On rules, and breaking the hell out of them (and more on Blake Crouch)

(Just so you know, this post was started Monday. It is now Tuesday. THAT is my life.)

Friday night, I finished Blake Crouch's breakneck story, RUN. It's awesome. A review is coming post haste, as soon as I can find five spare minutes between editing photos and buying groceries. Likely tonight, part two of Castle isn't on (I have a rabid crush on Nathan Fillion), no one has a project due tomorrow, and I should be able to give the children enough Dimetapp to get them to fall asleep and stay asleep. (Children's Nyquil is pretty effective, too. Just sayin'...)

What I want to address now, however, separate from the proper review of Crouch's work, is the importance of rules when writing: learning the rules, understanding the rules, and then breaking said rules.

Here is a cursory list of rules UNrelated to writing that I have been fed randomly throughout life. Maybe you can relate to a few:

1. Don't stick a fork in a toaster that is plugged in.
2. Don't play golf during a lightning storm.
3. Always make sure to have at least one (1) tampon in one's purse at all times.
4. Use adverbs under threat of torture involving bamboo skewers and snake venom.
5. Never marry a man who, a week before the wedding (his second go-round at the altar, your first), tells you that he won't be a "real" cop until he's been married at least three times. Ummm...yeah.


In kindergarten (and possibly before if our parents didn't spend too much time at the golf club's Saturday-night Hit & Giggle with the concomitant hangover that lasts all day Sunday, sometimes into Monday), we learn the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. We learn the rules of coloring in the lines and taking turns on the slide (Andy McCarthy didn't learn these rules. He used to cut ALL the time. Jerk face.) Cough into the crook of your elbow instead of your cupped hand; wash after using the restroom (please tell me you learned this one); it is mean to kick animals (especially beagles).

As we advance in our academic careers, teachers outline the rules pertaining to proper use of verbs and adjectives and commas and semicolons. If the teachers are awesome, like so many of mine were, we are taught how to take those glorious parts of speech and form them into melodic, complete sentences. Even if we're writing about the life and times of the common garden slug, we can, if we follow the rules, craft genius. A slug can sound quite glamorous if you put the words in the correct order and jazz up your prose with some interesting editorial on the viscous quality of slug slime. The potential is there. It's up to you to give it life.

But herein lies the dilemma: we become slaves to the rules. We are so worried about violating Strunk & White or even my own version of the bible, the Chicago Manual of Style, that the rules get in the way of our voices. I've heard it enough times in the creative writing classes and programs I've been involved with that it deserves repeating: Learn the rules, and then learn how to break them. With style.

Blake Crouch is one such writer who has done just this. His writing style, his "voice," screams at the reader through the pages. The sentences are incomplete. (I'll bet Word had a field day with all the green underlining to alert the writer to fragments.) The thoughts spill into each other, sometimes with such force that you're not sure if you will be able to keep breathing through the rest of the page. By breaking the rule about forming complete sentences, Crouch establishes a killer pace and visceral tension throughout the entire story, so much so that the reader will experience a physical reaction, likely in the form of a pounding heart, as he/she reads on. THAT is exactly what he wanted to do. The broken rules in his work set the scene for a kick-ass, throat-clenching blitzkrieg that forces you to keep reading. I dare you to put it down. (You'll pick it back up again. The dishes can wait. Tell your kids to eat Cheerios for dinner. Milk's in the fridge...)

The first time I came across this style of writing, where the author intentionally employed broken or fragmented sentences, was with Annie Proulx in The Shipping News. I didn't finish the book for a year because it drove me mental, all the starting and stopping and incomplete thoughts. That was before I was willing, or ready, to accept the notion that just because there are rules out there, shoved in my mouth like a bit, I don't have to be a bite down so damn hard. Blake Crouch obviously knows the rules--dude's got lots of books out there and has co-written with some heavy hitters--and he's an expert at making those rules his bitch. He's not a slave to them; he commands the rules to fuel the adrenaline rush that soaks into every single page. It works. The only bummer thing about it is, you'll finish the book so fast, you're going to want more. (Don't worry. Crouch has an impressive roster of titles from which to feed your need.)

Some writers want to toy with convention in an effort to be avant garde, and sometimes it works. We had a hearty discussion in a writer's group back in '07 about the use of second person ("you") as the protagonist in a story. The only time I've ever seen this work was in Chuck Palahniuk's Diary. Loved that book. I tried to write a short story in second person. It sucked. Big time. But, hey, I gave it a go. I'd be interested to read other second-person attempts, if you know of any that won't make my eyes bleed after the first three sentences. (My story made my eyes bleed. I ruined what could have been a saucy little tale by trying to be all tricky and clever. Dumb me.)

Another writer who has toyed with convention, successfully, is Chris Cleave in Incendiary. The whole fantastic story is told in the form of a breathless, ranting letter to Osama bin Laden, in the voice of a woman who has lost her son and husband in a terrorist attack. I didn't know what to expect when I picked it up back in '06, though the early reviews glowed. I bawled by the end. It was incredibly powerful.

The point of all this: Turn off your inner editor. Pick up an ax and do a little chop-chop-chopping of the rules. See what happens. Just don't be like that douche I saw at a writers' conference once, the guy who stood up when it was his time to address the speaker and went off on how he didn't have the learn how to spell or form sentences because one day, we'd all be standing in line to read his bestseller and to breathe his air, simply because he was THAT much of a genius. Did I mention he was a douche?

Now, go write something. I have to edit pictures from my headshot sessions last weekend before I have parents chopping down my front door with their pick axes. I leave you with my dear duck Jovie and her best friend Zuzu enjoying a spot of coffee at Duckbucks.

On grammar, Blake Crouch's RUN, and birthing babies in multiple states/provinces

~Dirty Grammar Bite~

When writing numbers, particularly YEARS, this is how it goes:

~the 1980s (NO apostrophe. Common mistake = 1980's. Nope. Not good.)
~the '80s (Make sure that apostrophe is indeed an apostrophe and not a closing single quotation mark. Apostrophes are to be used any time you are abbreviating a number or even a word. In a contraction, the apostrophe takes the place of missing letters/numbers. Example: can't. The apostrophe stands in for the "n" and "o" in cannot. In the case of our example ("the '80s"), the apostrophe stands in for the "19" in the number. Capiche?)
~She is in her eighties. Or, She is 102.
~Street numbers (avenues, etc., inclusive) that are less than one hundred are spelled out: First Avenue, Ninety-fifth Street, but 120th Avenue.

When it comes to writing numerals in word format, there are going to be those folks who disagree with me, who follow AP and other styles. That's cool. I follow the Chicago Manual of Style like a slave, so don't crucify me if you like using numerals for everything over ten. I'm down with that. Whatever you decide to do, be consistent. That's most important. Oh, and the rules about the apostrophes and numbers still applies, no matter what. That's just basic grammar, babes.

While we're on the subject, I just had the conversation about comparative and superlative forms with still-at-home-under-the-weather MiddleBoy. I reminded him: fun, more fun, most fun (but funny, funnier, funniest). Make a note of it. (Apple ran an ad campaign here for the iPod. They used the word "funnest" in their posters. I almost cried, just because we don't need to perpetuate stupidity. It flourishes just fine on its own, thanks to the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, and Jersey Shore.)

OH, and just for the record: I got into a pissing match once (yes, a pissing match) on Facebook with a girl from high school about the comparative and superlative form for the word STUPID. (We didn't like each other in high school; we're not friends now. It was a pissing match hosted on someone else's wall. There is a reason why I've changed my name a few times...) STUPID can be either stupider/more stupid or stupidest/most stupid. They're both right. If you want proof, email me and I'll send you the relevant Chicago and Webster's passages.

Enough boring grammar. These things just come to me while I'm sitting at my desk, which is in the living room, while the kids' TV channel blares in the background (someone save me from the KidPop commercials...Justin Bieber is painful enough when he sings, let alone a bunch of tweens whose voices haven't cracked yet) or reading our small community newspaper or driving in the car and observing readerboards or thumbing through the magazines in my shink's waiting room. It sorta eats at me, the misuse of simple grammar. But I'm neurotic that way. I know I offend in my daily usage, but as punishment, I flog myself repeatedly with a mace, the spiked tips dipped in snake venom, just so I will be reminded to not re-offend during subsequent opportunities to communicate. Snake venom can really burn, especially when it's embedded in those fleshy holes left by the mace, but I'm growing more and more immune. It's a process.

In other news: I'm very excited. I get to review Blake Crouch's forthcoming RUN, which is described as such:

Picture this: A landscape of American genocide...

5  d a y s  a g o

A rash of bizarre murders swept the country…

Senseless.  Brutal.  Seemingly unconnected. 

A cop walked into a nursing home and unloaded his weapons on elderly and staff alike. 

A mass of school shootings. 

Prison riots of unprecedented brutality. 

Mind-boggling acts of violence in every state.

4  d a y s  a g o

The murders increased ten-fold…

3  d a y s  a g o

The President addressed the nation and begged for calm and peace…

2  d a y s  a g o

The killers began to mobilize…

Y e s t e r d a y

All the power went out…

T o n i g h t

They’re reading the names of those to be killed on the Emergency Broadcast System.  You are listening over the battery-powered radio on your kitchen table, and they’ve just read yours.

Your name is Jack Colclough.  You have a wife, a daughter, and a young son.  You live in Albuquerque , New Mexico . People are coming to your house to kill you and your family.  You don’t know why, but you don’t have time to think about that any more. 

You only have time to….

R U N

   
Doesn't that sound SWEET??? You know it does. And you know you're going to want to buy it. If it sucks, I'll definitely let you know. But Crouch has some killer street cred, lots of titles, and some important friends, so I'm sure it's going to be a breakneck read. I can't wait! (Doesn't hurt that I like his name. One of my kids has that name. It's a good name.)

Speaking of kids: I am the ONLY PERSON I KNOW who has had a baby in all three western U.S. states plus British Columbia. Vancouver, Washington, 1990 (first year of college + baby = umm, trouble...); Portland, Oregon, 1993; Tarzana, California, 2001 (Amy Brenneman from Private Practice had her baby in the room next to mine, six or so months ahead of me--I know--I was there the night she delivered 'cuz I worked in labor and delivery for a brief time. Yay for Random Tidbits You Don't Care About!); and New Westminster, B.C., in full view of the now-defunct/destroyed Labatt's Brewery, in 2004. (Canada loves beer!) I should get a medal for being so damn procreative and for diversifying not only the gene pool but for screwing up the genealogical efforts of my great-great-grandchildren. Ha ha ha...they're going to pull their finely groomed hair out trying to retrace the convoluted path of where their great-great grandparents came from. *giggles behind cupped hand*

Dudes, YESTERDAY I had thirty "likes" on my new Facebook page for my book, Sleight! If you haven't liked me yet, you totally should. It legitimizes my existence in ways I never thought possible. Yeah, so, I'm a mom and wife and stuff, but seriously? THIRTY people like me! (Well, if you subtract my husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, my best friend, and my daughter, then there are really only twenty-four people who like me, but whatevs. I'm so excited!) I will have lots of info forthcoming about the BOOK, the WEB SITE, the RELEASE DATES and FORMATS. Yeah. It's allllll good. This is really a fun way to pull myself out of bed every morning. 

It's Friday. I have to work this weekend on stuff other than words, which totally depresses me. Work sucks. Money should just come to be because I'm so dreadfully charming and adept with comma placement.

FUN TASK FOR THE DAY: Post your favorite (dirty) jokes in the comments section. I need a pick-me-up that doesn't involve a bottle opener or corkscrew.

Monotonous Monday

~Dirty Grammar Bite for Today~

I keep seeing/hearing this on TV and it makes me a little nutty. Less vs. fewer, from The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition (5.202):

"Reserve less for mass nouns, or amounts--for example, less salt, dirt, water. Reserve fewer for countable things--fewer people, calories, grocery items, suggestions. One easy guideline is to use less with singular nouns and fewer with plural nouns."

Currently, there are commercials running that promise "less cavities" and "less calories." Not. Don't believe 'em. They're liars. If they said "fewer cavities" and "fewer calories," then I might buy the products they're schilling. Otherwise, not so much. Faulty advertising practices probably means their products will give you cavities AND make you fat. That's bad.

Another thing I wanted to address: genre. People who read books know what they like. Some folks like fantasy, some like romance, others like thrillers, horror, action, or crime stuff. Some like it all, whereas other readers are fussy and will only read authors they know and trust. Lately, I've actually started talking about my book project, out loud, and I've found that explaining what the book is has proved challenging. Not everyone is a nerdy bookface. Not everyone understands what genre and target market means. And writers, like every other profession, often find themselves lobbing blobs of jargon about that perhaps they understand, at the inherent risk of alienating potential readers. It's fun to learn what stuff means, and when we know what we're saying and use said words properly in conversation, we feel as though we belong to something greater than ourselves, that we are a collective of creatives rather than individuals holed up in dank attics and slouched over desks in cluttered kitchens. But thrusting our industry-centric words around in an environment in which not everyone is a player in the business of words will not earn us friends. Or readers.

As such, today I will risk looking like a moron (I'm good at that) and provide a few definitions for folks who might not otherwise know better. There is the chance that I am the last person in the reading world to understand this stuff, and if that's true, then I apologize in advance for rambling about stuff you already are privy to. I've mentioned before...I'm a slow learner.

YA = young adult ... While not technically a genre but rather an age classification, YA books are geared toward an adolescent crowd, often featuring an adolescent protagonist facing those pesky coming-of-age conundrums, even as they relate to post-apocalyptic life (The Hunger Games) vampires and werewolves (Twilight), falling in love with one's guardian angel (Hush Hush), or trying to break every bone in one's body to deal with the pain of being a teenager (Break). When someone tells you they have written a YA novel, it doesn't mean it won't appeal to grown-ups. These are often referred to as "crossovers," i.e., young adults and adults enjoy the story, for better and for worse (look at Harry Potter--not just for youngsters!).

Urban fantasy = A sub-genre of fantasy. When thinking of fantasy, one might think of dragons and magicians and all those medieval elements. However, a true fantasy includes some element of magic and/or the supernatural in its setting, plot, and/or theme. As such, urban fantasy takes place in an urban environment, i.e., a city. The story can be set in any time in history, but the element of the city is an important one. FYI: Not all urban fantasy has vampires, werewolves, or dead people as part of the story. When my book began to take shape and I realized it would likely be labeled an urban fantasy secondary to the supernatural components of the story, I railed against it and tried to find a way to call it magical realism. Because that's what it feels like to me. It's set in modern times, in a fictional city in Washington State that could be Any Small Town, WA, and it lacks magic wands, shapeshifters, and vampires. Not that I have anything against all those marvelous things--but the market has been saturated with YA urban fantasy projects, and I, like so many other writers, wanted to find a way to stand out. Alas, it only has shades of magical realism but isn't quite smart enough to be definitively qualified as such. Bummer. I was feeling so sassy and intelligent there for a sec.

More on fantasy, pulled from the Fiction Database (http://www.fictiondb.com/genres.htm):

• Epic Fantasy (EF) -- themes of grand struggle against supernatural, evil forces. Generally set in alternate worlds
• Heroic Fantasy (HF) (Sword & Sorcery) -- swashbuckling heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. Tends to be set in pseudo-medieval settings
• Alternate history – Set on Earth with a different historical twist
• Dark Fantasy– Horror novels with a supernatural element

Paranormal = Just like it sounds. Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties (okay, maybe not the beasties part, but definitely otherworldly creatures, especially spirits, dead people who reanimate, and apparitions). Some of the definitions floating about online suggest that all paranormal stories are romantic at their core, otherwise known as paranormal romance. Twilight definitely fits this (I only use Twilight as an example because it's a widely consumed book). Bella the human + Edward the sparkly vampire = love and romance and hybrid vamp/human babies. HOWEVER, paranormal can be un-romantic. I don't know about you, but The Exorcist (a novel before it was a movie) didn't scream "love" to me. Unless you're kinky and into that sort of devil-love thing...

Cozy mysteries = I wanted to include this definition because until this weekend, I didn't know what the hell it meant. I'd heard it used, but I didn't know how to classify it or what books came from this sub-genre of mystery. Apparently, according to the Fiction Database, a cozy mystery is a whodunit in which there is "very little onstage violence, usually amateur sleuth." Oh, I feel so much better now. (No, I don't write cozy mysteries. Just for the record.)

Now that you've been bored to tears, if you want to read something funny (caveat: LOTS of swearing), check out Chuck Wendig's latest post about instilling sadness into the heart of your stories (http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/02/21/storytelling-and-the-art-of-sadness/). This guy is a comedy god. I bow, humbly, before his Terrible Mind.

Other than that...on the homefront: Middle Child is home sick with a headache and maybe the pukies (we're still waiting). Smallest Child and Only Daughter went to school (hurray!). Army Son is scheduled to deploy to Kandahar in/around two weeks from today. *Gulp* And I need a refill on my coffee. Congrats. You're now up to date on Shit You Didn't Really Care About.

xoxo

Jovie is a cowgirl.

Flu...in summer?

Second to the last week of school, one of the kindergartners shows up hacking his brains out. As often happens with the younger crowds, the communicability was, shall we say, considerable. Everyone got sick. Lucifer brought it home, shared it with Bueno, who shared it with Princess. By proxy, Dad got it, and because we breathe the same air for eight hours every night, I got it. Which is weird, 'cuz I rarely get it. I think this time I was the biggest baby, though, believe it or not, flat on my back for two whole days last week feeling super sorry for myself. But that was soooooome headache, dude, seriously.

Back in the saddle here, though, and catching up on all the crap I didn't pay attention to while I was whining away the hours. Watched The Eclipse (Ciaran Hinds, Aidan Quinn) as promised, and while it was good, it didn't make it for review this week. Wrote and submitted A Single Man for the ChicMom column (should be up sometime in the next few days), with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. I'll keep you in suspense and send you to the review itself before telling you if I loved it or not.

I've been watching so many friggin' movies lately--I do that when I'm stumped on a writing project, hoping it will provide inspiration. Managed to get hold of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo--terrific film, if you can handle the subtitles. I <3 Lisbeth Salander! Caught up with an oldie from 2002--Sam Rockwell in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind--if you haven't seen this, it's definitely worth picking up. Sam Rockwell is THE most underutilized actor in Hollywood, and certainly in the top three BEST actors out there. Dude is a chameleon. Coincidentally, we watched Moon last week, too, another Rockwell flick (we're on a Rockwell kick around here), and while the premise was a little weak, his acting is grade A.

I'm embarrassed to admit we watched Hot Tub Time Machine and laughed our asses off, but don't watch it with the kiddos around. LOTS of swearing and sex. I found myself blushing with my 16-year-old on the couch next to me. "Cover your ears, Princess!" If you were at all a John Cusack fan wayyyyy back in the '80s, you will get a chuckle out of HTTM. Ridiculous but good for a laugh.

Took the kiddos to see Despicable Me on Sunday. Great film. Tight writing, awesome comedy, even some terrific subliminal stuff tucked in for adult enjoyment. (Gru, the super-villain, played by Steve Carell, is walking into the Bank of Evil for a loan. The sign reads: BANK OF EVIL / Formerly Lehman Brothers. I laughed out LOUD and embarrassed my whole family. Seems I was the only one who caught it, which is understandable considering the average age in the theatre was probably, like, nine, but Lehman Bros., as you will recall, was the banking and investment firm that initiated the most recent global economic meltdown. Bank of Evil is right!) Fun film, adorable little kids to yank at those heart strings. We loved it.

For this week, there are so many titles to choose from (it IS DVD Tuesday today!) -- Chloe (Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried), The Greatest (Pierce Brosnan, Carey Mulligan, Susan Sarandon), Greenberg (Ben Stiller), 8: The Mormon Proposition (award-winning documentary I will NOT be missing!), and Our Family Wedding (America Ferrera, Forest Whitaker -- looks cute). I'm definitely going to need a bigger column. I should talk to my editor about that...

Again am entrenched in the waiting game, waiting to hear back from queries sent to agents. Had some bad news last week--these two messages literally arrived within 30 seconds of one another, no shit--a hard-core rejection from an agent I thought may have liked me, and news from my oldest child that he will be deploying to Afghanistan in Feb 2011. THAT was a rotten day. But move forward, I must, and the feedback I've had from a few early readers has been really positive. Really the only thing that has kept me going on this project at all. I love it so much, but what if no one else does? What if it ends up in the round file like so many other projects have? I've long passed that million-word benchmark the veterans tell us we have to write. I'm not a newbie. I just haven't ever tried to publish anything because I've been too...scared. Now I want into the game, but the game is being fickle. As hell.

That's the thing that people don't get--if you're a writer, it's expected that you just...write. That you have an endless supply of words. Perhaps for some writers, that's true, but for me, a raging perfectionist with OCD tendencies, every word has to be perfect. I obsess over every combination of letters I choose--too many adverbs (I HATE adverbs!)? Is that adjective necessary? Should that be past perfect or just past tense? What would Hemingway do here? Obviously the obsessive tendencies do not extend to the blog (lucky you!)--this is a different beast altogether. But when I look at recently published titles that have hit the Big Time with Great Fanfare and Giant Movie Deals, some of the writing is...subpar. I don't want to be that writer.

And don't feed me your line of BS that you write because it makes your heart sing. If you don't want to make money doing this, you're a fool. Or maybe your bank vault is already bursting its seams. Mine? Not so much. I write because it's like a cancer. I can't excise it from my body. It's just there, always has been. No matter how much I've ignored it in the past, it rears its ugly head and somehow makes me feel better. Like built-in heroin (though, I must admit, I've never tried heroin. Maybe like built-in Prozac?).

The heroes exist among us, in all genres of writing. And there are so many I love, I cannot even begin to bow low enough to present myself with adequate humility. Maybe if I crawled under the top layer of soil and groveled at their feet... For YA, JK Rowling is phenomenal, as is Meg Rosoff, old-school Judy Blume, my fave up-and-comer Hannah Moskowitz, Suzanne Collins. In fact, Collins' third book in the Hunger Games series (book 3 is called Mockingjay) comes out in August--I cannot WAIT. The Hunger Games is a raw piece of work, brilliantly crafted, genius idea. Lions Gate has optioned the film rights and a screenplay is in the works with novelist Collins at the helm. Fabulous! Yeah, get your hands on it if you haven't. It's pretty hard core stuff for a YA title.

But I digress. (Imagine that.) Bottom line is, if I don't have words, I ain't got nothin'. I want the words to lead to publication, to readership, to strong out-of-the-gate numbers, to consistency, to more work, to more books, to more built-in Prozac. I don't want to be a one-hit wonder, a one-trick pony. What's wrong with wanting it all?

I'm not your bitch, Mr. Adverb, sir...

I can't say anything funny because I'm sitting here with a clarifying mask on, feeling it suck the life out of the pores of my skin, and if I laugh or smile, the mask will crack. Is this what Botox feels like? (How can people inject that crap into their face? Don't they realize that Clostridium botulinum is, uh, super scary shit?)

I should be editing. I'm so stuck on adverbs--what is this hate/hate thing I've got going on with those little words that modify verbs? Why so much hate? Why do I tell anyone who will listen that one of *the* most popular contemporary writers in the world today loves her adverbs like she loves her three children? I mean, c'mon, who am I to judge when her books, stuffed with more adverbs than there are pine beetles in BC forests, have sold over 20 million copies worldwide? Why must I be stalked by nightmares of adverbs chasing me through dark alleys, their "-ly" endings threatening to undo the last shreds of my sanity?

Because adverbs = shoddy writing. A few are okay, but there are purists in this realm of books & such (and not just any folks but those with impressive writing creds and published books on shelves) who have cast adverbs out of their vocabularies and who argue "real" writers should endeavor to do the same.

But it's soooooo hard! Seriously! <---See what I mean?

I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi, although I sort of am. I just want to construct, and read, cohesive sentences that aren't entangled by unnecessary crap. Is that asking for too much?

And yet, as I sit here editing, the same 467 pages again, I am underlining too many adverbs. I feel less than worthy, like Steven Galloway would shake his head for spending all that time trying to make us better writers, and for me to run out and inject more "suddenly," "immediately," and "softly" into the work.

I made the mistake of getting too cheeky in a recent email exchange with a potential agent--I challenged her to find more than two typos in my entire manuscript (she asked for the MS; I didn't just willy-nilly send it to her, folks). I'm a copy editor--I'm good at finding boo-boos--though perhaps not. I've begun anew the process of trying to remove 35,000 words or so (not gonna happen) to make the first book more aligned with industry norms, and I've found more than two errors. Not typos, per se, but grammatical missteps. I'm so ashamed.

I have to go wash the mask off my face. It's bringing too much clarity.