Liz's Road to Publication Through Comma Rules

Happy Monday y'all...

today I have the awesome Liz Reinhardt from Team Unpubbed over for a guest post, where she will tell you all about her journey to self-publication, WHILE teaching you where the hell to place your commas...... seriously? she is freaking awesome and funny as hell (not that hell is funny, unless of course there are people like Liz there, not that Liz would go to hell, nope, like me she already has her ticket to Heaven.. and as you might notice, I use commas, every, other, word... oh, forgive me, Liz, this is like comma hell.. yikes)

also, when you are done reading this post of brilliance, go read Abby's blog "Something to Write About"

where I guest post about story structure :)

My lovely friend Cristina invited me to guest blog (okay, I totally begged her!), and she discovered that I was once a grammar teacher. Which makes me nervous to write this, because now the gauntlet has been thrown, and I will be under enormous pressure to produce a perfectly written post!

So I will, Buddha-like, accept that it's just not possible to be perfect and rely on your infinite understanding as I slog through. And also, please don't run screaming, because I promise I will try very hard to NOT be boring and will endeavor to tell my story and teach about commas as best I can! (And if you HATE comma rules, just read the bullet points and the captions!)

So here is the story of how I came to write Double Clutch (available for Nook and Kindle!) told through comma rules.

Woot! Come and look inside! I promise there are tons of awesome commas in here!!

Comma Rule # 1 When you make a list of three or more things with one conjunction (and/or/but), use a comma after each thing except the last.

OR

When you need to organize all the things that make life difficult, unbearable, depressing, or insane, commas are your go-to punctuation!

• Ten years ago I started writing romances, historicals, and adult contemporary fiction. But I lackcommon sense about grownup relationships, the ability to resist a fart joke, and the hands-on experience to world-build an oil tycoon's daily life and was wildly unsuccessful in my attempts!

This was what I started writing...but I missed lockers, prom, first kisses, and snow days! What can I say? I'm sixteen at heart!

(Okay, that rule was easy, fun, and simple!)

Comma Rule # 2 Parenthetic thoughts go between commas.

OR

Those side blurbs you blurb out when you should probably just shut up and be concise...you should put those between a set of commas so people can follow your crazy train of a sentence.

A parenthetic thought is one that is separate from the rest of your sentence. You could take it out and the rest of the sentence would flow nicely. If you read it in a rush without the commas, the sentence would sound odd.

• In early 2008, when I quit the teaching job that was sucking the life out of me to stay home with my young daughter, I found there was only so much Dora the Explorer any adult could watch without getting the theme song stuck permanently in her head while she drowned in a slow swirl of insanity.

• It was during this strange transition time that my first YA contemporary, Double Clutch, crashed out of me! I spent hours typing, revising, muttering, forgetting to cook dinners, putting on just one more episode of Dora, ignoring my husband for the most part, and typing some more because I wanted to finish Brenna, Jake, and Saxon's story so much!

So this is basically what I was like...but I'm not a spiky-haired juvenile delinquent. And I wrote on a laptop. And the assignment wasn't forced on me. And I don't have an imaginary pet tiger. Okay, so maybe not like me at all!

Comma Rule # 3 A comma goes before any conjunction introducing an independent clause.

OR

As tempting at it might be, you can't just take a break whenever you want to. Sometimes all you get is one measly conjunction, and it doesn't care if you haven't showered, eaten, or peed in three days. Like a toddler, it just wants MORE fingerpaint and MORE cookies and MORE of your sanity! You only get a break when there is a completely finished task behind you and a completely finished task before you. Otherwise, you just need to schlep through with you damn conjunction and no break in site!

This one seems tricky, but I swear it's not! 1) Find your conjunction (and/or/but). 2) Read the piece of sentence on each side of the conjunction. 3) If each side could stand as its own sentence, no problem, you ADD a comma before the conjunction. BUT if one side would be a fragment (or if both sides would be fragments) just use the conjunction, no comma!

• I wrote a million query letters, and many nice agents responded with good advice, compliments, or polite 'no thank yous.'

(You DO use a comma here because there could be two complete sentences: 'I wrote a million query letters. Many nice agents responded with good advice, compliments, or polite 'no thank yous.' Each one works nicely on it's own! If I want them together, I have to use a comma AND a conjunction together.)

• I had collected one hundred rejections for Double Clutch, and I wanted to give up but knew the book was too cool for that!

(You DO use a comma to separate the first two thoughts. Why NO COMMA after the but? Let's look at what comes before it: 'I wanted to give up.' Okay, that's a full sentence. What about what comes after? 'Knew the book was too cool for that!' Who knew? What knew? AHH! This is a fragment, so we follow the rules and let the conjunction do all the work! NO COMMA there!)

Ouch! They hurt! All one hundred odd rejections. But I learned a ton and came in contact with some of the industry greats...who told me they liked me stuff! Woohoo!

Comma Rule # 4 Don't use commas to splice!

OR

Splicing is like trying to tape up your party dress with masking tape because you split the seam because you may have gained just a tiny bit gorging on cookie dough all summer. Maybe. It seems like an easy fix, but you need something stronger. Like a needle and thread. Or willpower. (Those stronger things, grammatically, are semi-colons and periods. In the real world, they're just a pain in the ass!)

(Splicing is when you cram two independent clauses together and stick a comma in the middle. You can put two independent clauses together, but you need a conjunction(and/but/or) with your comma!)

You can't really show a correct way to to this, so I'll just show the wrong way!

• I wanted to be published, my book went on sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble!

AHHH! Don't just mush two complete thoughts together! Let them breathe! Give them a nice period. Or even a semi-colon! A comma is just a pause, not an out and out stop.

So....

• I wanted to be published, and my book went on sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble!

OR

• I wanted to be published. My book went on sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble!

That's right! I got a bottle of wine, my husband made some brownies, and I ordered a whole bunch of new books! NERD PARTY!!

Well, it wasn't quite that easy! Technically I wrote, rewrote, sent it out to betas and critiquers, edited, got a cover designer, formatted, edited again, and put it up! But, those are all the boring parts! And the book is doing well, and I feel fantastic about it! One girl I swear I don't know wrote to tell me that she DREAMED ABOUT SAXON (a very hot character in my book)! How freaking cool is that?!

So I invite you to check out my book if you'd like to read a good YA contemporary romance! It's nice and long and angsty and funny, and it has tremendously cool commas all over! The characters rock, there's lots of action and kissing and more kissing...I'll just give you the link to Amazon and to Barnes and Noble so you can check it out if you like! And you can check out my blog at elizabethreinhardt.blogspot.com if you want a more complete story of my journey to self-publication! Thank you so much, Cristina! I have loved snatching some of the sanity from your blog!