10th May 2001
WARNING. This is very much work in progress - it's very very incomplete - and may never be finished, since the WRITING list administrators seem not to want a FAQ. I might fill it in and release it as an ``unofficial FAQ'' but would there really be any point?
``Revise and rewrite.''- Strunk & White
It's a work-in-progress FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the WRITING mailing list. You can find out more about this list at www.manistee.com/~lkraus/workshop/writing.html but briefly, it provides a forum for writers and would-be writers to discuss the craft and business of writing.
By addressing frequently asked questions, this document aims to reduce the need to rehash certain tired topics over and over again on the list, so that we can preserve our precious time and bandwidth for new issues.
``Whether I deserve it or not, I'm a big fan of my work.''- Dave Slusher
My name is Mike Taylor, I'm in my mid-thirties, married with three young sons. I write computer programs for a living; and I write prose for fun, and maybe one day, profit. If you wish, you can find out more about me on my web site, www.miketaylor.org.uk
From a writing perspective, I'm no-one in particular. I've never had a novel, story or non-fiction piece published in a paying market, so there's no particular reason for you to pay any attention to my ``wisdom''. You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that I know what I'm talking about :-)
If you want to find out for yourself whether I can write, you should check out my web site (address above).
For whatever difference it may make to anyone, I have been on the list on and off since 1992, so if I have no other qualifications, my longevity at least might give me a little credibility. So far as possible, I've tried to construct this FAQ so that it represents the emergent consensus of WRITING list members' opinions.
With those preliminaries out of the way, let's get straight into some nuts and bolts ...
``Many people want to think of English as a Latin tongue. I'd like to think of my car as a Porsche, too, but that doesn't help me very much in reality.''- Moshe Koenig
You should feel free to split infinitives if the resulting writing feels right and reads well. The prohibition against splitting infinitives (that is, putting another word between the ``to'' and the verb stem, as in ``to boldly go'') derives from a false analogy with Latin. In that language, infinitive verbs such as ``to go'' are single words (e.g. ``vado'' means ``to go'') so it's literally impossible to split them. There was a school of thought which said that writers ought therefore to avoid splitting infinitives in English too; but really that doesn't seem a strong enough reason, does it?
There is one good reason for avoiding split infinitives, and that is simply that a lot of people don't like them. If you think that your work might be read and judged by people who, for whatever reason, dislike split infinitives, then the pragmatic course may be to avoid them even though you know better. Sometimes, this battle just isn't worth fighting.
It is said that Churchill once made this marginal comment against a sentence that clumsily avoided a prepositional ending: ``This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.''- Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words
``Never begin a sentence with `and,' `or,' or `but,' and never end it with `wildebeest''- Hammill's Rules of Grammar
``As with most things in life, punctuation doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to get by.''- Terry Cox
``Maybe we should think of the `write what you know' rule the other way around, as `know what you write'.''- Rheal Nadeau
### avoid tags other than "said"; avoid "said" too; don't overdo interstitial actions.
``There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.''- W. Somerset Maugham
``If are a fascinating writer, then you follow a deeper set of rules which make the normal ones irrelevant. If not, then you need to follow the normal rules until you get fascinating.''- Greg Gunther
``Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous''- the last of George Orwell's rules for good writing
``The trick is not to be too easily pleased by one's own writing.''- Rheal Nadeau
``Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.''- E. L. Doctorow
``My pet peeve are all the people who say `I want to be a writer', but they don't want to write.''There's only one way to be a writer - by writing. There is no other way. If you write, you're a writer. If you don't, then you're not, however much you want to be one.- Trish Rucker
``I think the secret may be to take one's work seriously enough to claim time for it.''- Candace Byerwood
``The answer tends to be at once ineffably mysterious and excruciatingly mundane.''### Douglas Adams quote- Stephen Donaldson, afterword to The Real Story
Some writers plot everything out in advance - to the point where writing the story becomes a question of filling in the blanks. Some writers start with a concept, and write to see where it takes them [...] The one constant I've found for successful writers is doing what they believe, what works for them. Trying to force your writing down the wrong path will just kill it, plain and simple.
``If the sparkle fades from your writing, keep writing till you figure out how to get it back.''- Kristin Johnson
``Artists would like to ignore the business side: to some extent you can, and to another extent you can't.''- Alvin Sylvain
``If you really want to be a writer, develop calluses on your pride.''- Adrian Bedford
``Is writing art, or is it business? It's both. Be good at both.''- Dale Keiger
``I'm not sure exactly what your question is, but that will not stop me from attempting to answer it.''- Robert J. Stone
``One generation's `amusing dreck' is the next generation's high literature. (`I think the anvil landing on the coyote's head symbolizes ...')''- Bill Cameron
``I don't think we should all necessarily strive to move the human spirit - sometimes, just getting the punctuation right is achievement enough.''- Adrian Bedford
``When something can be read without effort, [it is because] great effort has gone into its writing.''- Enrique Jardiel Poncela