My 200th Post!

Ahem. Drum roll, please.

This marks my 200th post since starting my blog in 2013!

When I started this blog, I didn't have a clue about blogging in general, other than it functioning as anything from an online diary to a teaching or advertising tool. I've learned quite a bit along the way, and have made a number of online friends and friendly acquaintances through the experience. I've seen a lot of those original blogging friends fall off the map, so to speak, and I genuinely miss some of them.

I thought it might be fun to revisit the top posts of each year from then to now. If you're newer to my blog, please do check them out. They're a lot of fun! And if you were around back in the day, do you remember these oldies but goodies?

MyTop Blog Posts

2013

Green Eggs and Ham: A Fresh Look at a Dark Book AND Coffee Chat with S.K. Anthony

There were two top posts that first year, and they just happen to be two of my own favorites! The Green Eggs and Ham post was actually written by my Number Two Son, Jeff, then eighteen (he's now twenty-three and just got married last month). His "I don't know what to write" for a school essay tied with the original, very first, one-that-started-it-all Coffee Chat for the number one spot. This first Coffee Chat was special and fun, and in fact was so much fun that my readers asked for more, and CC became a regular feature for a total of twenty-nine posts full of ridiculousness, suspension of disbelief, and even good advice at times.

2014 

Coffee Chat 8.0 with S.K. Anthony: The Kidnapping of Janie Junebug

The number of blog visitors multiplied during 2014. Some of that was because we organized a huge giveaway, Share the Love, where four authors and I did the Rafflecopter thing. They gave away books, and I gave away an editing package. There was also talk of such dodgy prizes as an empty Thin Mints cookie box, "Pong" (the original video game), and a picture of David Hasselhoff holding an armload of puppies, but at the last minute, the authors involved decided to keep those special extras and only send books to the winners. That was also the year I first participated in the April A to Z Challenge, hopping all over the globe to other people's blogs while posting twenty-six times in April. However, those things aside, the real top spot went to Janie Junebug (who can be found at Righting & Editing). During one of the coldest winters in Erie, S.K. decided to kidnap a guest from Florida to "bring sunshine" to my kitchen. I'm pretty sure Janie has never really recovered.

2015

Well . . . the interesting thing about 2015 is that I didn't blog at all. Not a single word. And it just about killed me. Just as my blog was gaining all kinds of momentum, I had a job switcheroo happen (not quite my choice, and not a bad job, but just super busy on top of homeschooling) and by the end of 2014, I had to acknowledge that there was just no time to write for a while. In October of that year, I announced I was in need of a short break. And truly, it was intended to be only a few months off—just enough time to settle into a better routine and get my bearings—but a few months turned into a few more, and when I finally got to the point where I simply HAD to write, it was almost fifteen months later. But here's the cool thing. My post about taking a break ended up with tons of hits on it because some of you wonderful people kept checking in on me here and there. And I'm so glad you all didn't give up on me.

2016

Editor's Notes #23: Points of View Part 1—How Do I Choose?

Actually, all three parts of the POV series vied for the most-visited of 2016. Part 1 discussed the first-person POV, Part 2 talked about third-person point of view and the role of the narrator & viewpoint person, and Part 3 focused on how many points of view is enough, and when the line of "too many" has been crossed.

2017

Do I Have to Love a Genre to Edit It?

Reading for editing purposes is vastly different from pleasure reading. Whether I enjoy the heck out of a manuscript or not, the job still needs to be done well, because that's what I was hired to do. This post about the balance between enjoyment and duty ended up being the top post for 2017.

2018

Happy New Year!

Funny that a post on January 4 that talked about my previous year and the complete reboot halfway through it would be the most popular post of 2018, but there you go. The numbers don't lie. I think sometimes it's just nice to have a conversation with my readers, rather than trying to teach or inform, and I guess everyone else thought so, too. A close second was the first of my three-part series on Best Books on Writing and Editing, still worth taking a look at for the book recommendations.

2019

Editors: We Are Not the Grammar Police!

We're not very far into 2019, so there weren't many posts to choose from, but this particular one definitely wins for most views in 2019. Editors have such a reputation for negativity and pedantic behavior that every so often, it's important to remind others that we really aren't anything like the stereotype.

So What's Coming Up Next?

The Future of This Blog

It's only fitting that my 200th post will be my last "real" post here on Blogger. I've decided, after much thought, wasted time (I'm a slow thinker), and a hard look at the analytics that it's time to move my blog to another platform. My website is on Squarespace, and given that Google has shut down an avenue (Google+) that was a social media failure overall but that made it easy to follow Blogger blogs, I think it's best that I make the change sooner than later. 

I hope you'll all make the move with me, of course. The commenting on Squarespace is through Disqus, and you don't have to create an account anywhere to comment or use it—you can log in through Facebook, Twitter, Google, Disqus, or simply comment as a guest. I'm hoping this will simplify commenting, as I've heard from a handful of people that they've experienced trouble commenting on this blog more often than not.

So thanks for following along this far! And come to the new blog at https://easyreaderediting.com/blog so I don't miss out on catching up with any of you there. 

Editors: We Are Not the Grammar Police!

Editors.

We are a long way from what most people think we are. We are not the bossy know-it-alls who glory in telling authors how bad they suck. We're not J. Jonah Jameson, shouting at the writers who hand us their copy with trembling hands. We're not inflexible about THE RULES and how they should be followed.

We're not even the people who correct everyone's Facebook posts, believe it or not.

We're people who just enjoy polishing words and phrases. People who help to clarify meaning by adjusting structure. People who like to make sure the image a writer wishes to create is the image that comes across in the narrative.

One of the things that grows old fast for an editor is when someone calls us the grammar police. (Worse yet, a grammar Nazi, because only the Nazis were/are Nazis, and it's an abhorrent term that should not be tossed about lightly, comparing someone who corrects text with someone who committed genocide. But I digress.)

The term "grammar police" implies that editors lie in wait, hoping for someone to mess up so they can publicly shame them. Even the real police don't do that. Well . . . maybe the state troopers who ticket speeders on the highway do that.

But back to me.

I mean, other editors.

Okay, me. AND other editors.

We love a well-turned phrase, but honestly, the feeling of the fix and polish is more of a feeling of accomplishment for our own skills, not a feeling of superiority over the person whose work we're reading through.

I can't tell you how many times I've had acquaintances make a comment to me along the lines of "I'm so paranoid to write anything on your Facebook wall without rereading it a dozen times" or "Gosh, you're probably cringing as you read my post" or any number of variations on that theme. Let me set the record straight:

• I don't correct someone's writing unless they're paying me for it, or have specifically asked me to do so. 
• I don't always use proper English when I speak—just like everyone else when they talk. 
• I don't use proper punctuation (other than for clarity) when I'm typing in a private chat window or text with a friend.
• And I never EVER correct someone publicly on social media, especially strangers.

Those people who take joy in that type of overzealous behavior are jerks, plain and simple. Half the time, they don't even know the real rules (or the change in language that makes a certain style now obsolete) but simply want to show someone (strangers? and why?) that they're smarter than someone else. Quoting what we call "zombie rules," i.e. habits or styles that are/were popular but not actually rules that must be followed, is almost always done by those who have no basis for what they're insisting on. And yet the drive-by editors still do it with regularity.

Denise Cowle has a great blog post about why the grammar police aren't cool. When it was recently shared in an editing group, almost every editor in the group agreed that they don't like being viewed that way and don't behave that way. Again, it's always those who don't actually know what's what who shout the loudest. Where she reminds us that we need to be kind, she says, "If you're lucky enough to have benefited from a good education, and you don't have to wrestle with a learning difference such as dyslexia, be thankful and be gracious."

Graciousness and kindness never hurts. You never know when someone is writing in their second language, or with a disability, or whose speech-to-text program doesn't quite catch everything.

Another terrific post that addresses this is "4 Reasons Why Freelance Writers Shouldn't Be Grammar Police" by Linda Formichelli. It might be more aptly named "Why Grammar Police Make Boring Writers," because that's what inevitably happens when rules (or supposed rules) are adhered to without nuance or voice being considered: it's sterile and boring.

Grammar police? I think I'd rather be known as the Shiny Word Fairy or something like that. Since my goal is not to sterilize anything, but to make someone's work sparkle, I think it's fitting.

Thanks for listening, folks!

Love,

Lynda, the Shiny Word Fairy