D+
Title: What You Will
Author: Lily White LeFevre
Publication Info: Lily White LeFevre 2011
ISBN: ASIN:B0053H9OUM
Genre: Historical: European
This novella was submitted to me by the author, and based on her description, ” about a girl who decides to masquerade as her twin in order to get the attention of the guy she’s secretly in love with” I decided to give it a try.
Viola Gardener is the quiet twin, and has a Secret Thang for a Hot Earl who has danced with her once. She decides, as the author stated, to attend the masquerade ball her family is hosting and pretend to be her twin, Olivia, who is much more socially vivacious and popular. She captures Hot Earl’s attention immediately, but holds it through her own intellect and personality – something she’s not prepared herself for, because of course Hot Earl is thinking that he never knew Olivia was so interesting and smart. And much like the Shakespearean play for which it’s named and from which it drew some inspiration, shenanigans and mayhem erupt based on that and other mistaken identities.
In Twelfth Night – the Shakespearean version – Viola’s twin is a man, and Viola dresses as a man to serve as the servant to the Duke she’s secretly in love with. In this version, Viola’s twin is female, there’s no duke, and no one is cross dressing. That said, the mistaken identity and costume changes makes for an entertaining setting for a novella.
The problem I had was that I really liked the heroine and liked being in her head. Viola was smart, curious, daring, and something of an original in her character. But the Hot Earl, better known as Leighton Fortescue, is not as strong or as interesting, and when the reader gets to his POV and spends some time with him, the more he thinks, the more I thought he was downright barmy.
As I read, I made several notes to myself. Here they are, in order:
1. The author really likes semicolons. She; likes; semicolons; a lot. It was to the point where I started looking for them on every page. They were everywhere. They might have been breeding at exponential rates while I wasn’t looking.
Sometimes I don’t think they were used correctly. I remember seeing a discussion about semicolons and that editors would remove them because they were distracting to readers. I personally like semicolons about the same amount as I love compound sentences with eighteen supportive clauses that beat a metaphor into the dust, but I am distracted when I think they are not used correctly.
So here, feel free to tell me I’m doing this wrong. Is this semicolon incorrect?
The guests would see him, and those he knew would approach him, and those who wanted to know him would follow him with stares and whispers; but he seemed happier when he was not dangled before them like a prize or a taunt.
I think it is incorrect, because of the use of the word “but.” BUT, I spent so much time staring at that semicolon I had to back up and re-enter the story again because I couldn’t remember where I was.
2. There is a LOT of telling. The point of view switching means that the reader spends a lot of time in the characters’ heads as they ruminate about the situation at hand, and my GOSH these are some PENSIVE PEOPLE.
I think if this were a full-length novel, there’d be a lot of room to show rather than tell in ruminations like this one:
Perhaps it was the same restraint Viola had learned in her decision-making that made her more reserved in conversation than her sister; perhaps it was the symptom of having grown up with her sister and at some point striking out in a different direction so that she could be more herself and less her sister’s understudy.”
Here’s where I’m torn. On the negative side, that is one cumbersome sentence. In addition, it describes something relatively commonplace: twins have different personalities. But on the plus side, I was curious about the idea of the heroine, Viola, feeling like “her sister’s understudy,” and wanted to know more about that feeling. It’s almost macabre, the idea that the wallflower sister is the popular sister’s understudy, and is waiting for the popular one to break an ankle or become otherwise unable to fulfill her role, so the wallflower can step into her role.
And step in she does – by posing as Olivia at a costume ball. She poses as Olivia long enough to grab for herself some of Olivia’s braver, socially daring, popular personality without having earned it. Yet Viola keeps enough of her own intellect and curiosity that she catches the Earl’s attention.
Ultimately I wanted more revelations about the relationship between the sisters, but there was hardly any scenes of the two of them together. From what few there were, I couldn’t decide if Olivia was the stereotypically thoughtless popular sister, or if she genuinely cared about Viola.
There’s another semicolon in that excerpt, too. Don’t know if you noticed that one.
3. There were words that made no sense:
The man was the right height, the right build, the right chinned, and he was looking at Viola with the appreciation of a long-standing admirer.
Chinned?
4. There were sentences for which there could only be one reaction:
The lurch became a rushing pound that blew a roaring through her ears and pushed a tunnel between her eyes and her mind.
And that reaction is, “Whoa.”
5. There were other sentences which confused me:
He bowed, and when he stood again it swept the hood of his cloak off his bright hair.
It? What is “it?” What swept the hood of his cloak off his hair? I went backwards looking for whatever “it” referred to, and there wasn’t anything to be it. That was the first sentence of the paragraph. I kept picturing his own feet kicking his hood off his head, which, wow! Acrobatic!
6. There were descriptions that could have used some adjustment:
His lips were warmer than hers, and surprisingly soft. Not just the skin, though it was satiny smooth, but…mushy. Very fleshy.
Is that a good thing?
7. Yet here were moments I very much enjoyed, such as this scene, where Viola is pretending to be Olivia and is busy charming the cravat off Leighton:
“…You can have your pick of men.”
“Is that what you think?”
“It is the fact.”
“No.” She shook her head gently to emphasize her denial. Or perhaps it was a rueful shake at the male perspective she so clearly didn’t share. “Even if what you mean is that I can have my pick of my admirers… I still only have my pick of the men who have picked me. It is hardly the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing.”
“No, it’s not. Of course it is not. All a woman has is the right of acceptance or refusal. That is not the same thing as choosing. That is deciding whether a man is intolerable or whether he can be lived with, not whether he is the one she really wants. A man gets to actively court the woman he chooses. A man will never know how it feels to be a woman, yearning for a man who does not know she’s alive and helpless to change that.”
Viola is wise about her own predicament, and comes up with a way to go after what she wants – by pretending to be her twin, who already has a much more friendly relationship with Leighton.
Unfortunately, Leighton is inconsistent as a character and is not worthy of Viola. When he begins to suspect that he hadn’t been speaking with Olivia, he chastises himself for not figuring it out. I would think most men would be angry to have been fooled and possibly ridiculed.
Leighton is also inconsistent in his ruminations and reveals himself to either be completely bonkers or just a complete shit.
At one point he realizes that Viola, whom he had rarely spoken to at public functions, is engaged to his best friend, Francis. Leighton then has the following train of thought while pondering why Viola would pose as her sister, and whether he wanted to court Viola now that he’s met her, sort of:
Leighton hoped that Francis would not mind too much if he courted his fiancee. If Frances truly loved her, he’d have time while Leighton made sure he wanted her for his countess to try and win her back. And if Francis didn’t want her, then he might just see Leighton’s interference as a gesture of friendship.
That’s a real friend, right there. He’s the kind of guy who might want to bone your girlfriend, but while he makes up his mind about that, you’re free to try to steal her back. Real friends seduce your fiancee and call it a gesture of friendship.
Leighton also took the express train from “Wait, you’re not who I thought you were” to “I looooove you and what to marry you right now.”
She would make him a fine countess, and that was in her favor.
So was the fact that he liked her. He had genuinely enjoyed their discussion; he suspected they would never run out of topics, and neither would they sink into the polite trap of discussing only the weather, and their children, and social events.
Another plus – he desired her. Taking her to the marriage bed would be a joy and not a duty.
About the only flaws he could find were that her father was a commoner, if a very wealthy one, and her maybe-engagement to Francis.
They have had ONE CONVERSATION at this point! ONE!
By this point I was horrified by his justifications for his actions and figured he was a tool.
The strength of Viola’s point of view was undermined by Leighton’s bizarre jumps in justifying his own feelings and intentions. I liked the idea of casting Twelfth Night in a ballroom masquerade and the plot device that features a twin who feels like her sister’s understudy taking on her sister’s name for an hour to go charm the man she’s been staring at all season. I liked the concept and Viola’s adventure and the daring.
But the overuse of semicolons, the odd words and phrases, the at-times florid descriptions that made little sense to me, and the barking mad internal monologue from Leighton distracted from my enjoyment of the narrative overall. I was sorry that the writing and the hero didn’t live up to Viola herself.
This book is available from Amazon, GoodReads, and Smashwords.
I’m a former journalist who still freelances, and I’m in the middle of grad school. I like to think I have a decent grasp of basic grammar and at least three publication styles, (though I’m nothing compared to some friends of mine who are freelance copy editors. I shot an e-mail to one to weigh in.)
Associated Press, American Psychological Association, and Chicago style guides, as well as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style all agree. The writer is not using semicolons correctly.
In general, semicolons link independent clauses—noun verb; noun verb—together.
Commas and conjunctions also are used to link independent clauses. For example: Noun verb, and noun verb. Noun verb, noun verb, noun verb, and noun verb. (Obviously you can toss and object, prepositional phrase, etc. in there.)
Every so often a semicolon might be used in a series for clarity. You might see academic papers or textbooks using semicolons to join two independent clauses with lots of modifiers together, rather than making them into two sentences. (I personally find those really long semicolon connected constructions horrible, especially if they turn into 250-word paragraph.)
So when you zeroed in on the “but,” you were right on. (I’m sure it was a very nice but.) The writer needed a comma or to remove the but. (The sentences need some other grammar fixes.) All can be fixed with Strunk and White.
I pass on the advice that an editor pal of mine gave me years ago to Ms LeFevre. Girlfriend, get yourself a Strunk and White. They got your back.
P.S. I’m in the last semester of graduate school and this you smart bitches are saving my sanity. Perfect way to break away from academia. If I could put you down in the thank yous on the commencement program, I would.
Great review – and I’m still left wanting to read the books, because the novelty (har har) of some of these elements is truly so appealing.
Because I read so many free Kindle books, my ability to disregard grammar and still say with the story have improved. Hmm – not sure if that’s a good thing.
Mad props to any authoress taking the plunge to self-pub and promote. Sounds like this writer has potential and just needs a good editor.
Heh. As someone who has been committing that exact same kind of semicolon usage in her current manuscript, I’ll say that using a semicolon to join two independent clauses like that is out of fashion these days, but not uncommon in the past. (Like, say, in the nineteenth century: I found examples in both Dickens and Doyle, the first two places I tried looking.) Yeah, if you go by style guides, they’ll tell you it’s wrong. But those are a) modern and b) not entirely the same things as “arbiters of correct usage” (as evidenced by the fact that style guides do not agree with each other on all points—some of it does simply come down to style, and the imposition of a consistent standard).
Mind you, it still clearly jarred you out of the story, which is the risk of any non-standard usage. But in this case, I wouldn’t call the author wrong for doing it.
Although you should “use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses not joined with a coordinating conjunction”—“but” in LeFevre’s sentence is the relevant coordinating conjunction—“if at least one of the independent clauses contains internal punctuation, you may use a semicolon even though the clauses are joined with a coordinating conjunction.” And the example is from EB White, writing about the Model T Ford: “As a vehicle it was hard-working, commonplace, and heroic; and it often seemed to transmit those qualities to the person who rode it.” In White’s sentence the second “and” is the relevant coordinating conjunction. Except for the breathlessly repeated “and…and” in LeFevre’s sentence, it has the same structure as White’s.
That said, any usage, however correct, that brings the reader to a halt trying to parse the punctuation, should be revised.
_A Writer’s Reference_, Sixth Edition by Diana Hacker. Pages 274 and 276.
It almost sounds like it was written in a foreign language and then translated on the computer. I know my translator doesn’t always understand slang or nuances.
Isn’t it funny how something like that can be really distracting? I was reading a book and the one character kept saying, “Jesus,” something that I personally dislike. Then ANOTHER character started saying it. It was SO distracting that I ended up COUNTING the number of times it was used in the book!
I, too, like semi-colons, so I felt obligated to defend at least the sample provided. Yes, the internal punctuation of the first independent clause justifies the use of the semi-colon before the conjunction. And since I don’t own a copy of Strunk & White (can’t stand ‘em) I’ll express deep gratitude to Pam Regis for using White to back this up.
Of course, clarity and maintaining the willing suspension of disbelief override most if not all the rules. If the semi-colon becomes Richard Collier’s penny, all is lost. The fact that the reviewer placed the abundance of semi-colons as her first complaint suggests this may have colored the rest of her appreciation of the story.
Is it weird that I am thrilled you gave me this kind of review (if not this kind of grade, heh)? It’s a very honest opinion and probably the most helpful feedback I’ve gotten anywhere. The semi-colon thing…yes, I do like them. A lot. But knowing it’s that distracting? Means it’s something to scale back during an editing pass next time. Good to know. (Also, RE the first one: Pam is right in why I used it. I was taught that if you’re joining two sentences and one has dependent clauses in it, that a semi-colon is appropriate to use with the conjunction.)
So thank you for reading and taking the time to enlighten me and entertain everyone else!
Oh, and my mother had the same complaint about lack of time between the sisters. Damn it, IS Mom really always right?
Cheers,
Lily
@Lily Leferve: I don’t know if your book is any good, but based on your gracious comment, you, personally, are awesome!
@Lily Leferve: I don’t know if your book is any good, but based on your gracious comment, you, personally, are awesome!
Great review. I totally get what you mean about the distracting semi-colon. I remember one book where I couldn’t read more than a few pages because there were so many exclamation points. They were so distracting that I was counting them and could not really read the story. I kept thinking that the heroine would be huffing and puffing from exclaiming so much.
I don’t think the semi-colon in the first example was a wrong use, but I think the passage would be more effective if both the semi-colon and the conjunction had been omitted as unnecessary.
I love semicolons. Also dashes and, recently, the heady addiction to elllipses has reared its cluttered head.
The review kinda makes me want to read the book despite the fact that the hero sounds like a bonehead.
I like the premise. The cover’s pretty. Plus, my inner grammar-and-punctuation-geek can have a field day grinding her teeth over misappropriated semicolons.
I don’t know how to use semicolons properly. So as a result I never used them except to make winking smilies. 😉
In fact, when teachers used to edit my stuff and put in semicolons, I’d turn around and find a way to make that spot into two or more different sentences so I could use periods instead. I don’t think they liked it when I did that, but I was a little rebel like that. I also did things like spell it “grey” instead of “gray” and “theatre” instead of “theater.”
Yeah, I was evil like that.
As for the story – wait, she’s (maybe) engaged to someone else and is pretending to be her twin to get with another man? Tramp. If I was the hero I’d be worried who’d she’s be pretending to be to get with other men after they were married.
@Lily Leferve:
Well spoken, madame. I’m going to go buy your book now!
I find semicolons distracting in fiction, being interruptive of the narrative flow and all that. I probably would have used separate sentences instead of all those ands. Then I would have committed the cardinal sin of starting one of those sentences with a but. That doesn’t make her semicolon wrong, simply a personal style choice.
Like you, I’m confused by the use of “it” under your paragraph 5. Perhaps it is the bow. I could see the impetus of returned to a standing position having this result but not the bow itself. I’m also puzzled by the “It is the fact.” sentence under your paragraph 7. “The fact” as in the only fact? Of course, there is the fact that this is the barking mad earl speaking.
@Lily LeFevre
Hi, Lily. I’m sure Sarah and all the rest of us are glad you are thrilled. That isn’t any weirder than being thrilled by this type of discussion. Good luck to you. I look forward to seeing how you make use of Sarah’s constructive criticism in future works.
Oh, the semi-colon. I’ve edited “;but” out of more sentences than I can count in my day job—and when I read fiction which was written before the twentieth century, or which aims at the same feel, it doesn’t bug me.
@Lily: Wonderful response. Yay!
Yes, Lily, always.
A interesting, review making several good points followed by a gracious reflective response. Nicely done ladies, nicely done.
re comment #2: As the record holder for most run on sentences in a single paper, I can make no comment on anyone else’s writing style. No, really, it’s a fact; my professor announced it to the entire class.
and re comment #6: No, no it’s not.
I’m sorry, but where is the dependent clause in this sentence?
The guests would see him.—independent clause. Could stand on its own as a sentence.
Those he knew would approach him.—independent clause.
Those who wanted to know him would follow him with stares and whispers.—independent clause.
He seemed happier when he was not dangled before him like a prize or a taunt.—independent clause.
Side note—Strunk & White’s book was written for writers, not editors. It is not a style guide; it is a book about writing with a few pet punctuation peeves thrown in. For books that explain what to do with a semicolon, try the Chicago Manual of Style, Words into Type, the Little, Brown book or the Copy Editor’s handbook.
Word verification: did69. Hmmn… Mr. Word Verification is getting a little personal here…
When you mentioned the twin being an understudy for her sister it made me think of a great contemporary by Claire Cross that was published a number of years ago.
DOUBLE TROUBLE doesn’t have anyone masquerading as someone else, but it does have the twin with the bad reputation coming in to help her sister’s family. Her sister, who has always been seen as the responsible one, has taken off – abandoning her husband and two young sons. While helping the family Maralys (the protag) has to deal with her complicated feelings for her sister’s husband. This line from the Booklist review sort of captures that understudy feeling: “The two find that they are very attracted to each other, but Maralys worries about being a Marcia substitute”
If you go looking for this one don’t be fooled by the cutesy, cartoon cover. There’s a lot more depth to the story then the re-print cover would ever suggest.
Taking my cranky-editor hat off for a moment, I do not believe that a writer should be distracted from her writing by wondering whether how the sentence should be punctuated. Even after the draft has been written, it’s very hard to distance yourself from your own work enough to edit it. I think a good editor can really help with making a good book.
Did you ever check out the blog Reasoning with Vampires?
It’s devoted to analyzing the grammatical errors in the Twilight books. I’m not saying anything for or against the content of the books, but I will say that there are an amazing amount of typos in those books. They distract from what the writer is trying to say.
http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/post/8147862490
Lily Lefebvre: I have to admit, I read the comments just to see if you’d left an agry tirade. So glad you didn’t 🙂
Kudos on taking critique well, Lily! Probably one of the most important parts of writing, besides “Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard.”
As an editor, I would have whipped that “; but” outta the MS so fast it’d still be whizzing into space. A semicolon joins clauses; you do not need a conjunction in addition to the semicolon in most cases. They can join dependent AND independent clauses, but the clauses must pertain to the same topic.
To wit, re: above sentence—“A semicolon joins clauses; and you do not need a conjunction in addition to the semicolon in most cases” is wrong like a wrong thing.
/editing geek
And I ADORE a well-used semicolon!
@ Merry, on breaking up a jarring sentence:
See, the way I’d have done it is this:
The guests would see him. Those he knew would approach him and those who wanted to know him would follow him with stares and whispers, but he was happier when he was not dangled before them like a prize.
(I hate “seemed”, and I have never heard “taunt” used as a noun before, so I cut that, too.)
We’re down to two periods and a comma now, and I think that’s the correct interpretation of the sentence—Ms. LeFevre can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. 🙂
I love semicolons and I use them fairly often, especially for this construction: “blah-blah; however, blah-blah….” I also happen to be guilty of over-using exclamation points in emails, comments, and whatnot, but I find them extremely jarring in print.
From what I have heard, Strunk and White sometimes needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, even if you write AE (American English) . I have never even seen it, let alone used it, because I write BE, and there are many differences, even in punctuation rules: I rely on the Oxford Dictionary for Editors and Writers , but when I happen to disagree with that, I ignore it (for example, Oxford UP uses the serial/Oxford comma, and also uses …ize rather than the normal BE …ise in words like recognise. Fie on them!)
Really, the crux of the matter is this: grammar and syntax, including punctuation, are not set in stone. They really do vary, so there is often more than one ‘right’ answer, even within the same English dialect. The very raison d’être of editors is that they check on these matters, not only correcting errors that Strunk & White, or Fowler, or some other authority, might deprecate, but also ensuring that a ms. conforms to the publisher’s house-style, which may not be exactly the same as a given style manual. (All my books use the …ize ending in print, because my publisher follows OUP house-style. Every one was originally written with an s, and always will be).
This is one of the many reasons why the present changes, leaning ever more towards self-publication, are a bit scary, because the creative talent of a writer may not be matched by her technical, grammatical skills. We need editors.
On the particular example cited by Sarah, I’d have kept the semicolon (love semicolons) but deleted the ‘but’ pretty sharpish.
I like those sentences that ramble on from one subject to the next, not necessarily related, sort of with a stream of consciousness sense to them, easily understood by such a person as I, given to thinking in vaguely circutious ways, distracting me and taking me from the precipitating thought which, in most cases, but not all, was unpleasant to start with.
I am weird for the ellipsis, but have trouble with m and n dashes.
In previous millenia, the then called Chicago Book of Style waffled on commas and agreed they can be used to clarify in some instances. Semi colons? I guess I cannot think with that much complexity.
Some guy referred to Strunk and Write the other day.
Taunt is most definitely a noun as well as a verb. Insults are taunts:).
Virginia, I think the Chicago Manual of Style is still the standard reference for academic writing in AE, and it is now online.
The addition or removal of a comma can in some instances completely change the meaning of a sentence. In speech, pauses and inflections can make meaning unambiguous, but reliance on syntax alone in writing is not always enough. Commas matter!
Em dashes are used (in BE, at least) when marking out a parenthesis, or a pause in reported speech, while en dashes are used in marking out things like a range of dates (e.g. ‘1950-1980’). One of the AE/BE differences is that AE starts a clause after a colon with an upper-case initial, like a new sentence: we don’t.
This is fairly off topic, and very long, but I can’t resist trying to paste the world’s longest run on sentence into this thread. Rock on, Molly Bloom, courtesy of James Joyce, who, one assumes, is choosing to toss punctuation to the winds for artistic purposes rather than ignoring punctuation because he flunked all of elementary school:
…I love flowers I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven there’s nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying there’s no God I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because they’re afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they don’t know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldn’t answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didn’t know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
The point of punctuation, grammar rules, etc., is not to make your English teacher happy. The idea is to lead the reader through the story with minimum distraction. Punctuation functions like a road sign: it gives the reader an idea where the sentence is going. You don’t want the reader to get lost or confused. You especially don’t want them to have to stop reading and go back and retrace their steps—that is an excellent way to get the reader to put the story down and go do something else.
A lot of people have found it very easy to put Ulysses down.
Did you ever see the cartoon version? Ulysses for Dummies:
http://www.dannydries.com/Ullyses/ch1-ulys.html
If you follow standard punctuation rules, I’m not going to pay attention to semicolons; I’m going to be focused on your story.
Lily, you are obviously a doll. I’m going to go buy your book.
I adore semicolons, although I don’t use them that much. It makes me sad that certain pieces of punctuation are considered by some to be distracting—they’re the road signs of writing and as much a part of the rhythm of a book as the words are.
Signed, Headmistress of the Committee to Promote the Interrobang. Why the F are we not allowed to use it?!
@ Lucy Woodhull: I frelling love my interrobang. They will pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Not sure whether I’d use it in prose, but I love it for blogging!
@Merry: The cartoon is AWESOME. I esp like God saying, “HEY!”
Yes, I think Lily is a good sport about this. When someone reviews something I wrote, even a dry-as-dust technical manual, I find it very easy to get cranky.
Not quite as much as this poor woman, but close:
http://blogs.forbes.com/kiriblakeley/2011/04/01/self-published-author-cant-handle-a-bad-review/
First of all, kudos to Lily for her courage and aplomb. It’s rather terrifying to send your stuff to a big name review site, esp. one noted for tough (tho fair) reviews.
And it sounds like all Lily needs is an editor – not necessarily a publisher, just another set (or two) of eyes. I would suggest it be either a professionally published author or, if she can afford it, a freelance editor.
I’m going to guess that Lily hasn’t been published professionally before. But she obviously has great story instincts and she’s created a compelling character – and there are lots of authors who employ grammar perfectly and yet can’t come up with compelling characters or interesting storylines.
So write on, Lily. And no, Mom’s not always right. She’s just usually right about the stuff you don’t want her to be right about.
Oh, and I like semi-colons and em dashes far too much. My editor and the copy editors have to slap my hands a lot. “Put the semi-colon down! PUT. IT. DOWN.”
I just wanted to weigh back in and say thank you to everyone for the comments and discussion, be it constructive criticism, supportive “style is a choice” pointers, or totally off-topic ramblings. My inbox has not been this busy in weeks!
Also, I feel like we’ve uncovered my new marketing schtick: “If you like semi-colons, you will LOVE my books!” Eh? What do we think?
-L
@Kinsey, I have had the same hand-slaps. I too am overly fond of semicolons and em dashes. Where would I be without my signature run-on sentences and parenthetical asides? (Published, no doubt.) I think I have cured myself of exclamation point addiction however, or at least learned to boot the little buggers when they do sneak in.
Lily, do you have a critique partner? Or two or three? By which I mean not relatives or friends, who often won’t be completely honest with you for fear of hurting your feelings, but fellow writers, published or not, or even just discerning readers who know what makes a book work or not. Good critique partners can be a huge help in identifying some of the issues pointed out above, and a lot less expensive than a freelance editor.
And kudos to you for your graciousness, sense, and sense of humor. You rock on with your bad self, girl, and good luck to you!
Capcha: born98—no, sadly, I just wish.
@AgTigress. Thanks for clarification. Didn’t notice the colon thing, probably from reading both BE and AE, but love the way you make a point. You wear your erudition like a really cute blouse.
I teach academic writing and tell my students they need to know how to use semi-colons properly, but warn them not to use more than two or three in an entire 10-page paper. It gets distracting. I also teach them how to use “who” and “whom” properly, but warn them to keep “whom” to a minimum as well. There are times when “whom” is necessary, and times when it would be best to re-word the sentence and avoid it all together. The final trump card in grammar should always be readability. Keep the spotlight on content.