With the advent of the Internet, fads in writing have become the podiums from which impassioned diatribes, even scolds are launched with most earnest  fervor.  From lectures chiding writers against, perhaps, the use of any and all adverbs to the removal of tags from dialogue (now spelled dialog for some unknown reason), from castigating use of all ‘to be’ verbs and all tenses except the simplest of past or present tense construct, and the descriptive adjective or conjunctive form of ‘that’, are but to name a few podium favorites.  POV is another target among sententious individuals bent on proving their expertise and wisdom.

I sit back and grin, listening to the self-appointed pedagogues, do my own work, write as I will, yet feel a distinct sorrow for the earnest beggar who has the balls to plead the question ‘why?’ to his/her critics because s/he desires a certain voice/tone/POV/style (select one or more) to come to fore, and reducing his/her writing as suggested seems to utterly destroy it.

Well, here’s why: Because those self-appointed pedagogues have heard somebody, maybe an agent, editor, or author, say it, and they and others like them repeat it until it becomes “common law”.  That’s why.  What’s funny is when some debut author’s book comes out whose writing flies totally against all the faddish advisement of this sort.  I grin.  My advice?  Do your own work.

Recently:

• Writing Pedagogues
• They Work Very Hard
• Treading the Dangers of Fiction
• Infighting About Grammar & Punctuation
• Scary Writers
• New Novel, Chapter Two
• To the Book Store
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• Back from Summer Hiatus