Oh, the pronounity!

Day 44
Today's word count: 1,252
Overall word count: 42,991

Hey! (Click the video. Always click them. They're meant to be background music and images.)

A solid day today, after a few relatively quiet ones. But even the quiet days involve quite a bit of reread and rewrite.

In writing, I have to go back, periodically, to remember what happened, or who said what to whom, so that the current writing agrees with the previous. And in doing so, I try not to perform too much serious rewrite. I leave the plot, setting, and characters alone as much as possible. Those can wait until the second draft. But I do correct small things as I read. I can't stand not to: I'm a proofreader by trade, after all. And they are things that would have to be fixed sooner or later anyway, so all I'm doing is saving myself that much time later on down the line, right?

And many of the little fixes have to do with pronouns and their antecedents. It seems to me, in reading as well as writing, that so much of the rhythm of prose involves the subtle interchange of nouns and pronouns. I'll reread a paragraph, trying to figure out where "she" is adequate and understandable, and where "Emma" is needed to remind the reader who is speaking and who is hearing. As with so many other elements of writing prose, a balance must be struck between boring the reader with unnecessary detail, and leaving him or her in the dark. With pronouns, in particular, I intend to ask my first readers: in the dialogue, can you always tell who is talking, or do you ever have to read back to figure it out?

So, anyway. Writing a lot, reading a lot. This is a killer story, I believe firmly. Also, Schoolhouse Rock is amazing. I belong to that generation of Americans who have those few dozen songs, the Schoolhouse Rock songs, embedded in their heads. For me, I always retained the grammar and math songs and kind of disregarded the history ones. But having said that, the song about the Preamble to the United States Constitution has been stuck in my head for over three decades.

I remember hearing the urban legend that John Sebastian, of The Lovin' Spoonful and Woodstock fame, was the singer on a bunch of these. Not so: it was jazz and session vocalist Bob Dorough. Only difference is I'm raising a toast to you tonight, Bob instead of John. Cheers.

This TV show subliminally taught me English syntax. Thank you, Schoolhouse Rock. To everyone else, good night.