37 Things to Know About Grammar

For writers who may need a quick reference, the book is a handy tool. For non-native English speakers and writers, the book is a perfect guide.

Matteson Claus, the author of the book, has generously agreed to giveaway THREE copies of her work to FWJ readers. How cool is she?

All you need to do is to join the contest by following the guidelines below.

Step 1: Copy & paste the following, and then tweet it:

I want to win a copy of “37 Things to Know About Grammar” from @FreelanceWJ! Enter here: http://spla.us/yx3J7V #WinGrammarBook #contests

Step 2: Leave us a comment on this page to let us know you tweeted, and paste the link to your tweet in your comment. (Note that our comments are moderated, so your comment may not show up immediately after you click the “Post Comment” button.)

THREE winners will be selected at random from the commenters on or around 8:00 pm EST on Wednesday, January 25. Winners will be notified via Twitter, after which you’ll send your mailing address to Matteson herselfso that she can send you your prize. Don’t forget to thank her if you win!

Important: You can enter the contest once per day between now and the 25th.

Note that this contest is open only to residents of the United States and Canada.

Happy commenting and tweeting!

If you have been working yourself hard this week, why don’t you consider treating yourself to a break this weekend? I do not know what it is that relaxes you, but if you are like me, cooking is one of the things that serve as therapy. I do hate the cleaning up that comes after, but the actual cooking AND eating more than makes up for it.

Now if you sprinkle a little silly dust into your cooking, wouldn’t that be more fun? Enter Dr. Seuss.

For many of us, Dr. Seuss was an essential part of childhood. You probably have made Dr. Seuss mandatory reading for your kids – and I salute you for that! More than developing a love for words and reading, I think that Dr. Seuss taught us how to see the fun in little and silly things.

I am working on a project that is all about food – lucky me! – and I thought it would be cool to share it with you. The site is called Recipe Finder, and it is the largest recipe search engine that you can find today. I played around with it to see if I can find some Dr. Seuss recipes. Well, technically, they are not Dr. Seuss recipes, but they might very well be the real life versions of the things that delighted us as we were growing up.

Green Eggs and Ham With a Twist

Green Eggs and Ham

Every time one hears about Dr. Seuss, green eggs and ham always comes up. You might not be interested in the usual way of preparing/serving this (add some pesto or basil to the eggs), but here is another way you can present green eggs and ham. The recipe is named St. Patrick’s Day Emerald Eggs, and it doesn’t take too long to prepare. It’s also a perfect alternative for those who do not like scrambled eggs!

Pink Ink

Who hasn’t fallen in love with the Yink who likes to drink pink ink? I think that this is one of the few instances wherein I can say that I actually like pink! Now you can make your own pink ink, have fun, and feel refreshed while you are at it. Here’s a simple recipe for Strawberry Pink Lemonade.

Ingredients
1 pkt. (0.13 oz.) CRYSTAL LIGHT On The Go Pink Lemonade Flavor Drink Mix
2 cups cold water
1/2 cup frozen strawberries

Instructions

1. BLEND all ingredients in blender until smooth.
2. SERVE immediately over ice.

It doesn’t get much easier than that, doesn’t it? If you want something with a little kick to it, then I suggest the adult version of pink ink: Pink Lemonade Margarita.

Noodles for Poodles

Noodles for Poodles

What do you think about that image? Will those noodles make a poodle happy? One thing I am sure of: fusilli with smoked salmon is delicious!

Oh, and just to refresh your memory, the reference to noodles for poodles is from Fox in Socks.

Pita Pockets With No Wocket

I was one of those kids who had imaginary friends, and maybe that’s why I totally loved “There’s Wocket in My Pocket”. I never saw wockets, but believe me, I wanted to! Now we can’t go around cooking wockets. That’s just not humane. We can’t cook pockets either, as that would probably taste awful. Here’s the next best thing – pita pockets!

One of my favorites: Beef Pita Pockets. They’re also very easy to make, so you won’t have to stress.

So what do you say? Shall we have a Dr. Seuss weekend?

Images and recipes, via Recipe Finder, from: Food.com and Betty Crocker

Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and it is but fitting for us to celebrate the day he was born.  What better way to honor the man than to learn from him?

See the fun in what you do, and share that fun with your readers.

Pick up any – and I mean any – of Dr. Seuss’s books, and you will see how much fun the author had when he was writing the book. There is no denying it – Dr. Seuss enjoyed what he was doing, and that enjoyment shone through in his work.

Maybe you’re thinking along the lines of “How can I have fun when I have to write copy about real estate in a hundred different ways?” While it is true that not all the jobs that we get are inherently fun, our attitude towards the job can make a world of difference. Perspective is everything.

It’s okay to be different.

Dr. Seuss is as different as different gets. Where did his difference get him? A long, long way. I have to add this, though: being different is not an always excuse to use incorrect grammar.

Exaggerate if you have to!

Exaggeration does wonders if used properly. Anyone who has read at least one Dr. Seuss book can see that. Dr. Seuss himself once said:

I tend to basically exaggerate in life, and in writing, it’s fine to exaggerate. I really enjoy overstating for the purpose of getting a laugh. It’s very flattering, that laugh, and at the same time it gives pleasure to the audience and accomplishes more than writing very serious things. For another thing, writing is easier than digging ditches. Well, actually that’s an exaggeration. It isn’t.
(Interview in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, 1976)

Keep it short.

A wise man once said, say a lot in a few words. According to Dr. Seuss (and this may very well be one of my favorite quotes):

It has often been said
there’s so much to be read,
you never can cram
all those words in your head.

So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore
for the reader who reads.

That’s why my belief is
the briefer the brief is,
the greater the sigh
of the reader’s relief is.

FWJ readers, what are your “Seussical” experiences?

Deck the blogs with tons of leads

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la

Tis the season to take heed,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

To the tips, advice and wisdom,

Fa la la, la la la, la la la.

Troll the boards making friends,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Search the archives, thoughts and surveys,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Ask Jodee about your queries.

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Noemi leads in grammar guidance,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

While Jonathan talks legal countenance,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Fast away the old year passes,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Hail the new year of 1099 taxes,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Happy Holidays! Add your own verse!

Money for Nothing

I was planning to write an incredibly long, detailed post about the not-so-wonderful world of writing for websites that operate on revenue sharing models.

Part of that post was going to discuss a throwaway article I wrote several years ago for a revshare site on a lark, just to test the waters.  Due to a lucky combination of good timing, optimization for a virtually unexploited long tail keyword in a big money niche and what one can only describe as stupid luck, I’ve made approximately $600 from that article over the course of five years.  It took me approximately five minutes to find the primary keyword (there’s that luck) and about ten minutes to write the simple article.

I’m not underpaid, but I generally don’t make $2,400 per hour for lousy little pen-named articles designed for content mills.  I still chuckle every month when I see the mill make a deposit into my checking account.

Anyway, I wanted to mention that article because stories like those are one reason why so many people hop into the revshare world.  Unfortunately, they’re flukes.  Anomalies.  Luck breaks.  You can’t count on them.  They don’t happen too often.  I was going to put that particular article’s numbers up against the other four I wrote in the same week for that site long, long ago to illustrate the point.

I was plodding through the post about revenue sharing while listening to George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh and just as I started detailing the story of the miracle article, I found myself half-singing along with Ring Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy”.

It don’t come easy,
You know it don’t come easy.

It don’t come easy,
You know it don’t come easy.

Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,
And you know it don’t come easy.
You don’t have to shout or leap about,
You can even play them easy.

Well, in my case it did come easy.  I goofed around as an experiment and made a big ol’ chunk of cash from writing that I’d objectively value at approximately nothing.

Some days, Starr’s lyrics do ring true for a self-employed writer.

However, there are times when it does come easy.  The cosmic tumblers click into place and weird little miracles appear.

Accentuating the Positive

Instead of writing a post about the way things don’t come easy in the world of revenue sharing, I decided to write a post about the times things do come easy.  I figured it might be nice to celebrate the crazy flukes and accidental victories instead of focusing on the ugly grind of making a living with a keyboard.

Here are my favorite easy moments…  In no particular order:

The $600 Revshare Non-Masterpiece: This is the article mentioned above.  A nearly effortless bit of experimentation continues to pay dividends years after its creation.  There really is no logical explanation for why this article continues to earn and earn every month.  Somehow, it continues to fly below the radars of those who work in the niche and Google, pumping out steady earnings for the content mill and me.

The Three-Page Report that Made Over $5,000. I was driving down the highway and a simple idea crossed my mind.  Bum marketing (a simplified form of article-based affiliate marketing) was a hot topic in the Internet marketing world.  I realized there was a very easy way to boost the value of the articles and to insure at least some up-front cash value for them.  That relatively small cash payment could serve as something of an insurance policy for those who were writing free articles for directories in hopes of generating affiliate sales.

I came home, sat down and outlined the exceedingly simple process.  I added introductory and concluding paragraphs, converted it into a PDF and posted it for sale as an information product on a popular IM forum with a little off-the-top-of-my-head sales copy.  I set up a PayPal button and a quick automated download process for anyone willing to buy the guide.  From top to bottom, it took about two hours.

The next morning, I woke up to over $2,000 in sales.  Within three days, I made $5,000 off that simple idea.  The almost equally awesome part was the fact that the folks who bought the report actually liked it.  It didn’t take long for the concept to escape the confines of my hastily produced ebook and sales ground to a halt shortly thereafter.  I wasn’t complaining.

The Luckiest Celebrity Blog Ever: I noticed that my wife was watching a TV show featuring a woman I had seen on another show the day before.  Out of curiosity, I did some quick Googling and realized that her career was absolutely on fire and that she was poised for a major breakthrough.

At the time, I was experimenting with new keyword mining techniques and generating income via blogs monetized with contextual advertising.  A few minutes later, I had claimed a Blogspot blog with a domain name featuring a common misspelling of the celebrity’s name and was setting it up with a number of quick posts that were little more than silly notices of other articles about the celebrity, combined with a brief excerpt of the source material and a link to the original source.  It was a very crude homemade news aggregator, in a sense.

The site started making about $1 per day in Adsense earnings, so I kept adding occasional little posts.  The celebrity’s star power increased to the Nth degree and earnings went up, up and up.  Soon, it was making a solid $10 per day.  Then $20.  Then $30.  I outsourced one hundred additional news aggregation-style posts with some of the earnings, loaded them up and set them to drip feed at a rate of two per week.  The investment paid for itself within two months.

That site made a small fortune before people with real resources, strong content and a commitment to doing things the right way realized that a crummy little Blogspot blog was ranking in the top three for a series of high volume searches.  The competition didn’t find it hard to knock me off, but that blog put a stack of fat Adsense checks in my pocket before they did.  For what it’s worth, the site still generates about a buck every other day and I haven’t so much as looked at it in over two years.

Common Traits

All three of those weird winners share a few common traits:

They happened because I was willing to experiment. If I had been wholeheartedly committed to following THE plan and only THE plan, they wouldn’t have happened.  This serves to remind me that keeping an open mind and trying new things can be a lot of fun and a source of profits.

They all defied duplication. Efforts to replicate the results with similar projects invariably fall short of those anomalous originals.  I did have some luck with other Adsense-monetized blogs (enough that I still get a check every month from Google) and I’ve sold a few other information products here and there that have been well worth my time, but I’ve never come close on another revshare article.  This reminds me that luck matters more than we’d probably like to think.

All three of these happy accidents share one other trait.  They happened three or more years ago.

And You Know it Don’t Come Easy

I think that last fact may contain the most important lesson my three examples offer.  In the last few years, we’ve witnessed an absolute explosion in the number of people trying to make money online as writers, Internet marketers and everything else imaginable.  I think it’s an overstatement to say we’re near a saturation point, considering the web’s continued rapid growth, but the online world is certainly more crowded and competitive today than it was a few years ago.

I really do believe it was easier to mix some rudimentary knowledge with a little skill and a chunk of action to generate healthy chunks of cash back in the “good old days” (which aren’t particularly old at all, truth be told).  As I think about other cool little bursts of luck I’ve had, most of them happened during or before 2008.  I know I haven’t stopped experimenting with new ideas and I’d like to believe that my skills have improved.  I know my knowledge base is more expansive.

So, either I’ve hit a long luckless streak or it’s getting tougher to hit the big time with little effort due to increased competition.

I wanted to go from a somewhat negative post about the doomed nature of 99.99% of revshare writing efforts to a positive reflection on the times when the money rains upon request.  Instead, I think this post could still end on a somber note.

These days…  Well…  It don’t come easy.

Your Glory Days…  And a Prize!

Ah, who wants  to end on a down note?  Maybe it can come easy.  Even if it doesn’t, it did at some point and that’s worth a little party, right?

I open it up to you, the FWJ readership.  Let’s hear your stories of glory days, your memories of times when things that shouldn’t have been successful turned into moments of accidental greatness.

Maybe it was the unedited, typo-riddled query that still landed you a plum contract.  It could’ve been the time you sent off a piece of work you personally hated that the recipient loved so much you developed a profitable on-going relationship.  Perhaps you had a magic revshare moment, too.

I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I have to believe you’ve had times when it all came easy.

Tell your story.

Oh, and just to encourage participation, I’ll tack on a prize.  The best story wins a free copy of The Concert for Bangladesh on DVD.  You get Harrison, Clapton, Preston, Dylan and even Ringo in their full bearded 1971 glory!

Let’s hear your tales of mysterious moneymakers, accidental brilliance and those unexplained moments of magic when very little effort resulted in a massive payoff of some sort.

• Stuff on My Cat
• Cute Overload
• I Can Has Cheeseburger

Some of them are snarky:

• Passive Aggressive Notes
• People of Walmart

And some of them are downright tragic:

• FMyLife
• Texts from Last Night
• Hm, maybe I should list People of Walmart again…

There are some, however, that are just so cool that even though I don’t check back regularly, I think of them from time to time and fritter away an entire afternoon catching up on months’ worth of entries.  One of my very favorites for this purpose is Indexed.  I love Indexed because the creator has found a way to merge words, images, and *gasp* math in a way that not only makes sense, but also feels really relevant.  Some of the diagrams she does make me laugh.  Some make me think.  A few make me scratch my head and go “huh?’  But all-in-all, I’m so impressed by her ability to keep these coming year after year, and I think everyone should check them out!

I love this one especially because it really does sum up how so many of us get into this freelancing life!

Or so I thought.

I took this simple little quiz and was appalled at my results.  There were 17 quotes listed, and in the 5 minutes provided, I could only identify 7 of them.  (They even had the author’s initials listed as a clue for each.)  I may have to revoke my own word-nerd street cred after that abysmal showing.

So, now I’m curious.  How many of them can each of you get right?  C’mon.  Humor me.  It won’t take more than five minutes since there’s a timer and everything; and you can even count it as “work” since it’s totally writing related!

There seem to be a whole bunch of these types of games on this site called Sporcle, but the one I’m talking about is the Classic Quotes game.

After all, I was planning to take the month of October off, with only this blog to “worry” about.  So, everyone else was told that I’d do as much as I could for them, up to the last possible moment, but that I was off limits as soon as I went to the hospital.

That lasted about nine days.

The next thing I knew, there were these requests in my in box, and I started seeing dollar signs and feeling like I had way more energy than I expected.  All of a sudden, I was saying “yes” to batches of keyword articles and writing newsletters at the conclusion of 2 a.m. feedings.  My business partner was telling me to slow down and offering to take stuff off my plate, but I was just unable to stop myself.

I am pacing myself a bit, however.  I’ve only accepted a couple of smaller projects, and those clients that are more, um, “high maintenance” have all been put on a need-to-know basis regarding my availability.  It doesn’t hurt that my husband is on paternity leave, either.  With him, a mother’s helper, and an infant that actually sleeps (she’s currently doing so on my chest), I may actually get a few extra projects squeezed in during my self-proclaimed month “off.”

After that, though, it’s back to this:

Thanks to N.C. Winters at Freelance Switch’s Freelance Freedom for once again perfectly summing up the freelance lifestyle.  If you all aren’t already clued in to this awesome comic strip, you should DEFINITELY spend some time reading through these.  If it wasn’t a violation of copyright, I think I’d have about half of them printed out and stuck to my walls, computer, and bathroom mirror!

I have the heaters on and classical music on the radio, and there is no one climbing on me, asking for orange juice, or demanding an encore performance of the most recent Wiggles episode.  It’s just me and the tiny babe in a nicely lit, comfortably cozy, private office.  If she happens to get too fussy, we’ll head for home, but in the meantime, it’s not like I can’t find things to keep myself busy.

Have I mentioned lately that I really dig being a freelancer?

I’m using my time wisely, too, as I’ve been looking for cool stuff to share here.  One of the things I came across is a comic blog called Medium Large.  I’m trying to avoid getting sucked in for hours, simply scrolling backwards through amusing posts.  Because, let’s face it, I’m in the perfect position to do exactly that at the moment.  Instead, I will share one I found particularly hilarious and simply direct you to go spend your afternoon scrolling!

“Uh-oh,” I thought.  ”He’s finally decided he’s had enough of this being in business for myself thing and is trying to build a case against it.”  (I’m very glass-is-half-empty here in the last week or so of this pregnancy.)  Instead, he had found a really funny couple of cartoons that I think many of you will relate to all too well.

It’s by Alex Noriega at Stuff No One Told Me, and I highly recommend you click the link and take a look at the other cartoon posted below this one.  It has dirty words.

When I insult someone, I generally just end up sounding petty and awkward.  I mean, there are very few occasions where “Nuh-uh” or “YOU are” really elevate one’s argument.  From now on, I think I’m going to refer to someone who annoys me as a “filthy bung” or a “damned furious wight.”

• Ill-faced
• Worse bodied
• Vile worm
• Dissentious rogue
• Maidenly man at arms
• You sheath
• Starveling
• Vile standing-tuck
• Scurvy companion
• Huge hill of flesh
• O braggart vile
• Peasant swain
• Dissembling harlot
• You naughty mocking uncle*
• You mouldy rogue
• Filthy bung
• Bull’s pizzle
• Sanguine coward
• Thoug unnecessary letter
• Deboshed fish
• Sodden-witted lord
• Lump of foul deformity

*What the?

Oh my gosh. How much do I want this shirt from Threadless Tees? Words cannot express:

My birthday’s October 8th.  Just sayin’…

Despite my large vocabulary and ability to punctuate, there are some common English language issues that still escape me. As much as I want to understand them, however, I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around proper usage. One of these things is the semi-colon, and I’m *this* close to having that sucker nailed. I think the only real question I have left is the appropriateness of using it as a “super comma” with a conjunction. I did mention the whole word-nerd thing, right?

Another issue that I’ve never been able to completely put to rest is that of situational irony. Thanks to a degree in Theatre Arts and having actually read a decent amount of Shakespeare, I’ve got a great handle on dramatic irony…but situational? I have looked up the definition literally (ooh, I do know how to use the word “literally” correctly) dozens of times. For some reason, however, I just cannot make some sort of very important connection. When people go off about why that one Alanis Morisette song is so not ironic, I just clam up and hope no one looks to me for confirmation. I have serious inadequacy issues when it comes to this concept, people.

So, it did my heart some good when one of my favorite web sites gave me permission to stop haranguing myself over irony. After all, if The Oatmeal says something is cool or uncool, it’s my job as a sheep to throw up my hands and get in line with the stated opinion, right? I have to admit that’s a whole lot easier when I agree with them already!

If you want to feel better about not knowing the ins and outs of irony, or even if you just want a little better understanding of it, check out The 3 Most Common Uses of Irony.

Anyway, here are 53 rules to follow if you want to “write good.”

Avoid Alliteration. Always.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
Employ the vernacular.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Contractions aren’t necessary.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
One should never generalize.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
Profanity sucks.
Be more or less specific.
Understatement is always best.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
One word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be avoided.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
Avoid archaeic spellings too.
Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
Subject and verb always has to agree.
Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
Don’t never use no double negatives.
Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
Eschew obfuscation.
No sentence fragments.
Don’t indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
And always be sure to finish what

Anyway, I found some new writerly jokes, and this was my favorite of the bunch. Because I have no illusions of my own diva-ness, I’ve gone ahead and infused myself into the joke as the know-it-all that I am:

A high school teacher is doing a lesson on pronouns with her Freshman class. She asks for a volunteer to use “I” in a sentence. Not surprisingly, the teacher’s pet raises her hand, waving it around to get her teacher’s attention.

“Oh,” Lorna responds with a puzzled look. “OK. ‘I am the ninth letter of the alphabet!’”

1. It’s NSFW because of some naughty language (in addition to bad grammar, of course).
2. A lot of people on my Facebook friends list are lucky I don’t have a taser like these grammar police.

OK, this one isn’t actually writing related, but since I already posted a link to a Tik Tok parody, I figured I might as well throw in my very favorite one. It’s geeky-ish-ly delicious.

The site is called “F My Life,” with people sending in reasons that their lives suck that day, followed by the acronym “FML.” If you get to feeling bad about how things are going for you, a little visit to this site might just make you feel better. It’s schadenfreude at its finest:

fmylife.com

A client needs general fitness articles that are original (no plagiarizing) and at least 550 words long that have been SEO’d for the URLs & keywords listed. They will be paying per article.

Thank you.

Did you catch it? They will immediately award the job to ANYONE who bids $4 per article. I’m generally annoyed with those who place these kinds of ads for trying to screw over the writers they hire, but this time, I’m actually feeling kind of bad for the potential employer. S/he has put way too much faith in the people on Guru who will bid $4 for 550 words. Apparently no one has explained the concept of “you get what you pay for” to these people.

I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only freelance writer out here that takes on the occasional less-than-stellar project. I admit, there are times that I accept a project based solely on the fact that I want the money that goes along with finishing the task. There’s a certain article about vaginal yeast infections that comes to mind, for example.

There are other projects that just drag on fooooreeeeveeeerrrr. You know these projects. They start out sounding very simple and straightforward, and by the time you’re into the fourth line revision you finally have to admit to yourself that your client is completely insane, and you will end up making approximately nine cents an hour because you bid a flat fee at the onset.

So, there are times when I feel the need to celebrate at the close of a project. I’ll fully admit that some of these times have involved varying amounts of alcohol. Others have revolved around my calculator as I punched in numbers and reminded myself that it was all about the paycheck. This week, my reward for a particularly grueling client experience was the fact that I was able to pay to have my front yard fenced. Those celebrations are particularly sweet.

These guy, though…They know how to celebrate when they reach their goals:

Of course, there are still the occasional homonyms and such that slip through, but it’s apparently made a real difference for him.

Anyway, I found this poem recently. After searching around the web, I’ve found multiple versions of it, but have not been able to track down the original author:

An Ode to the Spell Checker

I have a spelling checker -
It came with my new pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it’s weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud.
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Each frays come posed up on my screen,
Eye trussed to bee a joule.
The checker poured o’er every word,
To cheque sum spelling rule.

That’s why aye brake in two averse
By righting wants too pleas.
Sow now ewe sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear for pea seas.

After centuries of us constantly getting it wrong, the “powers that be” gave one of our fellow writers an all access pass to heaven and hell. He decided to take a quick tour before really getting down to the nitty-gritty narrative description.

First up was hell. The demon in charge took him to see where they kept the writers whose bad behavior landed them in the firery depths. What he saw was pretty par for the course: writers in tiny cubicles, chained to computers that kept crashing, crying and sweating and searching thesauri that never seem to give them just the right word.

“Wow,” thought the writer, “that really is hell.”

Next, he found himself accompanied by a saint who was assigned to show him around heaven. Eager to see how writers were treated there, he was dismayed to see writers in tiny cubicles, chained to computers that kept crashing, crying and sweating and searching thesauri that never seem to give them just the right word.

“What is going on?!” the writer asked his tour guide. “This is just as bad as hell.”

“Oh no it’s not,” replied the saint. “These writers get published!”

Anyway, that whole part of the conversation kept reminding me of a hilarious story that one of my favorite comedians (Dan Cummins) tells about the origin of his own fear of clowns. I must warn you that this is absolutely NSFW, but it’s a pretty funny story, nonetheless.

Ooh, ooh. I even just figured out how to make this post writing-related: I’m trying to pitch a story about Dan to a magazine that showcases talent to colleges around the country.

10-Year-Old Me: Mom, what’ this word mean? (Pointing to the slang term used.)
Panicked Mother: What do you think it means?
10-Year-Old Me: Never mind.

I worked my way through most of his then-existing cannon by the time I got to college and pleasure reading went by the wayside.

Later on, I read his On Writing and was quite pleased to discover that The King of Horror and I have a pretty similar approach to the writing process. I’m one of those people who will take validation where I can find it…or pretend it exists. I haven’t read a whole lot of SK’s most recent works, with the exception of Under the Dome. I ordered and read it on my Kindle and had no idea it had been a particularly long book (Kindle doesn’t show page numbers) until other people who had read it on paper were freaking out about it.

Still, I have a soft spot for this particular author. I also happen to think that Conan O’Brien is hilarious. So, I was pleased to find this clip of King on Conan’s old Late Night show. It turns out that even though he’s a bit…well, odd…Stevie can hold his own against Conan’s comic chops.

I used to read a lot of blogs, but I just don’t seem to have the time, energy, or attention span to keep up with any of them lately. In my defense, I am running a business, sustaining a marriage, keeping a house, raising a child, and growing an entire human being in my body, so if anyone is personally offended that I don’t keep up on his or her blog…he or she is totally a selfish loser.

I do find myself with the occasional lull, however, and at those times, I like to take a quick peek at some of the sites that make me laugh. I’d look at educational sites, but frankly, I don’t have the brainpower for it these days. Throw me a highly inappropriate “text from last night” or dangle an “lol cat” in front of me, and you’ve pretty much monopolized my entire attention span.

It turns out that one of blogs I occasionally like to frequent for the chuckle factor (gee, that sounds like something dirty) has a post about that very thing. I definitely recommend you go check out “This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult” on Hyperbole and a Half, and the following pictoral excerpt should give you a bit of an idea as to why.

Note to the author/artist, Allie, if she happens to notice this. Please don’t sue me for using your image. I’m trying to send you traffic, and I’m totally giving you credit, and I think you’re so hilarious, and I don’t really have any money anyway.