Wonderful post on why ‘was’ is not a crime.

[alex_beecroft]

I occasionally also froth at the mouth about this subject, and have crossed one publisher off my list of ‘people I will ever work with again’ because they tried to take my wases away. But I have been too lazy/ill informed to ever write a proper post about why using the verb ‘to be’ does not constitute passive voice, why you can’t just take it away without deforming the language – and why passive voice isn’t always such a terrible thing anyway.

Fortunately for my laziness, Patricia C Wrede has written her own post about it, and it is wonderful. Have a look at this:

Misunderstanding grammar

~

On other news, I am having a bad winter this year, despite the lightbox and the vitamin D. I just got the SAD sorted out when my hormones decided to pack it in. I’m still managing to do my 1000 words a day on The Pilgrims Tale, but I went to the doctor today to talk about HRT and this conversation sums up my current level of enthusiasm for life.

Dr: Are you enjoying anything in your life at the moment?

Me: No.

Dr: I see you’re a writer. Are you enjoying that?

Me: No.

(OTOneH, did he really have to ask the same question twice? The first answer clearly implies the second. OTOH, I may not be the easiest of patients to squeeze useful information from.)

Which is a way of saying that I may be blogging less frequently, or less lengthily for a while. If I’m going to make a point of carrying on doggedly with something I’m not enjoying, it’s going to be the writing rather than the talking. (Even if the talking is done via text.)

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

Comments

[sharpiefan]

I think this whole grammatical thing has come about because schools aren't teaching English grammar. They teach you certain things about the set texts, but they don't teach how the language we use every day actually works. (That this hinders kids when they move on to learning a foreign language, where they are taught the grammar, doesn't help anyone. Also, use of passive there? Perfectly acceptable... although not in Certain Circles, apparently.)

And you do what you need to do. We'll see you when we see you. *HUGS*

[alex_beecroft]

Yes, I really regret not having learned any English grammar at all. I don't even remember learning much grammar when I did French. If I hadn't done a year of Old English at uni, I don't think I'd know anything at all about how sentences fit together - and OE grammar is all word-endings, so it's not terribly applicable. Too much ignorance around, including my own.

Thanks for the hugs! I needed them :)

[elingregory]

*cuddles* Hormones, or lack of them, or radical changes in them, are a pain. But I'm cheered to hear that you're able to write more to The Pilgrim's Tale. Bloggers blog - storytellers make stories.

These posts are an education! I wasn't taught 'proper grammar' either. When I started learning French it didn't occur to me that English would have things like Present Perfect or Past Progressive as well.

[alex_beecroft]

I'm torn between resenting the fact that mere chemicals can have such an impact on my health and happiness, and being annoyed that - if we know that chemicals make such a difference - there aren't pills we can take to make us healthy and happy all the time. It just makes no sense that my body has apparently decided that what I really need at the moment is to be horribly tired and headachy for months on end. Where's the survival benefit in that? Or is it just that I'm now expendable? If so, I can't say that makes me feel any better about things either!

It sounds like you got the same 'progressive' education I did - which was all about encouraging the children to express themselves, and not about actually teaching them things. I wish I had learned some grammar at school, because nowadays when I try to read grammar books, my eyes glaze over as though it was maths, and none of it sinks in.