Yes, this looks like an ad for Ikea’s Poäng chair, but it’s not. This is my favourite writing spot in the house. There are windows along one wall and continuing for a bit around a corner, so I feel surrounded by light. And, okay, the Poäng chair is pretty comfortable too.

What is the difference between wont and won’t?

The word wont talks about someone in the habit of doing something, or of a characteristic of something. To use it in a couple of sentences:

“Samantha was wont to think about spelling too much.”
“Tomorrow will be quiet, as Sundays are wont to be.”

The word won’t, as I bet you already know, is a contraction meaning will not.

So, this one’s easy. It’s really a spelling thing, since speaking the two words aloud will tell you right away if you’re saying the wrong one – and if you’re saying wont, people might mishear you and think you’re saying want, depending on your accent. This adds a bit more excitement to life! Actually, the pronunciation might help you determine which one you want to write out. Wont sounds like want, and you wouldn’t spell want with an apostrophe, like won’t!

Oh wow. Was I getting carried away there or what? Sorry, spelling tends to do that to me.

Click on any of these for a larger image.

1) This was a response to a play we’d read in my OAC Writer’s Craft course (a course I passed by the skin of my teeth – it remains my nemesis to this day). I think the first line sounds that way because our teacher asked us to identify what specific style of reaction we’d had, or something, but please look at what I’ve highlighted in the red box:

A well-defined social milieu?! I don’t think I rightly know what that means even now, and I’m nearly 30 years old! Maybe this one phrase is the reason I nearly failed the class. It’s all so clear to me now.

2) The next two were from my CanLit course, the course that pretty much defined me as a writer and showed me how amazing Canadian writing was. Below are notes about Fifth Business, and I don’t know if they’re notes from a lecture or if I invented the wording myself. Either way, it’s amazing to me how deeply we have to delve into books as students. I understand the value in it – and in this case it made me appreciate Fifth Business much more – but I also remember being skeptical that all of these elements were valuable/existed.

3) Now, keeping in mind how much I loved Robertson Davies at this time – how cruel is it to make your class write his obituary? And why did I get such a low mark on it? Probably because I wrote it through tears or something.

4) This one’s my favourite. It’s from that Writer’s Craft course. This document may also be the reason I nearly failed. Look at my answer to the last question! The cheek of it!

5) This last one sums up my high school mentality pretty well.

• Are Your Clients Really Getting Your Best? from Men With Pens.
• Teri Vlassopoulos blogs about choosing the name of her new short story collection.
• Lija at The Writer’s Pet writes about Fifth Business, a favourite novel we have in common!
• An article about the writing advice industry at the Globe & Mail.

Ms Hegeman, whose father is the renowned German literary director and theatre professor Carl Hegemann, has already written a play and the script to her own film. But her novel about a 16-year-old girl who suffers the death of her mother and subsequently plumbs the depths of wild sex and heavy drug taking on Berlin’s techno music scene has been her first runaway success.

Read the full article here.

So. What education is needed to become a copywriter? My subjective answer is: absolutely none. And here is why I say this: I am a copywriter and I have no education.

Well, not no education. I did graduate high school, but that’s about it. I know now that I can hold some out-of-date opinions about how to move through the world. This was evidenced when, upon graduating high school, I decided it would be more logical to spend my post-high school years in the working world. I would enter at the lowest level and work my way up, just like in the wholesome ’50s! At the time, I dreamed of working in publishing. I sent my wee resume along to every publisher in Toronto, with a cheeky letter saying, essentially, “I love books and will sweep floors if I have to.” I was surprised at the time that nobody took me up on this too-good-to-miss offer.

I ended up working in restaurants, pursuing web and magazine writing opportunities as they arose in my free time. As always, I read a lot and wrote as much as I could, getting used to adapting my voice and tone to the subject matter. After a few years I moved to Calgary and began working office jobs, including my first marketing & communications job, which I held for five years. The rest, if I may be cheesy, is history.

Now, I’m not advocating shunning post-secondary education in the least. In fact, by rights I shouldn’t have even got that job I just mentioned – the posting called for someone with a BA. It was just luck that they overlooked that. I’m merely saying that, with copywriting, all you really need to succeed is a good grasp of spelling and grammar and a way with words. I have those things naturally (tooting my own horn, yes). I like to think that early employers took a chance on me because they liked my writing (I still hold the record for best speller at the aforementioned marketing & communications job), and sensed how much I love writing.  As a freelance copywriter, I’ve not had a single prospective client ask about my education. They only care about how awesome I can make their project sound. In the end, experience spoke louder for me than any degree I could get.

What do you think? Is higher education necessary to become a copywriter?

(Image courtesy of stock.xchng user tsunei.)

Dear editor of novel: The word “which” is not a synonym for “and,” “anyway” or even a period. Here is an example from the book:

“And if you tell him you saw me smoking, I will banish you to the lowest circle of hell. Which I’ve never been there, but . . .”

Now I’m not going to get all academic on you here (I couldn’t even if I wanted to, anyway), but “which” is a pronoun. That means it refers directly to something that’s been mentioned in a conversation, or refers to the people having the conversation.

The character in the example I used should say either, ” . . . the lowest circle of hell, which I’ve never been to, but . . .” or drop it altogether. If he says which in the way I just suggested, he’s referring directly to the lowest circle of hell. In the way that appears the book, he’s using it to refer to, “I’ve never been there” – a future, entirely new point – which is redundant and makes no sense at all. He’s using which to indicate an afterthought, in which case a, “come to think of it” at the beginning or “anyway” at the end of the thought would suffice. Actually, in this example, dropping it altogether would make the most sense.

I know the example I used is from a character speaking, but that doesn’t make it right! Using which to signify an afterthought or make a new point isn’t a regionalism as far as I know, so it gets no pass from me. No sir!

I hope the above made sense. The thing with me is I usually feel it when a word is used wrong or a sentence is composed badly, but I can’t often put it into words. A loud clanging bell goes off somewhere in my torso. I think it’s my mutant superpower.

My dear friend Suzen and I, among the many things we have in common, share the unique preoccupation with Home that only being away from it can bring. Admittedly, her Home, Newfoundland, is a bit more picturesque and immediately evocative than mine. However, Ontario works its way into almost everything I write. There’s even a literary style named for my home region, though I don’t think my fiction fits into it – much as I’d love it to.

So, it made my wee expat heart soar to read:

This summer, Ontario’s literary history will become a permanent part of the province’s physical landscape with a new project called Ontario: Read It Here.

A series of eight plaques will be installed across the province in the exact geographic location where Ontario-based literary scenes takes place.

The full article can be read here. Having lived here in Alberta for nearly a decade, I’ve taken my fair share of lumps about being an Ontarian. Say what you will about Ontario – I’m excited about this and wish I could see it!

I decided to continue once I realized my mistake. I was disheartened at the beginning because it started out so confusingly, Lessing listing her grandparents and talking about them in a way that was hard to follow. I almost gave up, especially since the book was volume one of two and not at all short. But, happily, it got loads better. There wasn’t really a structure to the autobiography. I mean, yes, she does tell her story chronologically, but she digresses into stories and memories that might not have to do with the “plot,” at least not obviously. And she does this in such a compelling way; her stories are so interesting and her tone is so engaging. She was born in Iran and grew up in Zimbabwe, the daughter of British parents who were farming in “the colonies,” and was also a Communist. Though she seemed to like living there (even if her childhood wasn’t perfect), she has a pretty realistic view of this time in history; she leans towards the side of “this was a kind of ridiculous time and I tried to change it in my own way.” Also, I love when people branch off into side stories, especially elderly people who often have a lot of great stories.

Anyway, I read the book eagerly and am now reading the second volume, starting after she leaves Zimbabwe for England with her young son. She writes about her writing process and I thought it’d be useful to share. She writes:

Impossible to describe a writer’s life, for the real part of it cannot be written down. How did my day go in those early days in London, in Church Street? I woke at five, when the child did. He came into my bed, and I told or read him stories or rhymes. We got dressed, he ate, and then I took him to the school up the street . . . I shopped a little, and then my real day began. The feverish need to get this or that done . . . had to be subdued to the flat, dull state one needs to write in . . .

And now, on the little table that has been cleared of breakfast things, replaced by scattered sheets of paper, is the typewriter, waiting for me. Work begins. I do not sit down but wander around the room. I think on my feet . . . I find myself in the chair by the machine. I write a sentence . . . will it stand? But never mind, look at it later, just get on with it, get the flow started. And so it goes on. I walk and I prowl, my hands busy with this and that . . . I walk, I write. If the telephone rings I try to answer it without breaking the concentration. And so it goes on, all day, until it is time to fetch the child from school or until he arrives at the door . . .

So that’s the outline of a day. But nowhere in it is there the truth of the process of writing. I fall back on that useful word ‘wool-gathering.’ And this goes on when you are shopping, cooking, anything. You are reading but find the book has lowered itself: you are wool-gathering. The creative dark. Incommunicable.

She then goes on to recount how different publishing was back then, in the ’50s, how there used to be a close relationship between writer and publisher/editor, and books were sometimes published even though they wouldn’t make any money – just because they were good. Thoroughly depressing. This is why I like small/independent publishing. For the love! Or any other, less cheesy, phrase you’d like to substitute.

Anyway, this was long but I hope it was interesting. Personally, I can’t get enough of reading about the writing/creative process!