st louis « Robin Writes

We have a lot of stuff. A lot. Moving it is not fun at all—I know, been there, done that. Many times. We’ve been married 17 years and we’ve moved eight times, not counting a few hotels we stayed in while houses were being finished/made ready.

At the moment, we’re looking at building a tiny house, with some outside storage for things like supplies, weapons, fuel, tools, etc., and so we won’t be able to take much with us. Currently, we have an 1800+ square foot home, three-car garage (not as fancy as it sounds, we only put a car in it once), a shed, and a greenhouse.

That’s a lot of stuff.

Yes, we’ll have a storage shed on the property—my husband is a whiz at packing those—and I’m not going to get rid of any family pieces or heirlooms or all of the memorabilia. I have limits, after all.

And I’m not going to go crazy, either. We do have to live here for the next couple years, according to our plan, and we’d like to still enjoy it. Looking around the house, I can see a ton of stuff that we won’t take with us, or store, when the time comes:

Three desktop computers and one laptop—I’m not counting the kid’s stuff, ‘cause that’s his and he’ll take it off to college. Everything will go onto one computer, the newest one, although we may have upgraded by then, so . . . Point is, we don’t need that many! Most of the other equipment here in the office will stay, too, except: the bookcases.

Here’s where we get serious. Okay, *I* get serious—can I consolidate and make do with just three? Or maybe five . . . this is gonna be tough. Five of the bookcases in my office are ancient. Not antique, just old prefab furniture. Goodbye!

Let’s look at the living room: it’s L-shaped, with three main areas. And they’re pretty full. Hmm, let me think. Tiny house. Uh oh. Naturally, Grandma’s electric organ will come with us . . . and a couple things to sit on . . . this is really going to get interesting.

I mean, how do you get rid of things you’ve had in your house, like, forever? Some of these things I “inherited” from Mom. She always cracks a joke about déjà vu when she’s here, since it really does resemble her old place, with the tea cart, the curio cabinet, and some of my childhood furniture, kids’ stuff that we have here for the grandkids. Of course, part of this exercise will be thinking ahead: in two years, the grandkids will be 9, 6, and 5. Unless we have more by then . . .

Anyway, moving on: dining room, actually kinda/sorta part of the living room. Big table. Huh. No room for that. We’ll move in the old Ethan Allen table we use on the patio—also once my mom’s. But the china cabinet? Probably not. Antique sideboard? Definitely. Kitchen? Yikes.

I haven’t even mentioned the bedrooms or closets—most of the items in the garage and outbuildings will be going with us, of course, tools and such, but just for fun I looked up the dimensions of this house:

The living/dining area alone is 800 square feet. I’m trying to imagine everything put into that space and well, this is definitely going to be a challenge. Yeah, challenge. Might be the understatement of the century.

The point is that we’re going to SELL, SELL, SELL! Starting soon, more than likely. This is gonna take a while . . . First step, the garage. And in the spirit of that little adventure, here’s a link:

BOOKSTORE STARTER KIT

In case, you know, you want to be adventurous too!

There’s a big difference between errors and typos—the first is not knowing the correct from the incorrect, the second is making a simple mistake. How can you tell? Usually, if the incorrect usage is repetitive, that’s an error.

Kinda bothers me when people—writers—claim “typos” versus errors. Writing is a craft, one which you should continuously practice with the goal of becoming proficient. It’s very unprofessional to laugh off those errors and claim “oops, typo!”

Of course, “there, they’re, and their” are one of the most common, at least insofar as people complain about them, but *there* are a lot of others I see pretty often:

Leaving a space between the last word and the end punctuation, especially when using an exclamation mark.

Using “to” instead of “too,” as in “to much.” I always want to ask where “Much” is located.

This one, however, drives me absolutely insane: when introducing someone, you should NOT say “Here is the website for author, John Smith.” LOSE THAT COMMA! PLEASE! The correct way is “Here is the website for author John Smith.” Go ahead, read them both aloud—not allowed, for heaven’s sake—and be sure to pause at that comma.

Yep. There ya go.

Now, if you were to say, “. . . here is the website of the author, John Smith,” you’d be okay. “Author” is not a title, not an honorific like “doctor” or “minister” or whatever.

Also, don’t say “the Doctor” (unless, you know!), but rather “the doctor;” unless you’re using it as a title, “Dr. Smith.”

And finally, as a publisher, don’t send me query letters that capitalize words like “Author,” “Publisher,” and “Book.” You’ll go straight to the rejections folder.

I know I’ve harped on these things before, and I probably will again. But as a writer, have some pride, even in your social media posts. If a reader’s first impression is that you’re ignorant of basic writing, why would he want to buy an entire book full of errors?