved me countless times.

Is it a crutch though? Yeah, but I think it’s okay to use a crutch sometimes.

My greatest weakness, is Grammar.

You should have seen how I was writing back in January of last year when I first decided I was going to write a book.

You couldn’t make out who was saying what in the dialog. I wasn’t putting the quotes in the right place even though I’ve read multiple books. It was a complete mess.

After showing it to people, they pointed out the parts that didn’t make sense and immediately I opened my favorite book and checked. They were right.

From then on I went back and fourth between books following the example of others writing. It worked really well for me.

Over time as I showed my manuscript to more and more people, the leader of our local writers critique group decided to help me with editing.

We worked endlessly, going line by line. We would send notes back and fourth, as I asked why certain things needed to be a certain way. When we were finished, I felt as if I finally started to “get” grammar.

I still struggle every day with where to put comma’s. There’s so many little rules and places I don’t fully understand. I’ve watched videos of people using language like “conjunction” or “predicate” and it never seems to help.

I’m sure I’ll figure it out one of these days. I’ll eventually find someone who can explain it in a way I understand. But for now I’ll continue using Grammarly and having my friends help me through it.

The best part about all of this is seeing your work come to life. There is also the side effect of actually giving your editor a break and being able to clearly put your vision on paper/screen.

This has actually been disrupting my willingness to apply for writing jobs. I’m gonna screw everything up. Then I imagine their editor shooting virtual laser beams at me destroying any semblance of courage I had. It’s silly but it’s a fear.

How are you all with Grammar, punctuation and spelling?

Thanks for dropping by again! I hope you didn’t come here looking for some sort of insight in how all this works. I’m still figuring it all out myself.

Have a wonderful day,
Katherine