March Forth

National Grammar Day--
Started in 2008 by Martha of A Way With Words. Did you know? Did you celebrate? This year there was a grammar haiku contest. I read through the winners. Haikus don't really do it for me.

So what does one do on a national grammar day? Go ballistic for a day with impunity on every violation you encounter, or take a break from your inner grouchy grammarian and sip grammartinis? The Chicago Tribune suggests celebrating with the grammartini. The day was new to me and kind of snuck (sneaked?) up on me. Maybe next year I will find some appropriate way to party. Any day can be celebrated if you look hard enough for something, but this is a bit of an odd one. And do we really need a Grammar Day as an excuse to enjoy a martini?

I am reading Stephen King's book On Writing. This might be a good book to browse on National Grammar Day. It is autobiographical but also reflects his own particular rules for writing which he has internalized, starting with Strunk & White (The Elements of Style), and refined with decades of writing practice. It has already been helpful to me and I have been thinking differently about writing. I will do a further report when I finish the book. It turns out he is close to my age and his story reflects some of the same early influences and cultural trends that I experienced in my formative years. I already recommend the book, even though I am only at the halfway point.

King reflects more than a few of his own strongly held opinions on writing in the book. His prose is very clean and direct, without a lot of superfluous description. Less is more in his book. And no adverbs. He hates the adverb! He opines, "The adverb is not your friend" and goes on to explain that if you don't (diligently?) root out the adverbs in your drafts they will spread with profligacy, like dandelions in the lawn!

I don't read his scary stories, but I may try one after reading this book. I even enjoyed the sprinklings of crudeness in the book. He gives an example of a really bad sentence and then writes, "Oh, man--who farted, right?

I protest just a little--adverbs must have some good uses! And no passive voice. And how to use frags... That's all I remember so far. Oops! I see that I have used a dreaded -ly word in this post (think differently).

I have banned many words, Rose said banally. Ha! That is my lame attempt at one of the famous "Tom Swifties," which King also discusses in the book. I wanted to say a lot of words, but I have banned that word.

Wow! Writing about writing and On Writing on National Grammar Day has made me very self-conscious. If Stephen King reads this post (no chance of that, I know) he would probably reply with "who farted?" That would stink.