The short answer…YES! I recently read a book where the punctuation was atrocious. There were several times I had to go back and re-read a sentence to figure out what the author was trying to say. I had to re-read all those sentences due to misplaced, or lack of, proper punctuation. Readers find this re-reading frustrating and may put down your book because of it. You don’t need to be an English teacher to know all the punctuation rules. It’s simply helpful to create a list of those rules and keep it handy for you to reference during your writing/editing process.

There are a lot of sites online where you can find charts of rules and also examples to help guide you. Homeschooling sites are great places to find all the rules for writing. They usually even have the rules all lined out for you on handy-dandy charts that you can download and save for free.

Follow this link to download several punctuation help charts http://www.lousywriter.com/free-visual-charts.php. This is just one of many sites.

I homeschool my children and when it came to teaching my son the importance of the comma, I used this little graphic I found online.



This may be silly, but it is truthful when it comes to our writing. Punctuation is very important and should not be overlooked thinking no one will notice or that it won’t make any difference to your story. It could make all the difference in the world.

If you are unsure of yourself and punctuation, find someone who can help you. Do you know an English teacher? Do you know a grammar Nazi that corrects everyone’s posts on Facebook? Do you know a fellow writer? Those are the people you want to ask for help if you need it.

Just don’t ignore your punctuation problems.

Have you ever felt like your writing was in a slump? Of course you have, if you’ve been writing for any length of time. I know I have more times than I can count.

What’s the cure?

I’m not sure there’s any perfect cure, but there is something that helps.

Stop writing.

“What?” you may be asking. “How can I write more by writing less?”

Often our writing gets in a slump because there is no new information coming into our brains. And sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes you need a change of scenery. Writing is a sedentary and lonely job. Get away from the house/office. If you work at home, seeing the same four walls all the time can kind of put a damper on your creativity and imagination. When you never see anything new, you won’t get new ideas.

Take a day trip somewhere: to a park or a lake, go shopping (but not in your town). People watch while you are out to get ideas for new characters.

You can take pen and paper with you, but don’t plan on doing a lot of writing. Plan on only taking notes. Take your camera if you wish to take pictures of new things and new places that could later provide scenery for your story.

Plan a vacation or even a long weekend to someplace new and different.

Listen to conversations people around you are having. Allow strangers to talk to you. For some reason, people feel the need to talk to me at the grocery store – and these are some strange people!

This is a conversation my friend overheard while she was at grocery store:

“Conversation between two late teen/20ish age girls. 
‘So, like, Christmas in July? Like, I don't have any money in, like, December. Like, where do we get a tree in July?!’ 
It continued...
‘Yeah, like, it's all sooo, like, confusing! A baby born in a stable. Like, not me! Why didn't they have, like, reservations?’

For just a moment, I thought we were on some hidden camera revival!

Can't make this stuff up, folks.”

There has to be a story or a character in that somewhere!

These things – new places, new people, new experiences – can give you new ideas. Every writer gets stagnant from time to time. Give yourself a little freedom to NOT write and suddenly you will have ideas to fill several notebooks.