Stinking Commas

There are so many aspects in regard to writing that it's sometimes very difficult to make sure that you cross every t, dot every i and place every stinking comma in the right place. I am starting to hate those stinking commas.

Here's the situation, I have this site that I've recently joined...okay, not so recently, I joined it in January. It's called FanStory.com and this is a site for writers to post their work and get review from other writers. It does help in pointing out what the problem areas are in your own writer, but let's be honest shall we? It's mostly an ego booster for writers. You know, a consistent flow of wonderful sounding praise of how wonderful and a great story it is. Some is completely BS of course, but there are the times when someone actually offers up good and practical advice and/or reviews.

In the process of those helpful reviews I have found the one chink in my writing skills. Those stinking comma placements! I usually don't use enough of them apparently, or I use them in the wrong place. And it's surprising that this is my problem. I mean, I've known that grammar isn't my strong suit. Why? Well that's easy, being a military brat has made getting a steady influence of proper grammar at a consistent level. This is of course annoying.

Making it worse is that apparently, surprising, creative writing utilizes a different grammar set of rules than normal writing for e-mails, essays and other forms of written communication. What we learned in school was more than likely are APA or MFA. Oh no, Creative Writing and novels in general are checked with the Chicago Style Guide which is a set of very complicated, very annoying rules that incorporate a hell of a lot more rules.

Why the hell do novels have to hold to a stricter code of grammar????

Sigh, I know the reality is that I can' change it. All I can do is make sure that I learn it. In the meantime I think I'll continue to moan, groan and growl at those stinking commas and hope that the rules will eventually sink into my brain.