in which you find out more than you wanted to know about my opinions on writing

I got sucked into reading an entire book in one day today (which would not have been possible except I had a migraine this morning so wasn't feeling up to much of anything except reading). Maybe I will tell you about the book another time, but it means that it's almost midnight and I haven't written the post I was planning for tomorrow. So you're getting the leftovers from Friday's post, apologies in advance, because I think I can pull that together in about fifteen minutes since it's already mostly written.

On Friday I warned you that I am bad about making changes to my posts after they've been published, which means if you've subscribed via email, they may show up in your inbox more than once. But I'm better about it than I used to be, because I've figured out some of my writing quirks and I look for them before I post.

For example: I search for the word "just," possibly my most overused word. Sometimes it will appear 5 or 6 times in one post. Usually at least half of them can be deleted. And I often throw in extra prepositions where they're not needed: "I went in to town to run errands..."-- in is just an extra word (just!). And "that." Good Lord, do I overuse "that."

Which brings me to a post I read on Book Riot this past week about calling a book "badly written." The author wants the Book Riot community to stop using that phrase, because it is so subjective, and because if a book is in print, presumably commas are in the right place, subjects and verbs agree, and therefore the minimum requirements of "good writing" are met.

But you know, just (!) like you can cultivate a taste for good wine, you can cultivate a taste for good writing. Of course it's subjective. Value judgments are always subjective. But that doesn't mean there's no difference between Boone's Farm and Dom Perignon (which I know is champagne and not wine, but since I have zero knowledge about wine, that's the only name I can pull out of my hat). Different people like different types of wine, and different people like different styles of writing. But that's different than saying everything in print is well-written.

I'm not going to apologize for being an overeducated English major and having marked opinions about what constitutes "good writing." I avoid reading things that I think are "badly written," just like a wine connoisseur is not going to apologize for skipping Strawberry Hill. (I just googled, and yes, they still make it. Good Grief.)(And also this post about Boone's Farm wines is hilarious and well-written, thank you very much.)

Oops. That sort of turned into a rant.

Years ago Dean and I decided not to take a wine appreciation course when some friends of ours wanted us to go with them.  We figured that it would just make it so we would want to spend a lot of money on wine. But we know we have no taste in wine. I would never try to convince you that there is no such thing as good wine.

Sadly, if you're a grammar maven, you will know that my grammatical standards are pretty low. I'm a complete hypocrite, because I look for a certain level of skill in what I'm reading, while I'm not exactly a shining beacon of high level writing myself. (Thank you, formative years spent in East Texas where correct grammar is not exactly a high priority.) But there is a certain level of loose inefficiency in writing that immediately throws me out of what I'm reading and into mental whining about the author's need for an editor. (deleted just in that sentence.)

And now it is 12:10 a.m. and that's all I've got to say about that. I really did have something interesting to talk about today. I will try again soon. There are eight occurrences of the word "just" in this post, but I have the excuse that some of them are talking about using the word just. 

And now there are ten.