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Living with Typos and Errors in Writing

October 17, 2022

As it’s often said, if you want to discover a typo in your text, simply publish it; it will make itself visible immediately. The truth is, typos and other errors in writing are inevitable. They are a necessary evil. Should we fix them? Yes. Should we worry? No.

I see this with many processes. In photography, you get people agonizing over the sharpness of their lenses – going as far as wasting their time photographing diagrams. The miracle that is language – a living organism – has produced a fantastic word for such people: measurebator.

Also in music, there are people who worry over the most minute details – their strings, their pickups, and whether the fretboard is of this or that wood.

Do these matter?

Allow me to reply with my standard example: Slash sounds better with a Gibson Les Paul and a proper amp than with a Hello Kitty guitar and a toy amp. But not having a Gibson Les Paul is not the reason why I don’t sound like Slash.

Again: Yes, we should fix typos when we see them. But there are far more important things to worry about.

typos and errors in writing — This is one of my best photos. It’s technically flawed (for reasons beyond the scope of the post), but it serves its **artistic** purpose. Similarly with texts, typos, and other errors in writing are of course annoying, but not a deal breaker

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What Is Metatextuality: Examples and Purpose

August 29, 2022

Literature

book, creativity, fiction, literature, writing

“What is metatextuality?” There’s a question many students of literature ask. “How about intertextuality vs metatextuality?” is another valid question. Though some definitions can be offered, they are unnecessarily complicated, as we’ll see. Inevitably, the hapless student then comes back with a timid suggestion: “Can you just give me some metatextuality examples?”

This is precisely what I’ll be doing in this post. Funnily enough, I recently realized with some trepidation that metatextuality is a topic I haven’t properly examined in all these years Home for Fiction has been online. Except for one post on metatextuality in Dracula, there hasn’t been a proper analysis of this fascinating topic.

So let’s see what metatextuality is – with examples – what literary purpose it serves, and overall why we need to care, as readers and writers. Here’s a warning, however: As I often do, I will mention “official definitions” only to disregard them; I will present the established way of doing things, only to place it on the sacrificial pyre. After all, it’s about understanding metatextuality in practical terms, rather than repeating vague academic words.

metatextuality examples — Each novel exists not in a vacuum but as part of a larger ecosystem of words, ideas, and culture. Metatextuality is the way all these connect to one another.
(Image made with Mandelbulber; based on the Krzysztof Marczak collection – CC BY 4.0)

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A Literary Self-Assessment of my Work

July 11, 2022

Criticism, Fiction

book, criticism, fiction, literature, writing

I had a bit unorthodox idea: I thought to write a post featuring a literary self-assessment of my work. In particular, I wanted to self-critique all the novels I wrote in the past eight or so years.

This might sound like an incredibly arrogant thing to do, but you can also see it as a teaching point. As you might recall, authors are the sole authority of their work, so you might want to do something similar for your own novels, taking this post as an example.

A literary self-assessment of my work can show you how to do the same for yours, highlighting your evolution as a writer.

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