Lou

Lou's Fun Writing Tips

To Declutter or Not to Declutter, That is the Question
	During a recent scroll through cyberspace, I ran across a really neat site. I can’t remember the URL, but here’s what got me so excited . . . an article said I can now keep all my clutter. I’m thrilled. My husband is not. Several years ago I decided to rid my house and my life of clutter. I began having garage sales, and my basement soon filled with old photos of people I don’t know, suitcases, baskets, pottery, old books, hats from the twenties, the thirties, the forties—just about everything that I thought might qualify as clutter, I packed away. Feng shui taught this Grasshopper that once my brain was free of the clutter that had been surrounding it, my life would change. I would become more creative. When my house was bare, I waited for the Einstein thoughts to blaze into my brain? They didn’t. Although disappointed, I decided it was my fault—that I had to declutter some more. At least once a month, I packed up another box and reluctantly took it to the basement until the walls were covered with leaning towers of my past. Then I ran across an article by a psychologist that assured me the precious things I’d surrounded myself with for the last fifty years aren’t clutter at all. They are part of what makes me, me. Part of what makes my creativity thrive. Imagine that! What I loved most about what I read, and what my husband doesn’t like, is that it said to keep surrounding myself with things that I love, especially my office. It said what is apt to stifle my creativity is not the broken tea cup that belonged to my grandma, or the bag of marbles I bought at a flea market because they’re probably just like the ones my dad would have used as a kid, or not even the white pottery I buy simply because I like it. Those things are what make me feel warm and fuzzy. They’re taking me back to my childhood, fond times, and the love of family and friends. The things I surround myself with are there because for some odd reason they remind me of the tidbits stored away in my mind that are good. I told my husband about the article as I rushed him out the door to go buy a new lamp for my desk. “I need to make my work space Shabby Chic,” I told him. “That’s what I like. I need picture frames and baskets and more stuff, oh my!” “What about all the stuff downstairs, and in the hall, and the basement and garage?” he asked. “Can’t move that,” I said. “Gotta feel good in those rooms too.” By this time, I felt my muse growing stronger just because I had dusted my desk and put a flower arrangement next to the printer to hide the wires. “I need more stuff so I can finish my book!” I screeched as we drove to the mall. “Geez,” my husband winced as he walked out of a store carrying a beautiful white lamp with scrolled iron work and a pink flowered shade. “We were making progress at cleaning out the house. I’d get a second opinion about this creativity angle if I was you. I think that Fungus Way thing probably had it right.” The article said that what clutters your mind are the things that remind you of work yet to be done. The stacks of manuscripts, the old papers lying around, and the post-it notes stuck to the side of your monitor. Your brain turns those things into unfinished work and tells you that you’ve already gotten behind, so why bother—just go watch Judge Judy. But if you put the little Niagara Falls cup and saucer your grandma brought back from her honeymoon next to your desk, it will make you think of her. It will make you feel good and soon you’ll be writing your own To Kill a Mockingbird or Gone With the Wind. So, decorate your office with things that you love, things that make you feel good. Put copies of your stories and essays in an antique picnic basket like the one you took to the park as a kid. Put your ballpoint pens in an old crystal tumbler that at one time graced someone’s Sunday table. Set a white pottery bowl on the shelf to hold post-it note pads. Store your paperclips away in a small covered candy dish. And get yourself a spiffy new lamp.
Comma Mommas, Beware
	When I started writing a decade ago I knew I had a lot to learn about grammar and punctuation. I decided to join the local critique group, where I’d been told a writer can always find a cadre of double word commandants, weak verb patrols, and comma mommas willing to help. I’d hand out my manuscripts, read with gusto, and then gather the papers back like a hen gathering chicks in a rainstorm. Afterwards, I’d study my manuscript and try to make sense of each comment, each mark, each often undecipherable word written in the margins. It soon became obvious that most found my lack of comma use somewhat akin to Hannibal Lector’s lack of table manners. I’d furiously rewrite, carefully placing commas after each but, and, or therefore. I’d read my revised story the following week, and again I’d get it back with a superfluity of red marks, often telling me to take out the comma I’d been told to put in the week before. Those unruly little punctuation marks began racking up more miles than my car. And it wasn’t just the wayward commas that were causing the problem by being thrown willy-nilly into my work. Several years ago a newsletter editor inserted semi-colons into a column I’d written. Three of them in one sentence! I was flabbergasted and appalled. The words I had so carefully chosen were now surrounded by a barricade of punctuation. The voice was no longer mine. That’s when I dug in my heels and said, “No more fascist punctuation tactics for me. I’m making a stand against comma mommas and semi-colon prudes.” I trekked to Barnes and Noble for every book I could find on punctuation, and it didn’t take long before I realized the old adage—“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”—is probably true. No wonder people are confused about commas, ellipses, and dashes. There are a dozen different views out there on how to use them. It was confusing until I remembered the “Judgement Day Debate” of ’99. I’d written a story called New Black Suit for Judgement Day and my critique group marked out the first e in the word judgement. “But that’s how you spell it,” I said. “Not anymore,” someone replied. I went home and looked in my trusty Bible, the one given to me nearly fifty years ago. It had judgement spelled with an e. I looked in a new Bible and the e was gone. An older dictionary had the e, and a newer one did not. What was going on here? How could something as sturdy as an e just disappear? That’s when I decided I wouldn’t use a dictionary or a Bible printed more than fifteen years after my birth. I shelved the new guidebooks I’d been buying and began scouring flea markets and used bookstores for anything written before the 1960s. I found that William Strunk’s, Elements of Style, first printed in 1919, tells you to use commas before the last “and” in a series—The Associated Press Stylebook, printed in 1974, does not. I have an old guidebook from 1955 that states, “Commas are often used unnecessarily. Commas used incorrectly can ruin the flow of a sentence. Use them as sparingly as you use sugar.” So now I have a new rule for my writing. I call it the “Sugar Rule.” I will use a comma to divide a compound sentence, I will use them in a series, and I will use them if the first word of the sentence is a mild exclamation: Yes, that is a colon! No, I refuse to use commas willy nilly. Oh, what an ugly thing a semi-colon is. And yes, that last paragraph is correct. Look it up in Webster’s New World Dictionary, Elementary Edition, 1961, if you don’t believe me.