This very comprehensive roundup from Nicholas Rossis gives writers essential information to help them use AI to enhance their writing, whilst always remaining in control of the output. It is here to stay, so it makes sense to know, as a writer, how to use it to your advantage.
Category: Writing
Why not use Jung?
Could Jungian thinking enable you to write better fiction? Nicholas Rossis shows you what to do!
Mathematics & Fiction: analogous?
Kurt Vonnegut, of blessed memory, thinks a graph can determine the shape of all fiction; that’s a [humorous] analytical approach, but I don’t think it would work for me!
Have a go!
Have you ever thought about sharing ideas with your friends, but you find platforms like Facebook & Twitter, etc. intimidating? Why not start a WordPress blog: it’s easy! Click the link to read the post. There are plenty of different templates to choose from, and if you have something to promote, there’s nothing to stop you; for example, I use my blog to promote the biography of my grand uncle, Wilfred Risdon: Black Shirt and Smoking Beagles, which can be bought direct from my own website (follow the link, and don’t be put off by any browser warnings: the site is perfectly safe—it just means I haven’t converted it to https yet, but it’s coming soon 🙂 ), but I also like to share reviews of books I’ve read, and other things related to books & publishing, so it’s not just a hard sell. Even if you only post now & again, it’s rewarding being able to share your thoughts with other people; check out the blogs I follow, from the links on the right, as well: there are some lovely, friendly people out there. As they say on The Prisoner [one for the teenagers!]: Be seeing you!
Book Review
Have You Eaten Grandma?, by Gyles Brandreth
This is a departure from my normal reviewing format, in that I mostly review fiction publications, but occasionally, a non-fiction one will catch my eye and, whilst I might not always deem it worthy of a review, this one definitely is. I am known to be a stickler for correctness in written English, and I constantly bemoan the slipping of standards, so this book is an opportunity for me to use someone else’s commitment to underline my own; that someone happens to be a ‘celebrity’, of course, which is of no particular significance to me, but it does mean that my readers—the British ones, at least—should already be aware of him, and his penchant in this area. Whilst I am in broad agreement with him on most of his items, I do take issue with some, which I will detail here, in sequence; which will obviously have more significance if any of my readers is able to obtain the book to follow my points in comparison with GB’s opinion—yes: not law!
In contradistinction to what I wrote above, I will start with a few general points, some of which I consider quite important. GB is in favour of starting sentences with the conjunctions ‘And’ and ‘But’, but I was taught at my grammar school to avoid this, from a style consideration, and I have always followed it, because I think it looks clumsy; and there are better ways to structure a sentence. GB frequently uses a convention which is, in my view, all too common: the use of ‘either’, when what he should use is ‘each’, or ‘both’—‘either’ means ‘one or the other’, so my reaction when someone writes, say: ‘There was a pillar on either side of the door’ is: “So: which side was it?” Curiously, he makes no mention of syntax, the incorrect use of which is a crime committed by far too many people, most of whom should know better; GB is all for clarity & correctness in written English, and poor syntax always gives rise to doubt, which should be avoided. Here now follows my points of contention, preceded by page numbers.
p29 Comma inside quotation marks for direct speech, before attribution; e.g.: “Easy-peasy,” said Gyles. I know it’s the convention, but it’s wrong! A comma implies a continuation, so either a full stop [period] should be used, or nothing. He is correct with continuation: “Yes,” Gyles admitted, “commas can be challenging.”, but sometimes continuation is possible, but ignored, as in: ‘That’s right,’ Gyles admitted, ‘Commas can be challenging.’
p67 Adjunct to the above: “In British English, the associated punctuation is placed outside the closing quotation mark: Money talks. All mine ever seems to say is ‘Goodbye’.” I prefer the American English convention [just for a change!]: “Money talks. All mine ever seems to say is ‘Goodbye.’”, because the quotation is treated as complete, be it a single word or more.
I also loathe & detest the convention which appears to be universal, where if the quotation has more than 1 paragraph, you put a quotation mark at the start of the opening paragraph and at the beginning of each subsequent paragraph, but no quotation marks at the end of each paragraph until the end of the complete quotation is reached: I know general prose & coding are completely different, but to my eyes this convention just looks unnecessary & wrong; and it would cause many problems in coding. Happy to be out of step here! Clarity could easily be maintained by either italicising quotations or extra indentation, or both.
p74 Possessive of personal names ending in -s: a singular name should always have an s following the apostrophe, no matter how odd it might sound, so it’s not Mellors’ as GB asserts, but Mellors’s; another prime example is Brahms, whose possessive many people mispronounce as Brahms’, but that means of Brahm [singular—and should be written Brahm’s], not of Brahms [singular]; the correct form is Brahms’s.
p98 “—stay focussed, please—”: I prefer focused, as in buses, not busses.
p114 “May be — maybe”: GB doesn’t make a distinction between might & may, but for me, the difference is clear—might implies possibility, whilst may specifies permission.
p133> Imported words; especially from Latin [the most common]: I hate Anglicisation! If we import a word, why can we not use its correct plural: my most loathed is referendums for referenda, but there are many others, such as graffiti, which is plural, so it’s ‘a graffito’, not ‘a piece of graffiti’. I also resent foreign place names being Anglicised: what’s so difficult about saying ‘Munchen’ or ‘Nurnberg’? [umlauts deliberately excluded] Or ‘Torino’, or ‘Sevilla’? It’s time we stopped being so insular, when it comes to pronouncing foreign languages.
p249 A very obvious tautology is excluded: ‘repeat again’: very common!
p251 GB is not in favour of euphemisms for dying, but I wonder what he will use for his beloved monarch?
p274 My own view is that it’s unfair to use foreign words in Scrabble, unless they are so common as to be known to all participants.
p283 I disagree with Martin Amis on his definition of whilst: “Anyone who uses ‘whilst’ is subliterate.” Poppycock! They have distinct & separate meanings: while implies the passage of time, whilst whilst implies conditionality. Think about it: you know it makes sense!
p290 Relative pronouns introduce relative clauses: that should never refer to people [as is almost universal in the USA, thanks to the 16th century settlers, and increasingly prevalent over here, as a result of imported US ‘culture’]; always use who. This was lamented in my review of The Man That Got Away, by Lynn Truss.
I could have said a lot more, but this is quite enough for one review! Good on him for spreading the secular gospel of good English, but I reserve the right to vary from the majority observance of the accepted rules. The hardback I read was published in 2018 by Michael Joseph, part of the Penguin Random House group, ISBN 978-0-2413-5263-2; a paperback is also available, ISBN 978-0-2413-5264-9.
Promotional Post
This is a promotional post for aspiring authors, from QueryLetter.com, a company which helps them with the technical aspects of publishing. Occasionally, it posts lists of writing competitions on its website, so this post is a link to the latest list, with a synopsis of the advantages of entering these competitions:
https://www.queryletter.com/post/writing-contests-and-competitions
A successful entry in a writing competition can be a significant boost for an author’s career, providing exposure and potentially even leading to a publishing deal. They also provide fantastic motivation to get a work finished, to hone your writing, and to test yourself against your peers. Some also offer cash prizes—always welcome! In this list, we showcase over 270 of the best writing contests out there, in a variety of genres.
QueryLetter.com website
Recognition!
My Blog’s won an award!
My regular readers might like to know that this blog has been awarded the accolade of Top Writing Blog, by the QueryLetter.com site; apparently, people there regularly spend a lot of time reading top writing blogs, and they have selected Wilfred Books for a Top Writing Blog award! According to the email which informed me of this:
Congratulations on building one of the best writing blogs available today and for helping writers improve their craft.
Lana, at QueryLetter.com
Now, realistically, I know that this is a commercial site, and I am normally wary of promoting such sites on this blog, but after some consideration, I am happy for anyone who reads my blog and who is thinking about trying to get some writing published to a wider audience, should have a starting point for this research. Having self-published my own book, Black Shirt and Smoking Beagles, I know full well that publishing is not an easy undertaking, so it is worth considering all options, and it might cost less than you think: it always makes sense to shop around, of course. So, when you read the posts on this blog, and you see the new icon at the top of the sidebar, you’ll know what it’s about, and if you want to learn more, click on the icon to go to the QueryLetter.com site & investigate!
Website Update
With reference to my previous post, as a result of, sadly, inevitable postage price increases, and very probably an indirect result of Britain’s recently leaving the EU, it has become necessary to update the Wilfred Books website to reflect this, because the postal charges included for despatch of the print version of Black Shirt and Smoking Beagles have been insufficient, for all areas of the world, for some time now. I should also point out that the book’s retail purchase price has NOT increased, neither are there any plans for this to happen. To achieve this update, certain sections of the site have been ‘refactored’, as it’s called, but it has not been a simple matter of just editing a few items of text; the reason for this is that a new price group, specifically for delivery to the EU zone, needed to be introduced: previously, the first non-UK price group included Europe, but this is no longer the case. More details can be found on the website’s about page, where there is a link to the book’s own page, and there is also a purchase link there.
Another complication is that there is now a veritable plethora of possible screen sizes for all of the devices which people can now use to access websites, compared to when the book was first published, in 2013; and, indeed, there are now even narrower screens than the first smartphones had [which I find slightly incredible, but I’m old-fashioned, and prefer a laptop for accessing websites]; so, each possible screen size had to be checked, to make sure that the new layout of the page a buyer is taken to when purchasing a print version of the book, looks acceptable with the new EU postal delivery price group included, so although this was relatively straightforward, as mentioned above, it was not a quick undertaking!
I hope the page looks acceptable across all devices, but I must stress that I am not a professional website developer; although I was confident that I could produce a functional & attractive site to make my book available direct, with no middle-man in the process, other than PayPal, which processes the purchase securely. So, if I have missed a new device size, or slipped up when formatting the page for an existing device, please don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments.
Finally, dare I remind readers that a present-buying opportunity [in addition to normal impulse-buying] is rapidly approaching, so if you know of someone [or yourself!] who would enjoy reading a comprehensively-researched examination of the febrile inter-war period of the 1920s & -30s in Britain, please ensure that a purchase can be delivered in good time! The book focuses specifically on what made an ardent socialist like Wilfred Risdon from Bath, who saw action as a medical orderly in the first world war, and worked in the Tredegar coal mines alongside Aneurin Bevan [who, as we know, went on to a sparkling political career], drastically change his political allegiance to support Oswald Mosley who, although he started out also as a socialist with the best of intentions, fairly soon swung to the opposite side of the political spectrum before the second world war. During the war, after a short period of internment in Brixton Prison under the notorious Emergency Regulation 18B, Wilfred sensibly decided to leave politics behind as far as possible, and concentrate on his passion for animal welfare, advancing to the position of Secretary of the prestigious National Anti-Vivisection Society, before his death in 1967; before that, he engineered the bold [and confrontational!] move of the Society’s London headquarters to Harley Street, the heart of the British medical profession, that still [and continues to, sadly] relied upon animal testing, which involved [Wilfred would argue, unnecessary] hideous & painful procedures. Given the state of the world in general, and British politics in particular now, a knowledge of how we arrived at this point can be very illuminating, so I can heartily recommend Black Shirt and Smoking Beagles: but, then again, why wouldn’t I?
Why don’t lowercase & uppercase numbers exist?
As Archie D’Cruz tells us on Quora, they actually do! Although this might seem like an esoteric concern, if you are an author, or any other sort of writer, for that matter, and you want to go the self-publishing route, knowing the difference, as demonstrated in the image above, plus how & when to use each type, can make a significant difference to the look of your output, and when you do self-publish, this is one aspect of the total project that is just as important as the content of your writing.
If you want to find out more about this, check out Archie’s article here.
Cynthia Voigt: A Lie Designed to Tell the Truth
Cynthia Voigt: “… while History is the truth, designed to tell a lie, Fiction is a lie designed to tell the truth.”
Cynthia Voigt is a prolific and highly successful author, winner of multiple accolades including the Katahdin Award for Lifetime Achievement (2003). A full list of her awards can be found at the bottom of the “Books” page on her website here.
Source: Cynthia Voigt: A Lie Designed to Tell the Truth from Mythaxis Review.
Wilfred Books 