I have been sooooo good. I haven’t ranted in a while. And this isn’t a full blown rant by any means.

I was shopping for books to read a few minutes ago and found a few things that made me wonder. When I say I’m not sure, I mean it. Maybe I’m all wrong here and I’m just being too picky. It’s happened before and I’ll be the first to admit it.

But when I saw a sentence that read like this, “Her feet climbed the steps,” I had to wonder whether or not the rest of “her” followed. Sereiously? Was this girl somehow detached from her feet? And wouldn’t it have made more sense to just keep it simple and write, “She climbed the steps.”

I don’t know what you would call this. I honestly don’t. I don’t think it’s overwriting, but it could be. But when I see things like this in published books, and I see publishers charging money for these books, I can’t help thinking maybe the pirates aren’t all that wrong about things when they say the quality of fiction isn’t what it used to be.

I realize mistakes happen. That’s understandable. But I read more sentences like this in the excerpt, and it wasn’t much better. And I honestly don’t know what to say about it.

“me and my twin brother” Judge Judy throws people out of court for grammar like this. And this wasn’t part of the dialogue, which I do think works, with dialogue, if the character isn’t well educated.

All I know is that if you read proven authors, like John Irving or Anne Tyler, and you get a sense of what they do and how they write, these things happen a lot less. There’s a reason why Irving and Tyler are considered the best. It didn’t happen with luck.