Weekly Word Count: February 5

by Kestrel on Friday, February 5, 2010 · 0 comments

in Writing

What Is This?

Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here.

I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is add up the “words” column and I’m good to go. I’ve also decided to give this article half-credit, since I do a bit more than just paste boilerplate and fill in numbers (see the next section, for example). However, it will be counted in the following week’s total.

Blog posts and creative writing count full credit (with the exception of this weekly article, which counts half credit). Copyediting for other writers is counted at ten percent of the actual word count for the document; style sheets for that copyediting will count twenty-five percent. Editing my own work, if and when I get to that point, will count fifty percent of starting word count. 

How Did I Do?

My weekly goal is 2,000 words. This week, I published three articles to the blog, one of which was a creative writing effort.

  • Weekly Word-Count: January 29 – Blog Post @ 50 percent: 231 words
  • A Pro and Con View of Language – Blog Post: 1209 words
  • Saucy Writing Prompt – Creative Writing/Blog Post: 402 words
  • Two-Minute Drill – Blog Post: 444 words

Total: 2,286 words. I’m still making my goal: Being on vacation has, in fact, given me plenty of time to do that. However, because I am on vacation, and because I don’t want to exceed my 5GB/month bandwidth limit on my Verizon data plan, I’m not doing the sort of research I do at home, so my posts, while frequent, are fairly short. (Of course, many of you may view that as a Very Good Thing!)

Much as I wanted to, I did not get any more written on Darklight, but I did some mental outlining. I know roughly how Chapter 3 will start, and it will introduce a new major character, a point of view change, as well as some new conflict. Chapter 2 was begun last week, and there will be some more conflict there. I realize the vast majority of you have no clue about Darklight, but it’s the NaNoWriMo project I did not do last November. If I work on it for a year, instead of a month, I might have 50,000 words before December 1.

Looking Ahead

We’re still on vacation through February 17. Thursday evening, my brother-in-law and his wife drove up from Los Angeles, so we’ll be spending the weekend wining and dining together. I doubt I’ll write anything more before they leave on Sunday.1 

I should be able to get at least one blog post up Sunday or Monday. Sometime Tuesday (the earlier the better, but it won’t be till late morning, in any event) we’ll drive down to Santa Barbara. We’re hoping to explore some art galeries there in the afternoon. I may get a short post up Tuesday evening. 

On Wednesday, we fly to Orlando for a week at the Disney parks. Since we’re joining my son and his family, my free time will be extremely limited. And what little I’ll have, I would prefer spending with my granddaughter instead of blogging. However, I may still manage to get some short items posted while in Orlando.

The bottom line is, if I miss my goal next week, I won’t be too concerned. Same with the week after, when we’ll be home part of the week. But once we get home, I expect to get a lot done, even with some other non-writing projects I have planned. Maybe I’ll discuss them in a blog post next week. :)

__________
Notes:
  1. In fact, I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon, and will post it Friday morning.

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Two-Minute Drill: The Comma Splice

by Kestrel on Thursday, February 4, 2010 · 0 comments

in Grammar, Punctuation, Writing

For some reason, discussion of comma splices is on the upswing lately. I’ve run across it at least three times in recent weeks; most recently, at Copyediting’s Fiddly Rules Podcast #12.1 Because it’s unlikely you visit the same websites (or subscribe to the same blogs) as I do, I thought I’d give a quick lesson on this sometimes troublesome bugaboo.2

First of all, what is a "comma splice"? Very simply, it’s the joining of two independent clauses with a comma, but without a coordinating conjunction. Here are a few examples:

  • We bought a lot of chocolate chips on sale, my wife is baking cookies today.
  • I’m hungry, I don’t want to fix anything too complicated.
  • I looked at my weekly word count earlier, I was a couple hundred words below my goal.

Many of you may see those as examples of "run-on sentences," which they are. There are a lot of other ways to create run-ons; a comma splice is one of the simplest. 

Earlier, I mentioned "coordinating conjunctions." Coordinating conjunctions are and, but, or, for, nor, yet, so.  Each of the examples I gave can be fixed by inserting a conjunction:

  • We bought a lot of chocolate chips on sale, so my wife is baking cookies today.
  • I’m hungry, but I don’t want to fix anything too complicated.
  • I looked at my weekly word count earlier, and I was a couple hundred words below my goal.

Note that the comma is still required before the conjunction, because the clauses are independent, or unrelated.

I’m sure many of you figured out different ways to eliminate the comma splice besides using conjunctions. For example, instead of trying to join the two independent clauses, you can simply make two sentences: "I looked at my weekly word count earlier. I was a couple hundred words below my goal." This is probably the easiest "fix," but it doesn’t always have the desired effect.

Likewise, many of you probably came up with another alternative: the semicolon. Use a semicolon if the two independent clauses are related to each other, and you want to add variety to your sentence structure:

  • I’m hungry; I think I’ll fix some lunch.
  • I looked at my weekly word count earlier; I was a couple hundred words below my goal.

In short, then, there are three ways to correct a comma splice:

  • Use a coordinating conjunction after the comma.
  • Use a period instead of a comma.
  • Use a semicolon instead of a comma.
__________
Notes:
  1. Except when I went to listen to the podcast, the link took me to Fiddly Rule #11; hopefully, it’ll be fixed soon!
  2. Other Resources: Grammar Girl – Comma Splice; Grammar Girl – Semicolons.

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Saucy Writing Prompt: Dictionary and Pest

February 3, 2010

Each episode of the Saucy Wenches Podcast includes a two-word writing prompt. These prompts are intended to spur creative writing, by using the prompt words in a short story. I’ve never taken part in the writing exercise, although I’m one of the podcast’s most loyal listeners. (I’ve even been a guest!) However, I’ve resolved to [...]

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A Pro and Con View of Language

February 2, 2010

I was talking with a friend on Saturday, and our discussion caused my thoughts to spin off on a totally unrelated tangent (although I eventually brought it back to a point we were discussing). I asked,  “Do you know why I love words so much?”
And suddenly that started me off on a dissertation I had [...]

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Weekly Word Count: January 29

January 29, 2010

What Is This?
Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here.
 
I set up an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is [...]

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On Writing: A Small Epiphany

January 26, 2010

For the past year or so, each time we went on a trip—Hawai’i, California, St. Louis, back to Hawai’i over Christmas, and again to California this week—I’ve been carrying two paperbacks with me, fully intending to read them and fill in a huge gap in my science-fiction background. Those books are Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s [...]

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Kinda Sorta AFK

January 24, 2010

 Monday morning, my wife Janet and I are flying from Rapid City to Santa Barbara, Calif., via Salt Lake City. From Santa Barbara, we’re driving north about 90 minutes to Los Osos (just north of San Luis Obispo), where we’ll spend the next two weeks. On Feb. 10, we fly from Santa Barbara to Orlando, [...]

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Weekly Word Count: January 22

January 22, 2010

What Is This?
Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here.
 
I set up an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I [...]

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Two-Minute Drill: Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, and More

January 20, 2010

Wouldn’t writing in English be so much easier if we could just write out words, or combinations of words, the way they sound? Instead of typing out forget about it, I could simply write fuggedaboudit and be done.
Of course, if I’m writing dialogue, I can do such things, if the character’s vernacular is such that [...]

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Passive and Possessive—Pronouns for Pros

January 18, 2010

How about some mad props for the alliterative title? Hopefully, it caught your attention and prompted you to read more. So without further ado….
First, let’s be sure we’re all on the same page with respect to what pronouns are. They are words we substitute for nouns, generally to avoid repeating the nouns each time we [...]

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