I think I'm terrible at all the rules basics of the craft. I know I need to pay more attention to it, but I just don't. Blargh.

And yet somehow, Liese, I always remember what you've written...

Well, thanks, deb. That's nice of you to say.

Don't know about nice - it's true, though. The scenes are very clear in my head for a good long while after I've read one of yours.

I thought I'd try fanfic today. Something from Neil Gaiman's Sandmanverse.

Perfection Discovered

Replacing the nail file in the purse, a glance at the check book reveals that the month’s paycheck won’t cover both rent and car payment. She wasn’t good enough this month. Not smart enough, not strong enough, not perfect enough. So, tomorrow she’ll “find” a little in this account and a little more in that one to help. And in the bathroom it was only a little help, today. A little sniff here, a small snort there. Perfection in the right powder, cut with a nail file and liberally applied. Behind the mask, within the mirror, Despair wails and bleeds.

Heh. Susan, I'm a Fragment Nazi. They drive me batshit; it's a quirk. I'll leap on an overuse of those long before I'll check the proper placement of commas.

While I'm a Comma Nazi. I've seen so many contest entries and writing class submissions with commas everywhere they shouldn't be and nowhere they should, and that drives me batshit. Especially breathless run-on sentences that would be just fine with a comma or two properly placed.

I crawled down the stairs. It was night. Dark. Chilly. I crawled. Those damned stairs.

Yeah, I've certainly seen fragments abused as a cheap way to create suspense or speed pacing. But I still like using them in moderation.

I think I'm terrible at all the rules basics of the craft.

No, you're not.

Thanks for letting me vent. For the record, I'm only this much of a perfectionist over things that are being submitted, and I think of contest entries as a sort of dry run for submission, especially since finaling gets you in front of an editor or agent judge. And I get annoyed at having to wade through prose so grammatically flawed that I keep having to read sentences two and three times to have any idea what the writer is driving at. Fortunately, those entries are the exception rather than the rule, or I'd quit judging out of sheer frustration.

I'll use fragments a lot when writing dialogue, since it's how some people speak.

As for punctuation, I may have a bit of an addiction to the em dash.

I've been told(I have barely noticed myself) that I have a parenthesis(dependency)

As for punctuation, I may have a bit of an addiction to the em dash.

Me too. First-round editing involves cutting my em dashes down to one per page. Final round includes seeing if I can weed it to one per scene or even chapter.

This wasn't how it was supposed to feel. Hotter, surely, more active, with her whole body twitching to action. No nerves afire -- cold sliding down every artery and up every vein, coiling around her heart and stiffening her back.

A sudden blush of fire raced across her face, shame and humiliation chased away by resolve.

She tucked the photograph back into his wallet. Contempt filled where anger might have been -- at his stupidity, at the ease of her discovery.

Hefting the knife from left hand to right, she imagined him with his throat slit, a gaping, leaking, twisted smile.