Getting Into It

It is snowing like crazy here in Illinois, and here I am,cozy at home, writing up a storm. "Seer, Tyro, Fiend" is   in the hell-bent-for-election stage, pace increasing, tension increasing (I hope), and all the story threads coming together. Even that final confrontation scene I've been agonizing over . . . well, not really agonizing. Fact is, I haven't given it all that much thought as I develop all that leads up to it. But I did have an idea of how it should be resolved, and it ties in nicely with my dilemma over one of my characters being too perfect while not having enough of a role for another one. Yes (she chortles), it's all coming together.

Then there's the other segment of my writer's career--promotion. Kind of difficult to think about getting out there to sell, sell, sell in the midst of the biggest snow event the Midwest has seen all winter. I did rewrite and fund my Google ads this morning, and maybe I'll take another look at my Goodreads ads. I still wish I knew exactly how many sales are generated by my advertising dollars, but I doubt there's any way to know for certain. Now that I have more free time, I can do some web surfing for more venues.

Just on the spur of the moment, I had an idea for something to do on this blog. It draws inspiration from today's post by Arline Chase from Write Words with some observations about editing. The English language is riddled with words that sound alike but are spelled differently and mean entirely different things. I know I've been caught by them more times than I'd like to admit, and I've read works by other authors who have fallen prey to them too. So starting today, I'm going to include "Gotchas" in my posts. (Thanks for the inspiration, Arline!)

compliment/complement You pay someone a nice compliment. The icing is the complement of the cake. (Caught this one a couple of times in recent proofing tasks.)

peak/peek You climb a mountain peak. You peek under the bed before climbing into it. (Microsoft Word often gets this wrong!)

heroin/heroine The first is a drug, the second is a female hero. It's easy to miss the final "e" when it's needed. The following two sentences both make it through spell checker: He's keeping an eye on our heroin. He's keeping an eye on our heroine.

it's/its Contrary to conventional rules of English, "it's" is NOT the possessive form of "it" but a contraction of "it is." For something belonging to "it", the word is "its." (Oh, yeah. Microsoft Word gets this wrong, too.)