Here’s the difference between “conscious” and “conscience”

• Conscious means to be awake, to be aware, or to have knowledge of something.
• Conscience is the little voice inside you that tells you stealing your best friend’s car and driving it into a lake is wrong.

So, this means the following phrases are incorrect:

• Socially conscience
• Unconscience
• Listen to your conscious

How to tell the difference between “conscious” and “conscience”

Because these words sound so similar, it’s easy to get them confused. However, the key to telling them apart is in the second ‘n’ in conscience. Say it aloud if you need to (if you’re in public, you can say it under your breath – it’s okay!). If you need to talk about how to tell the difference between right and wrong, watch for that second ‘n.’ Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come up with an easy mnemonic device for this one, but after a while it should become second nature!

For those of you who don’t want to read all of it (though I think you should! It’s very well-written), here are the main points I took away from it:

• Take the time to create a history for your story or novel. Even if you don’t write fantasy, readers need to feel drawn in and surrounded by the world you’re creating.
• Don’t overexplain everything. It might feel weird, but keep some things mysterious or hinted at and let the reader keep coming back to find out more.
• Write from your passion – themes and thoughts you keep returning to personally are bound to translate in a complex and evolving way in your writing.
• Trust that your readers want to participate in and explore your work. By leaving certain things open to interpretation, you are making readers partners in the creative process.
• Check your facts!
• When writing, don’t resist letting the story or characters unfold in a different way than you’d intended.

I took a break to help him finally deal with the leftover moving boxes that were waiting to go down to recycling. First, we had to take all the discarded newsprint out of each one, spread it out flat, rinse, repeat. Let me tell you, there was a lot of newsprint. However, it turned out to be great for working out the knots my brain was making. I got to focus on something other than worrying what the buildings in Winnipeg are made of (yes, it’s important), so every 10 minutes something awesome popped into my head and I went promptly to write it down.

I’ve also started taking a walk every day – there’s a good-sized park near my new apartment so I have plenty of new places to see. I’m finding this is also helping me to think of new ideas or ways to improve on my old ones.

It’s not revelatory, I know. But really, it works! Do something monotonous, try not to get a repetitive stress injury at the same time, and I bet your writer’s block will go away.

At the time I didn’t really get why she cared about it so much, and now that I freelance I get it even less. Personally, I never care where my clients or colleagues are when I talk to them, as long as they’re not driving or under a tree during a thunderstorm. What matters is we talk about what we want to talk about clearly and without distraction (I’m not trying to be a gossip or stir the pot here, but the person in question was constantly distracted by one of her persistent children whenever we spoke. To me that was the actual issue, more than where she worked from).

I mean, I’ve shown you where I write (and will show you again once our new apartment is more “lived in” and less “moving in”). When I started freelancing, I made sure to set up a dedicated home office space with a proper desk and chair. And I only used it about 40% of the time. I simply felt more comfortable elsewhere, most of the time. My attitude has always been: if I’m completing good, professional projects for my clients or creating something great in my fiction, it shouldn’t matter if I’m hanging upside down from my couch while I’m doing it.

That said, I’d never let a client see me doing that.

What do you think? Does where you write actually matter? Do you work better in some places than others?

PS I don’t actually hang upside down off my couch. More power to you if you do, but I would spend all day fainting if I did that!

(Image courtesy of stock.xchng user sundstrom)

Either way, I’m here to tell you it works. The other day, I unearthed a story I’d written seven years ago and completely forgotten about. I was prepared to pull my face off in embarrassment as I read it, but the shocking thing was – I actually liked it! At that time in my writing life, I didn’t focus too much on traditional story structure or really even a traditional plot arc. I’d come across examples of this earlier, more experimental writing that made me roll my eyes, but this one pleasantly surprised me. If I may toot my own horn a bit, I found it was smart and flowed quite well. Of course, I’m not going to go into details about an unfinished story here, but suffice it to say that it just needs a small bit of polish (I mean, I really like plot and characterization now) and I’ll be happy to send it out into the world!

Success! It’s almost like I didn’t really have to do much of anything to get a completed short story. It’s like a gift from Me of the Past.

Seriously – who said that thing about putting your writing away in a drawer? Part of me thinks it’s someone ridiculous like Plato, but maybe it’s Zadie Smith. Does anyone know?

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.

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.)

Before I met my husband, I thought, like lots of others, I thought “begging the question” was the same as “raising the question” – like, “It’s Donut Friday, which begs the question – why am I not eating a donut right now?” It turned out, that’s totally incorrect.

“Begging the question” is actually a logical fallacy. Sounds complicated, but basically, begging the question is a statement that assumes its conclusion is proven correct without any evidence. Like this:

“If donuts weren’t delicious, then everyone wouldn’t eat them.”

In this sentence, the assumption is being made that its conclusion – everyone eats donuts – is true, without any proof of that. Just stating something doesn’t make it true. It’s also using that assumption as evidence that donuts are delicious. For these reasons, this sentence is begging the question.

Make sense? I hope I’ve explained that clearly. As you can tell from the examples in this post, my thought power is being eclipsed by donuts right now. My friend Teri and I have been talking about the office tradition of Donut Fridays, and I’ve decreed freelancers can also take part in it. Granted, those working from home will lack the anticipation of the endless possibility contained within the Tim Hortons box, but even still, I’m off to get a donut. Have a good day!

A paid-for URL, a few redesigns and some hilarious spam – this blog’s seen a lot in 2009! I took a quick look back at some of my earlier posts and thought I’d share some of my personal highlights from Wordscience. Here are the blog posts I liked the most in 2009:

• My Life With Robertson Davies
• Office Culture for the Self-Employed
• Three Ways my Mother Can Help you be a Better Freelancer
• How the Web Has Changed Since “My Day”
• Three Ways to Find Writing Motivation When You Just Don’t Care
• Quotes on Writing and Art

Oh, this one’s not a post of mine, but I kind of wish it was, given my Spelling Thing: Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling from The Oatmeal.

I hope everyone has/is having a great New Year’s Eve!

(Photo from stock.xchng user Staszkinse)

“For years I set aside daytimes for artmaking and evenings for writing; at some point I reversed that schedule, and months passed before I realized my writing had dried up – not for lack of ideas, but because it turns out I process words better at midnight than midday.”

“Try, if you can, to reoccupy your own aesthetic space of a few years back, or even a few months. There is no way. You can only plunge ahead, even when that carries with it the bittersweet realization that you have already done your very best work.”

“Working within the self-imposed discipline of a particular form eases the prospect of having to reinvent yourself with each new piece.”

“New work is supposed to replace old work. If it does so by making the old work inadequate, insufficient and incomplete – well, that’s life. (Frank Lloyd Wright advised young architects to plant ivy all around their early buildings, suggesting that in time it would grow to cover their ‘youthful indiscretions.’)”

“Only the maker has a chance of knowing how important small conventions and rituals are in the practice of staying at work.”

“The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done – over and over.”

“Only in these moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it’s not art. Your job is to draw a line from your life to your art that is straight and clear.”

The last three, in particular, were my favourites. I should print them out and read them next time I’m considering taking another fiction workshop instead of writing new stories!