English Grammar for Dummies

I must be more of a "dummy" than I thought. I Found this great reference book English Grammar for Dummies. All the "For Dummies" books that I have read have really impressed me. When I was first getting into photography, most of what I learned was from Digital Photography All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies.

These books are written very simply. Just about anyone can pick them up and understand what they are reading without getting confused.

My one beef with this book is the examples the author gives. She goes though the trouble of breaking down complicated information about punctuation and sentence structure so it's easy to read and understand and then gives these terrible examples.

Here is one:

"Lochness snatched the atomic secret and quickly stashed it in his navel."

Come again...? Almost all of the examples are like this. They have characters with bizarre names doing bizarre things. Im sure this is intentional to be funny and entertaining, but it is distracting.

Other than the crazy examples I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to get a refresher on English grammar.

*Photo from Amazon.com

Progress Report

I started on a third draft of a short story I'm working on today. I took a little break between drafts to brush up on some grammar and punctuation basics. The story is about a family that goes camping in a remote area of the Pacific Northwest and run into some trouble with another camper.

In this draft I'm hoping to get the word count down from 6,500 to around 5,000 or less. I also need to come up with a title. I'm currently using "Bad Camper" as a place holder, but I need something better. Other than that I'm just going to try and apply some of what I learned from reading "The Elements of Style" and really strip down everything that isn't important to the story and polish everything that is.

First Post

I just had a (great) idea to start a writers blog where I can post updates on my attempts to become a published writer. I have been writing stories for as long as I can remember and I have finally gotten to a point where I want to take it to the next level and try to get something published. My goal is to write several new stories all short fiction (3,000-5,000 words) and start submitting them to magazines.

I have written a rough draft of my first story and have set it aside to spend a little time brushing up on the basics of writing and grammar. I feel so rusty on this stuff. I have been reading through a text book of my wife's "Essentials of College English" and it feels more like reading a foreign language. Luckily when rereading Stephen King's "On writing" he recommended "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White and I have been learning a lot from it.

Hopefully someone will stumble across this blog and get a laugh at my expense at my trial and errors, and maybe someone will find this and learn something. I will be happy either way.

Please feel free to leave comments, questions, or words of wisdom.