"Language is the only homeland." Czeslaw Milosz.

Is your meter running?

Meter is one of those words with several meanings. It's a measurement of size, though we spell it metre in Canada. It's a device like a parking meter, measuring time. It's also measurement of rhythm and pace. According to my Funk & Wagnalls dictionary, a meter is: "A measured rhythm constituting one of the chief characteristics of verse."

Meter isn't just for poetry. There is some form of poetry in our fiction and nonfiction writing. The words you choose, how you arrange them and how they sound when they come together, are all part of writing something people will want to read more of. Think about it.

Recently in the BackWash message boards PussNBoots, one of the Adult columnist's said:

"Every writer searches for their own "voice." The best way to find it is to write. Also, pay attention to the voices of writers you admire. Read their work out loud to hear the rhythm and meter. Listen to why they chose particular words."

I thought that was brilliant. Reading your work out loud is the best way to check it's meter, the rhythm of your words. That doesn't mean you need to make your writing longer or chop it down, just choose different words or arrange them differently. See how your words flow, does the rhythm change or get monotonous? Is it dramatic and fast paced when you write about action? Or are the sentences you use kind of long and clunky? Do you tend to start sentences with the same pattern or rhythm? Vary your sentence structure.

"Tom went to the market, at Guildwood, everyday" Could be "Everyday, Tom would go to Guildwood's market." Not great examples but you get the idea, I hope.

What are your words? The ones you always have to look up and check spelling or meanings? Looking at a book with "the most common mistakes in English usage" I found a couple of my own.

Accept and except.

These even sound about the same. Do you know which is which? When do you accept and when do you except?

Lay and lie.

For me it's really the word lay. A chicken lays eggs. Do people lay down or lie down?

Then, there are common mistakes I see myself. Not my own mistakes but those of others.

They're and there.

They're going to the park on the way there.

Your and you're.

You're going too fast your speed is too high.

Where and were.

Where were you?

A lot and alot.

Alot is not a word. It should always be a lot.

Do you know which is the principle and which is the Principal?

When is it better to further your efforts to go farther?

No doubt those aren't glowing examples of grammar but sometimes knowing how words fit in helps you remember which one you need at the time.

Other confused words are anything with double "0's". Choose chose, too to, loose lose and so on.

But my personal worst mistake is its and it's. I still can not keep them straight. Sometimes I get lazy and just type 'its' regardless of correctness.

I can stick up for my laziness by saying that's how language is built, it evolves from laziness and a need for better understanding in communication. But, I know in the case of 'its' I'm just being lazy when I should, or at least could, be checking my handy dandy dictionary.

There isn't much talk about writer's cramp any more. Writer's block is still around but the crampiness is becoming a thing of the past.

I wonder what writers, of the feather pen era, thought about when those newfangled typewriters came along? What changed for them, if they took up the new technology? What special skills were lost as the typewriter grew in popularity? Likely, there was some skill to dipping your pen into the inkwell just right, to avoid drips. There would have been skill involved in knowing when the ink on your page was dry enough to be handled.

I sometimes miss writing long hand. It's nice to feel the flow of my words smoothing over the page. Creating stylish swirls and tall towers from the alphabet is almost as much fun as making the letters into words. Pens are fun too. I've been writing with a couple of gel pens in unique colours. In the past I've experimented with various pens, Bics were my high school pen of choice. As I evolved my pen selection became whatever was on sale at the time. Still, I always preferred black ink.

My penmanship has taken a turn for the worst due to all my time on the keyboard. After a few minutes writing long hand my words become chicken scratchings, something even a doctor would struggle to decipher.

Will penmanship become a lost art? Will calligraphy just be something you do on the computer with fancy fonts? Then of course, I wonder what the next advance will bring. Will computers have their own turn at being obsolete?

I started reading "Guerrilla Marketing for Writers" yesterday. One thing that struck me as was this: "You can show your involvement with your fans by being cordial when you contact them, by being helpful to them, and by asking about them."

Almost no one does that any more in the great big, fast, condensed world of email. Yet, I think most people have felt short changed by some one sentence, abbreviated email reply. Why don't we show an interest in the people we email with? Especially if you are writing to someone who has shown an interest in you, or whatever you are selling. Is it so greatly time consuming? Is it too hard to write over the one sentence quota? Or do you really just not care?

The advice from the Guerrilla Marketers is good advice. You really can win people over if you show some interest in them. Maybe they have just read your book or something you wrote on a website. First of all, it's pretty amazing that you got feedback at all. Not may people bother to send a note. When you have the chance to reply to feedback, take it.

Make the most of the chance to connect with someone. Send them your promotional spiel, your upcoming books, articles and where you are writing online but also send them answers to their questions and some questions of your own. Give them a reason to write back, or at least remember you.

There is a lot of email flying around out there. Adding HTML and graphics isn't the best way to make yours stand out. Ordinary, old fashioned chit chat is free, takes up a lot less bandwidth and is far more impressive.