“Dear Writer!” will be a regular feature on this blog, serving as a light-hearted look at composition, grammar, and vocabulary. Inspired by dubious “classics” like English as She Is Spoke, Engrish, and Today We Learn English!, this feature follows the principle that having to read a difficult text slowly and carefully while pausing frequently to process what you read allows you to learn it better. But if you find this feature’s style obnoxious, you’re forgiven.

Dear Writer! What is today we are facing is enormous, nay, immensous, and we are dare to say egregious malusage of two most similar and yet asimilar of the words. They are to be having the “immensity” and the “enormity.” Are both a meaning of bigness, yes? But no. “Immense” and “enormous,” if we these adjectives having implement, a bigdom we connote. But if you a noun wrote, other meaning enter left from stage!

Enormity: (n) to of wicked and evilness be.

Immensity: (n) to of bigdom and largery be.

We are reading is often of “enormity of the situation,” and yet dear writer is to be mean a situation what is quite big! Do not “enormity” what call which is not of the evilness! We wrote now the example:

“As she looked down at the blood on her hands and the knife on the floor, she realized the enormity of what she had just done.”

“The immensity of his fame really sank in when he found fans camping outside his house.”

We learn you have hope, dear writer, and may never your words plagued by enormity of the bad writing again!

Have you ever tripped over your own feet? Yeah, you probably felt dumb. But as soon as you got up and ascertained there was no permanent damage, I’ll bet the first thing you did was look around to see if anyone noticed. That’s the think about humility, shame, embarrassment—you’re much more likely to experience it when you have an audience.

I’m not advocating you join some funky self-flagellation sect, but sometimes, putting your goals out there for all to see is the greatest motivator of all. Chipper life coaches call it “accountability.” I call it “not having to learn what your own foot funk tastes like (usually).”  And the best part is that you can turn one of the greatest time-wasters into one of your greatest tools for productivity and motivation!

Join me in the greatest Twitter revolution that doesn’t involve regime-toppling and imprisonment! First, tweet that you’re going to achieve some bite-seize writing goal: write 500 words in the next three hours, for instance, or line edit one whole chapter before midnight. Add the hash tag #amwriting (or #amediting , thanks @KDSarge !) Then tweet again to let everyone know you accomplished your goal! Because you just told the world you were going to, right? Kinda like how people on The Biggest Loser have way more success than those playing the home game—our lonely nation turns its eyes to you. And you’re gonna get tons of supportive tweets and messages (especially if you tag me @BohemienneDC ). And you’d really feel like a chump if you let all those people down, right?

Twitterers may be infamous for their short attention spans, but we don’t forget.

Now, obviously there’s no way for us to check your work, so this accountability scheme relies on the honor system to some extent. But really, who are you cheating if you lie? Yourself. Your manuscript. If you have time to flap your chops on Twitter, you can crank out your promised 200, 300, 500 words. I know you’re busy. I’m busy too. But trust me, you have the time. You just have to claim it.

And feel free to follow me @BohemienneDC. I’ll be issuing regular challenges to all my writer-comrades. Accept them at your peril, for there may be contests and prizes associated soon.

Good luck writing and have fun #amwriting!

Scoffing at New Year’s resolutions seems de rigeur these days. Gym regulars gripe at the (very) temporary influx of treadmill hoggers, and your office is considerably grumpier from the caffeineless trying to kick the joe. The SMART system of goal accomplishment, however, aims to break down a resolution, project, or habit into something designed to help you succeed:

S: Specific. “Write more” is pretty ambiguous. “Write 500 words a day” is not. This gives you less room to let yourself slide.

M: Measurable. There needs to be some way for you to measure your progress and quantify when the goal is achieved—500 words is easily measurable, even with the most basic word processing software.

A: Achievable. Something that has an endpoint that is within your reach, as long as you stick to your goals.

R: Realistic. You know yourself better than anyone. What are you going to be able to consistently motivate yourself to do, and what is beyond your capabilities?

T: Timely. Give yourself a deadline! Write it somewhere prominent, where you’re sure to see it multiple times throughout the day.

I broke down some of my writing goals along this system, and noticed an interesting trend that I’ll get to in a moment. First, let me give you some examples.

My first SMART writing goal: write 3500 words a week. This works out to 500 words a day, but I wanted some flexibility for illness, crunch time at work, or impromptu Sunday all-day socializing. This offers me a Specific goal with a built-in Measurement. It’s perfectly Achievable. I know I can write 500 words a day because I’ve done it before. I’ve just never stuck to it before, because I didn’t have a good system for accountability. Realistic—even in a deep creative drought, I can force myself through a mere 500 words that can be finessed when the muse returns. The Timely one is a little tricky—I’m going to try to stick to this throughout the year, but I have other milestones within the year. For instance, I want to write THE END on my current main WiP, UNDER A DEAD MOON, by 31 March, so I’d better allot my 500 daily words wisely.

I have a few other writing goals as well—trading a chapter a week with my Crit Buddy, for instance. Then I have a nice outline for getting my draft submission-ready by July. But I realized, as I went back through my plan, that nowhere did I state the seemingly obvious goal: “Finish my novel.” This vexed me for a little while, but finally I accepted the omission.

How do you declare your novel truly “finished”? I had straightforward, SMART-approved goals for the writing, the editing, and the querying. If I stay on track with those goals and knock them all out, then by the end of the time frame I set myself, I should have a finished novel. All the components are there. If I reach the end of my plan and don’t feel the novel is yet ready for submission, then I can reevaluate.

Don’t stress about the major goals you can’t quantify—finish a novel, lose weight, read more. Break it down into easily accomplishable tasks that you can, and the bigger goals will come naturally.

What are you focusing on this new year?

I ve been going through ye olde Work in Progress with the Blue Law Pen (red is just too gut-wrenching), and I m finding a lot of overwriting. Big surprise. But one overwritten construction in particular keeps popping up, and now I m seeing it everywhere in Critique Buddy s manuscript, online, even in published works. I call it the Double Description, and much like a double rainbow, it s too much.

Here s what I mean:

Glittering encrustrations covered the clock s face.

Okay, it s purply, but can you really pinpoint the problem? Let s swap in some synonyms to bring out the real issue.

Glittering encrustations encrusted the clock s face.

Oops. Double Description, what does it mean?

When I m trying really hard to find the perfect description, I tend to throw in every adjective, gerund, adverb, noun, and overwrought simile I can think of until the right one sticks. This often leads to Double Descriptions, cunningly separated by enough words to evade detection: Glittering encrustations of sapphire and ruby covered the clock s face. Sometimes these Double Descriptions are the result of painstaking acrobatics to avoid passive voice, or sometimes they re just careless writing/rewriting. Regardless, don t use the same imagery twice when once will do.

Sapphires and rubies encrusted the clock s face, dazzling in the lamplight.

It s not poetry, but at least it won t move your editor to tears.

The news came during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, as we huddled around our TV with the few friends brave enough to trek through three days unrelenting snowfall. Work was closed for Monday. The DC government was shut down. The federal government was shut down. Private businesses attempting to operate did so at great financial and legal risk. I woke up (quite late) Monday morning bursting with childhood snow day glee.

A surprise day! All to myself! Mine, all mine!

I went up to our building s rooftop and admired the massive drifts of snow crenellating the Capitol Dome. I watched the snow plows struggle against the snow. I looked at the street around our building, and discovered that those odd lumps in the vast field of white were once cars parked on the street. I made hot tea.

Then I realized that it was already February, and I hadn t even started editing the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2009.

We all want to live life to the fullest, but sometimes life lives us. I ve always wanted to write at some points in my life, I ve spent all my free time writing. But the two years after college, when I was underemployed and in Job Limbo (the infamous This-is-Not-an-Offer Offer!), I had nothing better to do with my stultifying free time yet I scarcely wrote. We bow to obligations, expectations, errands, tasks. Often because we have to, either to survive or to maintain the life we love, but sometimes because of fear: the things we secretly dream to accomplish are too wonderful, too great. We need excuses to save us from our dreams.

I didn t want to be afraid anymore. I didn t want to wake up and feel lost in a sea of white emptiness, a blank canvas, a fresh screen. So during that snowed-out week, I rewrote the first three chapters of that novel, without once glancing at the source material. And by the time NaNoWriMo 2010 came around last November, I d rewritten, re-rewritten, edited, and revised 65,000 words of a new draft.

I lost the drive at times. I curled up on the couch and watched House Hunters International. World of Warcraft Trivial Achievement Addiction claimed far too many weekends. I sent my critique buddy dozens of emails, all Baroque Theme and Variations on I m a failure! But I wrote, if not every day, then at least every week.

Then in November, I wrote 50,000 more words for a new story.

I m learning to write, early and often. 2010 taught me this. 2011 will be the year of finishing what I begin. Of moving beyond the draft and into the query. I like Erin Doland s approach to New Year s Resolutions (though to resolve to do something is the surest way to wreck your resolve) she breaks everything into four quarters, little milestones for progress. So I ll join her in putting my scary, desperate, optimistic, wonderful plan out here for dog and country to see.

Writing
UNDER A DEAD MOON: Complete Draft 3 in Q1
UNTITLED YA NOVEL 1: Write Draft 1 in Q2/Q3
UNDER A DEAD MOON SEQUEL or UNTITLED YA NOVEL 2: Write Draft 1 for NaNoWriMo 11

Editing
UNDER A DEAD MOON: Complete revisions in Q2
GHOSTS OF GRIMLEY: Revise, start to finish, in Q2/Q3

Submissions
UNDER A DEAD MOON: Have out on submissions by 01 Jul 2011
GHOSTS OF GRIMLEY: Have out on submissions by 31 Dec 2011

You know. Not to be too ambitious or anything.

What successes do you hope to build on in 2011? What secret dreams will you finally face head-on?