My NaNoWriMo Word Count Widgets!

Wednesday 20 July 2011

You learn something new every day...

People (exactly which people, I'm not sure) say "Write about what you know".  That's all well and good, but we'd get some pretty boring books if that were the case.  So I take the above sentence to mean this:  Research what you want to write about so you don't sound like a complete idiot when describing a hospital procedure.

So today I've learnt about ECGs and where the different electrodes are positioned.  I vaguely remembered the positioning from the one or two times I had an ECG in the past, but I wanted to be sure.  Plus, where do you put a wrist electrode when your patient has a bandage on it?

I also read up on symptoms of panic attacks and heart attacks.  Having been lucky enough to have had neither, this part of my story is proving the hardest to write so far.  How can I describe something from Esme's POV when I don't know exactly what it feels like myself?  I hope I've managed....

I spent much of last night and this morning reading Stephen King On Writing.  The first half of the book is a little autobiography, which is interesting.  The second half is the advice on writing.  He uses the analogy of a tool-box with all it's different drawers and layers of tools....I have to ensure I have my own writing tool-box equipped.  Apparently an understanding of grammer is important...I hate grammer.  We were never taught it properly in school so I've never understood more than the very basics.  I get confused when people start talking about verbs, let alone adverbs. 

Luckily I found another book at my local library, another how not to guide.  It's called How not to write.  Simple guidelines for the grammatically perplexed, by Terence Denman.  Hopefully, by the end of the week, I will understand why it's wrong to Boldly go and why I shouldn't start so many sentences with But, And or Because. 

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