Why Am I Starting This?

Why am I starting a blog at 2 AM instead of sleeping the well earned rest of retirement? It's one of those nights when petty grievances have been gnawing at my vitals as if they were the weight of the world's problems. Maybe I should concentrate on just one to start with, and it is one of the most petty and annoying of them all.  Who knows, I might just become the female Andy Rooney!

I am a reader.  Always have been, as far back as I can remember.  When I was about ten, I spent the summer reading all the Perry Mason mysteries in the order they were published.  I'm not usually that compulsive, but when there is a series of books that follows a time line, it makes sense doesn't it?  In high school I met and fell madly in love with Jane Austen's people and stories. 

Those were certainly superbly crafted pieces; vignettes of their time, 1930's Los Angeles and the late 18th and early 19th century England.  Those and so many more books have served me for over 60 years now.  Mysteries, romances, history, comedy, just about anything was my joy.

What has happened to writing today? So many formula plots that I wonder if it's just that there are no new ones to be discovered.  Just like it was once thought that the Heavens contained no new surprises. I suppose I could live with that - each re-use of a plot or story has it's own tiny differences.  What does REALLY bother me though, is careless writing.  Not only grammar (and isn't that really the fault of badly educated teachers, more on that some time!) but the lack of basic research and editing that you find.  If you are spending almost $10 on a paperback that you will read in a day or two at the most, should you have to edit the thing for the author? 

Take the current crop of "Historical Romance Fiction."  While the writers have finally and thankfully gotten past the heroine who isn't even kissed until the wedding night, they have totally failed to do basic research on what, where, how and when of the times they write of.  I recently read one book where they talked of blueprints in 1812.  I just had to Google "blueprints" and found that they first were used, and the word coined, in the late 1840's.  And how hard is it to look up the proper usage of the titles  of the English nobility?  Debretts has a wonderful web site that lists the correct dates of the Kings (and Queens) of England, proper titles (a knight or baronet is Sir John Smith not Sir Smith) and forms of address. They will even answer questions on useage and if notes are taken and kept, it only has to be done once.

I told you this was going to be a petty rant on a petty subject, but I do feel so much better!  Maybe I can sleep now.