Blog for January 2023

Semicolons.

Recently, I started Ursula le Guin’s book about writing, Steering the craft. In the

introduction the second sentence says that this is not a book for beginners. In the fourth sentence she mentions semicolons. It looks as if it could be an amazingly instructive creative writing handbook. Despite the reassurance a few pages later, that she is not a grammar bully, at present, I am too terrified to read further. (Were those commas in the right place?) Despite my heightened fear of semicolons, I have just finished the final manuscript of The Sunset Clause, a story about a couple of teens who begin to question the history and philosophy of the militant society they have grown up in. The 72,000-word manuscript took a lot of effort, time and headaches, but the 200-word synopsis? Excruciating. Next to get stuck into is the story I’ve had in my head for 3-4 years now, Fight, about a 15- year-old boy’s fight to be heard in the family court system.

Luckily for me, 15-year-olds don’t care too much about semicolons.