27 September 2008

Random Thoughts for today

I'm trying to keep up with many other interesting things. I'm writing as well as working on that project for my youngest son. I was surfing for writing topics and read Richard's Grammar and Composition Blog at about dot com. I was especially interested in the one on the apostrophe. Lots of different views. Still, I was looking for topics and continued on to Ginny's fiction writing blog. Today's topic was "Writers and Money" and I went to the link. I started to add a comment on Amanda Clayborn's blog "The Good, The Bad and the Money." From there, I needed to sign in and now, I am writing an entry on my blog. A typical day spent surfing the net.
I spent a couple hours off and on playing games also. Added a line or two to my son's vest. I spent six hours researching the Battle of Luzon. My father was there. He was in the 880th Airborne Engineer Aviation Battalion. I'm in the process of writing his biography. My sisters have requested that I write down his stories and memories. It's now getting to be a good sized book.

My nephew spent a couple hours with my mother and myself. He plays the Wii while we do our thing. [Since reading that bit about the apostrophe, I'm getting conscious about my writing.] He received some new games today. His birthday was celebrated this afternoon.

The reason I was looking for topics-organizing my writing schedule for the next couple months-is because I joined a critique group for short stories. I finished the critiques and found myself not able to enjoy reading for pleasure the last two books I read. I'm noticing the amount of mistakes in famous authors books, a couple of them are my favorite authors. I know a lot of manuscripts are submitted on disk or through email and I can tell when I read. Some of those mistakes are proofreading errors. Others are spell checking errors.

Does this mean that emerging writers don't really have to pay attention to their writing? What is the purpose of critique groups if published authors' books contain many of the mistakes that a critique group points out? I pointed out grammar errors, missing words, misspelled words, places where I thought the author could improve his/her plot line. I pointed out where they had double words, past/present tenses mixed, unclear meanings, something not explained or too much explanation. Instead of concentrating on the pleasure aspect of my reading, I was looking for and finding errors that I hadn't seen during the previous six or seven times I read those books.

I used to just get annoyed with the occasional mistake. Now, I'm wondering if I will be critiquing all those books I read for pleasure and not getting any pleasure at a cost of anywhere from $5.95 to $24.95+ per book. My son, my mother and I will have to go back to watching movies maybe. No, that gets to be annoying too. I don't know. I'll have to keep reading all those books that contain those mistakes and hope I don't notice them. [Total 16 apostrophes in my entry today.]