Working On Me

If you've spent much time reading blogs recently, you'll have encountered the retro word processing phenomenon. Word's complications distract from the pure business of writing. First the Mac user, then those of us with PCs found tools available on the web that would give us a significantly downgraded WP experience: green text on black, no toolbars and no fancy options at all.

There is now a cross-platform way to try this approach on line without downloading anything. Why not see if it helps you focus on just the words.

Most of us don't think twice about buying magazines or sweets on a whim when we're out and about or travelling to and from work. There is money in our pockets or purses and we simply spend it. Each of these little purchases seems insignificant, but the cost mounts up over time. If you buy a £3 magazine even once a week and a 50p chocolate bar twice a week that's over £250 in the space of a year, more than £20 a month that you hardly notice spending.

Over the space of a month, keep a record of your incidental spending, and consider the impact over a year. Decide how much you want to limit yourself to for this kind of spending, and set a monthly or weekly budget for this purpose. Place the cash in an envelope or coin bag and spend only from this bag. When it's gone, it's gone.

I've been reading Where Did It All Go Right by Andrew Collins, a wonderful tale of a perfectly normal upbringing in the 1970s with little in the way of the trauma - real or imagined - that seems endemic to childhood memoirs these days.

The book is rich and vivid with detail. Friends' names, television programmes, full meals even are described seemingly effortlessly. I know that I couldn't dredge such details from my memory; the seven-year-old me is pretty much lost to me now. But Andrew Collins has an unfair advantage. He kept a diary throughout his childhood from the age of six. The early entries tend towards the brief:

Today I saw Star Trek on television and I went to Jeremy Skoyles's birthday but there wasn't any prizes.

These little notes, though are the keys that unlock the gates of memory. Although my own journal started rather more recently, I can read an entry from - say - three years ago, even a brief one, and instantly be back watching the events it describes. I can remember the events themselves and I can remember writing about them, some of my thinking about what to write and what to omit. This revisiting and review is the secret to improving long term memory. I'll always now be able to unlock my memory of events from my late thirties onwards, but I envy greatly Andrew Collins's ability to do so right back to the age of six.

Here is a pair of words often confused and widely misunderstood. The difference between the two is best illustrated by example. Consider these two sentences:

Cats that are black are unlucky

Cats, which are black, are unlucky

The first sentence uses 'that' correctly to restrict the subject. Not all cats are unlucky: only those that are black.

But the second example doesn't restrict. Effectively it says that all cats are unlucky and that all cats are black. The commas are a real help in parsing this sentence, because they point up the subordinate clause. Imagine hypens or brackets in place of those two commas. "Which are black" is clearly an aside, without which the sentence can stand alone quite happily.

Increasingly, though, you might be presented with this hybrid usage:

Cats which are black are unlucky

Note the lack of commas. Although the use of "which" ought to position the blackness as subordinate and thus not restrict the subject, the intention may well have been so to restrict. If so, the writer has used "which" believing it to have the same effect as "that" of restricting the subject to only black cats. We know better, of course.

Let your imagination run wild and one day in your journal write about the day as though it were the best day you have ever experienced. Imagine the events and people that might have made it so good, then write about them. Don't feel bound by realism, either; if your best day requires you to meet someone who is dead or visit another planet, go for it. But aim for as many events and experiences as you can. Try to reflect in your writing on why these events, these people and conversations give you so much pleasure.

After a few days, re-read the entry and amid all the fantasy, see if there are some things in there you could realistically plan to do or get closer to. Journal how you plan to make them happen.

I've written about this before as part of a longer post on how apostrophes work. For me the daily misuse of "it's" probably represents the greatest grammatical irritant. And it is everywhere, even in the work of professional writers.

So, just a reminder. "It's" is a contraction of "it is" or sometimes "it has". That's it. There is no other usage. When you want to talk about ownership, about something that belongs to it, you use "its" - with no apostrophe. Here are some correct examples of usage of both forms:

It's not my fault

When it's good, art is a joy

It's been ages since I cried at a film

The cat licked its paws

Every career has its highs and lows, and it's unusual to be happy in your work absolutely all of the time

Here is another pair of frequently-confused words. 'Affect' is a transitive verb. This means it is something you do to something else. Examples of correct usage are:

The weather affected my sales of ice cream

There was a teacher's strike, but my son's class wasn't affected

Other factors can affect the result

Although 'effect' can be used as a verb (one can, for instance 'effect a change') it is more usually used as a noun, a thing. Here are some examples of it being used properly:

The effect of all these changes is significant

The effort involved determines the size of the effect

He was clearly suffering from the effects of his illness