Category Archives: #amwriting

Five online mistakes writers should never make

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Clare’s post yesterday about social media has inspired me to add my own two cents about social media. Specifically, I’d like to discuss some of the language errors I see online at many sites (Fortunately, I don’t notice these mistakes here at TKZ, which reinforces my already high regard for this community). 

Anyone can make a typo or a mistake when they fat-finger something in haste or after consuming too many Singapore Slings. But there are a few gooflaws which seem to reflect a lack of understanding about the use of language. 

Here, in no particular order, is a list of the five language mistakes that have been driving me absolutely bat poop crazy lately, especially when they’re made by people who claim to be writers:

  1.  Loose/Lose: Perhaps because my series deals with body image issues, I lurk at a few sites where people discuss their need to lose weight. Too often, someone will say she needs to “loose” weight. Whenever I encounter this error, I have to control my itchy typing finger to keep from replying with a snarky correction. Nobody likes snark.
  2. Its/It’s: This is the mistake I see the most. People often use “it’s” when the correct form should be “its”. “It’s” is used as a replacement for “it is”. “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in, “This post has got its dander up.” When unsure, try replacing the word with “it is”, and see if it makes sense,
  3. Your/You’re: Sigh. I don’t think I even have to explain this one to our readers. This offense seems to be committed mostly by Millennials, including some who claim to be writers. These people make me despair of the current state of English teaching in America. On the other hand, I don’t have to wonder how their literary ambitions will pan out.
  4. Their/There/They’re: These words seem to get misused on news sites a lot, mostly by online bloviators who use anonymous IDs and savagely attack the opinions of other people, no matter how benign those comments are. So, to recap: “Their” is used when you are referring to more than one person and something they possess. “There” is the word that is most often misused in place of the other forms. “They’re” is a contraction for “they are.”
  5. Compliment/Complement: “Compliment” is something nice you say to someone. “Complement” is something that adds to, enhances, or completes something else. It can also be used as a verb with an object.

 So that’s my rant for today. Do you have a pet peeve about language you’d care to add to my list?

No book left behind? Sadly, no.

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Like Joe was moving homes a few weeks back, and Clare has done a couple of times in recent years, I’m in the process of moving. My family and I aren’t moving very far–just to the next town over, Manhattan Beach. This new town is closer to our tennis club and is known to be slightly tony. (Read: Old people live there). Our current home is in Hermosa Beach, which is famous for having a certain Animal House vibe. We’re about 30 years too old to fully appreciate the finer merits of Hermosa, like the fun of slinging beer bottles into shrubbery as one staggers home from a pub crawl at 2 a.m.

The main challenge in getting our current house prepared for sale is that we need to do a little decluttering. Make that a massive amount of decluttering. My husband and I are both pack rats–we’re the same species, just slightly different  breeds and scale. (Scale-wise, I’m like a Jack Russell Terrier and he’s more of a Great Dane. But I don’t want to get personal here.)

My husband doesn’t like to throw out paper, and I don’t like to part with books. Over 11 years of marriage our  combined traits have made our house a bit…how shall I say…full.

So we’re currently analyzing everything that’s been collecting here over the years, and making some hard choices.  My hardest choices involve books. How do you let them go? Where do you send them? I have a strange possessiveness about books. I can’t even part with ones I didn’t enjoy and may not have even finished. I have this weird suspicion that there’s a kernel of something useful hidden in each one of them, something that I shouldn’t let go of, just in case I ever need that kernel down the road. (It’s my version of hoarding. I totally empathize with the crazy people on Hoarders whose houses are filled to the ceiling with old plastic bags, bent forks, buttons, and the occasional cat carcass.) You just never know when you’ll need those things again. (Except for the cats. The poor things probably just lost their way in the jungle pile.)


Sadly, I’m having to downsize when it comes to my physical books. I’m convinced we could live in Versailles with every wall lined with bookshelves, and we still wouldn’t have enough space for all of these books. But what do you do with the ones you decide to let go of? Donate them to a library? Goodwill? 

I actually found a site called BookCrossing, where you can “release your book into the wild”. The idea is that you let other readers know where you left your book(s), and those people will come pick them up, and then pass them on. I guess the system even lets you track your book as it zigzags the globe, checking in from time to time like the Travelocity gnome. The whole thing sounds fun, kind of like the Readership of the Traveling Books.  But I’m not so sure the authorities would be thrilled if I released my entire stash into the wild. For example: Where do you dump 10 years’ worth of so-so mystery cozies? I guess I could leave the knitting mystery near a yarn shop.  Maybe I could park the restaurant reviewer mystery and an old Zagat guide near CPK. But I’m afraid I just have too many books to “set free” all at once. It might even violate some local dumping ordinance. I might run into a humorless merchant or constable who doesn’t appreciate my attempt to create my own episode of Lit Gone Wild.  

So, what would you do with a ginormous book pile that you must somehow unload? We are working with a professional organizer who will help us resell things, including books. But I would hate for my letting-go process to turn into a tawdry commercial transaction. Selling them would make me feel kind of unclean about the whole thing, like I’m turning into a Ferengi from Star Trek. But really, what other choices are there? Any ideas?

Writing in cold blood

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Like many people, I’m fascinated by sociopaths. In particular the violent, physically attractive ones–think Ted Bundy and Jodi Arias–make me wonder: What makes them tick? How did they become monsters? How do they behave when they’re flying under the radar, before revealing their violent natures?

As writers it’s our job to dissect what motivates our characters. Many writers fall into the trap of writing psychopaths (a term that is interchangeable with sociopaths) as cardboard, two-dimensional characters. Evil requires a special effort to make it believable. And even to make it, ugh, sympathetic. 

Science gives us some clues about ways that psychopaths reveal themselves in speech and mannerisms.  A computer analysis of interviews with 52 convicted murderers who tested positive for psychopathy showed that all the men spoke with little emotion, used cause-and-effect statements to describe their crimes, and emphasized basic needs such as food and money.

That finding poses a problem for writers: Unemotional characters who speak in cause-and-effect statements can be boring on the page. So when we’re creating a psychopath, we need to reach beyond the typical behavior. We might choose to make them charismatic and larger-than-life (Hannibal Lecter and the Batman villains, for example). Or we might decide to make them more human. After all, there are lots of murderers who aren’t psychopaths. They might be driven by revenge, a sense of mission, or even a warped value system (Dexter).


This topic has been on my mind because I’ve been reading The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry.The book offers a fascinating insight on psychopaths, as well as the psychiatric industry that treats and categorizes them. The book includes the standardized test, the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, to analyze whether a person exhibits sociopathic traits. Here’s an online cheat sheet to the test. Let us know how you score, if you feel like sharing! Disclaimer: It takes a trained professional to administer the actual test and analyze it, so we won’t start shunning anyone in the grocery aisle who comes back with a high score!

Fun Tip of the Day: Google Authorship

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Have we talked about Google Authorship here before? I just enabled this neat little feature, which causes Google to display your picture and a profile box during searches on your name.

Here’s a screenshot of doing a search with my Google Authorship profile enabled. When I begin typing my name in Google’s search box, my picture appears along with the various search result options.

And here’s a picture of the search results. A box highlights my profile information, including a photo.

It’s hard to get everything on one screen to show you, but my Google Plus profile information also appears in a box with a photo. The example below shows Basil Sands’ picture instead of mine. Why, I’m not sure. Basil’s an IT guy, so maybe he can tell us, lol.

I just did a random sampling of searches on the TKZ bloggers’ names. The results indicate that most of us, but not all, have already set up a Google Authorship profile. Google Authorship is an incentive to get more familiar with Google Plus, which is much less popular as an outreach tool among authors compared to, say, Facebook.

So, have you been using Google Authorship as part of your Google Plus identity? Do you have any user tips or best practices you can share?

When writers don’t play nice in real life, do readers care?

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For the most part, writers are the nicest group of people you’ll ever meet. When I went to my first writer’s

conference back in 2006 as a newbie without a publishing contract, I was expecting to be dismissed by the “real” authors there. Instead, I found myself surrounded by the most welcoming, supportive professional community I’d ever met.

Of course. there are always exceptions. I’ve become more aware of those exceptions recently because of Facebook. People who are active on Facebook eventually reveal themselves, personality warts and all. For writers, sometimes too much revealing of self ignites blowback from readers.

Last week, a well-known author posted a Facebook rant about a political topic. Her comments were followed by vocal disappointment from some of her readers; all of the commenters expressed disappointment in the author. A few vowed never to buy her books again. Ouch.

We’ve even been taken to task occasionally here at TKZ. Whenever a blogger has made an ill considered, controversial or tactless remark, it’s “Katie, bar the door.” You guys always let us know when we’ve fumbled the courtesy ball. And for that, we thank you. 🙂

But it occurs to me that most people don’t want to buy “nice” books. Few people want to read about the Village of Nice, Happy People. We want conflict, emotion, and tension from our stories. But we don’t want that from our real-life writers.

I grew up surrounded by high-achieving, volatile personalities, so I guess I expect my artists to be a bit raw in person. But I’m wondering–have you ever encountered a writer who was rude or obnoxious in real life, and did that experience make you less likely to buy his or her book? 

I’ll leave you with Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets, in which he offends an ardent fan.