Last February, I was a participant at the San Francisco Writers Conference, where I met lots and lots of people, but three people in particular: Katharine “Kit” Kerr, Alex Tillson, and Clint Talbert. Though it would probably surprise at least two of them to hear it, all three of them led me to great epiphanies about my writing this year.

For a magical hour or two, Katharine, the wonderful Philippa Ballantine, and I got an opportunity to sit down together in the quiet presenters’ lounge and talk long and passionately about writing. Technically, we were planning out what we would cover in our panel on fantasy. After the panel ended, and because she had time before the next appearance on her schedule, I invited Kit, on a lark, to come and sit with me on the editor/author 10-minute consultations I was doing. The two of us sat and evaluated first-pages of a bunch of manuscripts, encouraged a bunch of nervous authors (perhaps more nervous, for finding her there — surprise!), and we found a great synergy and bond between us as we did so. She picked out things I agreed with completely but wouldn’t have caught at a glance. Between that chat and those sessions, I think I learned even more than our authors did.

Clint Talbert is a promising writer who has become a good friend. Months later, we were talking and I mentioned that I feel selfish when I write; I have a hard time taking time away from my other work, on other people’s manuscripts which have contracts and deadlines and things, to write something of my own. He reminded me that every writer, no matter what their other work is, faces the same problem. I knew that, as an editor and advice-giver, but I hadn’t internalized it until he said it to me. You just have to make time for yourself, and write, just like everybody else. And since then, I have.

It was August, and I was musing about how to turn a particular one of my short stories into a novel, when Alex Tillson gave me possibly the simplest and most profound piece of writing advice I’ve ever received. She said, “Look at the decisions your characters have had to make [in the short story]. What can happen now that would turn those choices into the worst decisions they could have possibly made?” And that was the answer. So simple, and so brilliant. That’s where the plot was hiding. And it’s helped me craft every story since.

“Low-hanging fruit” is a common metaphor you’ll hear in writing circles, in reference to coming up with ideas. The lowest-hanging fruit on any tree are the easiest ones to reach and therefore the ones that get picked first. For writers, the metaphor usually suggests that the ideas you come up with first, or most easily, are going to be ideas that other people have had.

I’ve often seen it recommended, when writing short stories targeted for anthologies with specific themes, that writers reject the first five ideas they come up with. As the thought process goes, these are going to be the most obvious, easiest choices — the “low-hanging fruit”; the story ideas that everyone else will think of, too.

But it’s also said that “low-hanging fruit is the low-hanging fruit of metaphor.” (In addition to sounding potentially, well… Follow the link.) It’s an easy metaphor to use; a simplified way to think about something that may not actually be so simple or straightforward.

People are different, and people’s minds work differently. We don’t all have the same likes and dislikes, and we don’t all follow the same trains of thought. It would be pretty boring if we did. So, I don’t entirely buy the low-hanging fruit analogy when it’s applied to story ideas. I don’t believe that all people are going to strike upon the same idea as easiest or most obvious. There are too many variables between individuals. Between general life experience, what you’ve read or seen recently, a personal association with the topic, one person’s low-hanging fruit is not necessarily the same as another’s.

I’ve read a lot of queries for novel-length manuscripts over the past three or four years. I’ve also looked at anthology submissions, and I’ve talked to other anthologists. Trends emerge in submissions. This fascinates me, because it’s not usually popular media or current events that seem to have influenced writers’ ideas. And the ideas I would think of as “most obvious” are not always the ones that are most represented.

When I target a story for a particular anthology, I do think about the approaches that I think other writers are most likely to take. But, there’s a flaw in this: Unless I seek out other writers who are preparing stories, and poll them, I have no idea what kinds of things a given topic will make other people think of. I have no way of knowing whether I’m avoiding the trend, or second-guessing myself right into the middle of it. Maybe everyone is avoiding that ripest, most obvious apple and going for the second-ripest one. Maybe the obvious one is what the editor wants; if no one else is going to go for it, maybe picking it would give you a better chance.

You see, I hope, how this line of thinking can work you into writers’ paralysis if you’re not careful.

If you’re submitting to a second (or later) volume of an anthology on a particular theme, you can read the stories in prior volumes to make sure that you don’t reinvent them. That will help somewhat; you’ll be able to see trends in the earlier stories and do something different. Sometimes editors will tell you what they don’t want to see. But that still doesn’t help you out against all the other people who’ll be submitting for the new volume right along with you.

My advice: pick the fruit that looks most appealing to you.

When Ed Greenwood and I approached writers about When the Hero Comes Home, I could almost always see it in their eyes — there would be a spark of an idea that came to mind instantly, when writers heard the theme; something within them instantly surfaced, inspired. When that happens for you, take that and nurture it; tease it out until it’s the best story, and best expression of the theme, that it can be. Think about what other writers might be reaching for, yes, but don’t let it be your consuming worry. Go with the idea that inspires you, that you can put your own personal spin on. It’s that spark of you, that twist of something different, that will make your story rise to the top, even if a dozen others attempt the same theme. If you don’t write what you feel, if you focus instead on trying to predict what will be original and what will trend, you risk boxing yourself into a corner where you can’t write anything at all, for fear it won’t be the right thing. Since you can’t know what other people are going to be writing, the most effective thing you can do is write your story in your way. Put your voice and heart into it.

When all the fruit is harvested and taken to market, no one will know the order in which it was picked.

NaNoWriMo is almost upon us. Writers everywhere are stretching fingers and sharpening pencils, saying farewell to loved ones and clearing schedules to accommodate large blocks of writing time.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to pen 50,000 words within the month of November. Your mission is to get to that word count. There are no rules on how you get there!

I was going to save these sneaky tricks for Halloween, but I thought I’d give you an early treat! Below, five tips absolutely guaranteed to inflate your word count. Follow these, and you’ll be speeding toward 50,000 in no time!

1. The two-word first name! By naming your heroine Penelope Ann instead of Penelope, you sneak in an extra word every time she’s mentioned.

2. Involve a foreign setting in your plot, so that characters can speak in their native language and then translate for the outsider — double the word count for the same amount of content. Bonus!
3. Get ornate with your place names. Two- (or more!) word places are common enough in our real world and in our fiction, so why not use them in your fiction. If your action takes place on a ship, remember that HMS counts as a word all by itself. Space stations are also naturals for multi-word names. And, not only can you have a multi-word place name, but you can add further signifiers to it, like North, South, New, Inner or Outer. As an added benefit, you might inadvertently end up creating a name whose abbreviation spells a word. Perhaps that word can become part of the flavor of the place. (It’s all chaos and disorder in Lower Arden Woods!)
4. Speak formally. Avoid contractions. Why turn two words into one if you don’t have to?
5. Titles, titles, titles. Like the two-word name, this adds an extra word or two every time your characters’ names are mentioned in dialogue or narrative. Combine a title with a two-word name for a triple play! (That’s Royal Cartographer Penelope Ann, to you!)

Are these tips really sound writing advice? I trust you to judge that for yourself. Will you have to go back and clean out most of this stuff later? Probably.

But hey, don’t worry about that now — National Novel Editing Month is months away!

–
This post originally ran on this blog in October, 2010, but reprinting it is going to become a tradition. If you have any similarly tongue-in-cheek tips, please submit them. I’ll add them next year, attributed. I’d love to repost this list every year and see it grow!

When I’ve spoken in the past about the kinds of freeform text-based fantasy roleplaying games that have been my creative writing fix for the last eight years or so, people have always looked at me funny. But now, perhaps the old-school virtual communities have gained a bit more cred with this past Friday’s New York Times article about Jim Butcher and Ambermush.

Steve Bornstein is one of those people I met on one of these text-based roleplaying games. Steve pointed the above article out to me, and yes. Lots of yes. Steve and I met in 2005, on a fantasy-themed shared world that I was helping to administrate at the time. We’ve been writing together ever since. He’s one of the writers who keeps me sharp, on my toes, and in practice, in addition to being one of my favorite people in the whole world. Steve has also just started blogging, and he’s got his own great post about online roleplaying as an unlikely writers’ resource, too. He’s been at it much longer than I have.

MUDs and MUCKs were the precursors to the modern MMORPG. They are text-based real-time writing forums, generally centered around a theme, though that theme can be as wide or narrow as the admins and players wish it to be; because the system doesn’t need to produce graphics to match the action, the only limit is the players’ imagination. The writing is fast-paced, and it requires cleverness and creativity, and adaptability above all. You have to be able to think on your feet and express yourself eloquently in order to get any enjoyment whatsoever out of it. Sometimes sessions are guided by a game master, but sometimes it’s more casual and less structured, and the players themselves control the action. It can be giant game of narrative chess — a session can be competitive storytelling, outthinking your opponent. Sometimes it’s synergy and chemistry, working with someone to create something fantastic out of a blank screen.

It’s a much more dynamic form of writing, because the story isn’t under your complete control. You can try to guide the action, but you have no idea where the next player’s next turn is going to take it. It’s like being a kid again and playing make-believe in the backyard, except that your backyard is limitless in size and props, and your neighborhood is the entire internet.

And no, I’m not going to tell you where I play these days…But I encourage you to go out and get immersed in your own collaborative world.

I’m about halfway through my next short story, and I was planning to write a post about the writing process today. Then I read J.M. Frey‘s latest blog post about her writing process, and I’ve changed my mind. You should go over to her blog and read that one instead.

Unhooking – at JMFrey.net

If you want to talk some more about process, read Jay Lake’s recent posts on the subject, here and then here.

If you’re still here, here are couple random things I’ve learned about myself and my writing: I like having a beta reader peek once I’m done with the first scene, to make sure that I’m hitting the emotional note that I want the story to hit. Then, once I feel like I’m on target, I’m okay not sharing until it’s done. I’m confident about my spelling and worldbuilding and things like that, but I ask readers to spot me on emotional tone and on whether enough is at stake. I outline carefully, but my outlines are always full of questions. They’re flowcharts and forks in the road and decision points, and it isn’t until I start down the road that I know which choice is the better one to take.

If you’re friends with an aspiring writer, what’s the best thing you can do to be supportive for them?

At the Pub-Pourri (publishing potpourri) Writer’s Symposium panel at Gen Con, someone asked this question. I thought it was a great one, and I wanted to share some of the answers that the rest of the panel and I came up with:

If you’re asked to offer a critique, give an honest one.

Sparing a friend’s feelings seems like the friendly thing to do, but if you know a friend has a long way to go, or the story falls apart in the middle, or it’s just not your thing, the kindest thing you can do is to say so. If your friend had a rip in the back of his slacks, it wouldn’t be a kindness to keep quiet about it if he was about to walk into a job interview that way. The greater kindness would be giving him the feedback that would allow him the opportunity to make a stronger impression when it counts. False praise doesn’t provide any avenue for improvement. On the same token, don’t feel you have to nitpick and give criticism you don’t mean, just to have something to say! We trust our friends, so your honesty is the most valuable thing you can give, even when it’s hard.

If you’re not asked to offer a critique, don’t give one.

Sometimes, there are quiet moments when writers just need to collect themselves; when it needs to be about us, not our manuscripts. Offering a critique and being in someone’s group of first readers isn’t the only way to be supportive. If someone isn’t ready to show you their work yet, respect that and be patient. It’s okay to express interest in seeing it, but be aware of the difference between interest and pressure. There’s a difference between “Hey, how’s the manuscript coming?” and “Why can’t I see it yet?”

Give writers time and space to write.

Writing takes time, and sometimes that means taking time away from other things that take time. The opportunity to carve out some writing time may occasionally conflict with opportunities to go out and be sociable. A writer may feel bad about turning down a chance to go out to eat, or to a movie or event, but it may be the only time they have to get a decent chunk of writing done. They’ll never get anywhere as a writer if they don’t have a finished product to publish, so be supportive of their drive to actually do that writing…even if it means you get to see them a little less.

Be encouraging and supportive of the little milestones, and the big ones.

While many writers have already walked this path and survived, it’s scary to set foot on it for the first time. If you’re impatient with someone’s nervousness over something that doesn’t seem like a big deal, or jealous and bitter about their little successes, they’ll pick up on it and they’ll stop sharing those little things with people who (they feel) don’t want to hear them. You can encourage writers a great deal just by making us feel like we have people to share our news with.

Guest blogger Richard Lee Byers is the author of over thirty fantasy and horror novels, including a number set in the Forgotten Realms universe. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.

—
Five Truths About Publishing That Nobody Ever Told Me

Gabrielle suggested this topic when we discussed guest blogging on one another’s sites, and it’s a good one. Please be warned, though, that it may evoke a somewhat sardonic, cynical, or even bitter tone, because as you might expect, the stuff nobody tells you is often bad. So let me make two things clear before I start:

The first is that I actually like being a writer, and I’ve enjoyed many positive experiences and rewarding relationships over the course of my career.

The second is that your mileage may vary. In the world of publishing, people’s careers vary enormously, and in more ways than just how much money they make. It’s possible other writers will read what I’m writing here and not recognize anything that reflects events in their own professional endeavors. But I can only write based on my own experience, so here are my five truths, each learned the hard way:

1. Publishing is chaos.

Random, illogical things, things the writer has no control over, happen all the time. You submit a brilliant vampire novel just when the publisher has decided vampires are passé, and so it gets rejected. Or, the publisher has already acquired several vampire novels and thus won’t buy another no matter how great it is. Whole lines get cancelled, taking your projects into oblivion along with them. Literary agencies close. Submissions get mislaid and lie forgotten in closets and desk drawers for years on end. Magazines cease publication. Editors quit or get fired. Publishers go bankrupt or make radical changes like deciding that from now on, they won’t produce mass-market paperbacks anymore, only ebooks.

I think you get my drift, and as you read on, you’ll see that some of my other truths can be viewed as manifestations of this pervasive chaos.

Anyway, the flip side is that while it sometimes seems amazing that any writer ever manages to break in or achieve even modest success thereafter, occasionally, the randomness works for you. You submit your vampire novel just when the publisher has decided vampires are hot and is eager to acquire such a novel. A celebrity goes on Letterman and proclaims it the scariest story he ever read. Everything falls into place, and the book does great.

Therefore, the trick is to hang in there and keep honing your skills and your business acumen until the luck runs your way. It’s like poker. Over the long haul, every player catches some good cards. It’s your ability to make the most of those hands that determines whether you end up winning or losing money.

2. Publishing is cliquish.

Ultimately, publishing is about money. (I didn’t include that in my list of secret truths because people did in fact tell me when I was starting out.) If your books are tanking, rarely if ever will what you may have imagined to be a close personal relationship with your editor save you. At least, not unless you’ve got photos or video of just how close it actually got.

But where money isn’t the determining factor, cliques can be important as they were in high school. I once participated in a panel discussion moderated by an editor from a certain book line. She constantly addressed herself to the panelist who published with that same line and pretty much forgot that the lesser beings behind the table even existed. There are circles whose members talk one another up, review each other’s work, nominate one another for awards, and, when they wear their editor hats, buy one another’s stories. If you’re an outsider (and not a star writer whose name will attract readers), don’t hold your breath waiting for an invite when one of the insiders puts together an anthology.

Of course, this phenomenon isn’t unique to publishing. But in a field where the decision to solicit or buy a particular individual’s work is often highly subjective, it can exert a heck of a lot of influence.

Since there’s no getting around it, you might as well try to take advantage of it. Network. Join professional organizations. Make friends. Don’t do sleazy things like nominating somebody for an award just for the sake of sucking up, but short of that, get inside one or more of the cliques.

Or don’t, if, for whatever reason, you wince at the very thought of it. I’m not suggesting that you absolutely must belong to a clique to succeed. But it’s one way of improving your odds.

3. Editors and publishers hold writers to a high standard of professionalism. They don’t always hold themselves to an equally high standard.

Again, I feel the need to emphasize that I’m not talking about everybody. I’ve had plenty of editors who were 100% professional and a joy to work with him. My current publisher is never late with an advance or royalty payment.

But alas, that’s not everybody. Some editors and publishers will sit on a submission for months or years on end. If it’s a solicited submission, that’s abusive. If it’s unsolicited, it’s arguably less so, but still a shoddy practice. Boilerplate contracts often contain clauses designed to screw the writer. Many publishers delay payment because while they hang onto your money, it’s earning interest for them instead of doing something unimportant like paying your rent. Royalty statements are sometimes maddeningly cryptic, by intent and to facilitate paying you less than is actually due.

And as near as I can make out, pretty much everyone on the inside accepts that that’s just the way it is. Depending on your standing, you (or your agent) may succeed in negotiating a fairer contract or obtaining better treatment in other respects. But I’m not aware of any growing industry-wide sentiment that it’s time to stop abusing and exploiting anybody, be he wannabe, first-timer, mid-list writer, or superstar. (If I’m wrong about that, I would love for someone to set me straight.)

The differing standards for writers on one hand and editors and publishers on the other help to shape my next truth:

4. It’s always the writer’s fault.

A while back, I wrote a novel for a certain fantasy franchise. The books in this series always have cool action-packed cover illustrations of monsters, armored warriors, frenzied combat, and stuff like that. Except, not quite always. The cover on my effort shows a book, a piece of paper, and a hammer lying on a tabletop.

Despite being written with care and enthusiasm, my book performed poorly compared to the average book in the line. And it eventually became clear to me that I was considered to blame.

Of course, dull covers are only one of the things that can go wrong. Let’s imagine the worst-case scenario. You write a novel. The editor unilaterally makes stupid changes and never even gives you a chance to review them. The art director slaps a truly bad cover on the project, an ugly painting that was lying around in inventory and not even commissioned for your story. The print run is so small that even if the publisher sells every single copy, the novel can’t rack up impressive numbers or even earn back its advance.

Then, the book goes unadvertised. The publisher doesn’t send out review copies. The sales force doesn’t push it. One of the big chain bookstores closes half its outlets a week before the release date. In the end, the work only sells a few copies.

Guess what? It’s still your fault. Why wouldn’t it be? Why would the editor or anybody else who actually works at the publisher take the heat when he can blame you instead?

The impact of this can be twofold. Once you’ve been branded as a writer whose work doesn’t sell, the publisher may decide to offer you poorer contracts or drop you altogether. And bookstores may decide or order fewer copies of your next book. Which may depress your sales even further and send your career into a downward spiral.

Just as it’s always the writer’s fault when things go wrong, there’s a related belief that it’s always his responsibility to make them go right. As budget-conscious publishers do less and less to promote the average book, there’s an assumption that writers should take up the slack, and never mind whether you have the funds, time, or skills to do it effectively. When an editor doesn’t send you notes on the initial draft of a novel until a week before the contract says the revised version is due, you’re supposed to suck it up, crank out the rewrite at high speed, and keep the project on schedule. Why not? It’s not like you’ve got a life or a day job, right?

5. Editors don’t like to say no or break promises.

Not once they’ve worked with you, anyway, and especially not face to face.

This sounds like it ought to work in your favor, but in my experience, it doesn’t. Because editors who know you actually will reject work and renege on verbal commitments. It’s just that some of them are loath to come right out and say they’re doing it. Instead, they’d rather stall, obfuscate, and wait for you to figure it out.

At a convention, I once pitched a trilogy to an editor who bought it on the spot. Or rather, he said he was buying it. After we both got home, I attempted to follow up in emails. He equivocated for a couple months until it became clear that he’d decided he didn’t want the books after all and was never going to send me a contract.

I already mentioned my novel with the lackluster cover. After it came out, I wrote to the editor about doing another book for the same franchise. She encouraged me to send one pitch after another, and in due course, she shot down each of them. Meanwhile, I found myself waiting longer and longer for replies to my messages. Eventually, it became clear that she didn’t actually want a second book. She wanted me to get discouraged, shut up, and go away.

The problem in such situations isn’t rejection. Everyone gets rejected. The problem was that I wasted time and effort I could have invested elsewhere because the editors weren’t straight with me. I’ve never really understood why. They had to keep up their ends of the pointless strings of messages, so they wasted their own time, too. Go figure.

—

Anyway, there you have my five secret truths. I hope it hasn’t put anyone off being a professional writer. As I said at the start, I like being a writer. I just don’t like it all the time, and now you know the reasons why.

Before you stop reading, may I indulge in a bit of self-promotion? I recently published The Q Word and Other Stories, an ebook collection of some of my best short fiction. You can buy it for the Kindle here.

And you can buy it for all platforms here.

The Spectral Blaze, my new Forgotten Realms novel, comes out June 7th. You can buy it and all my other novels here.

Just a brief cautionary tale today.

Lately I’ve been trying to improve the work-productivity of my iPad. It’s a nifty thing for reading and for watching Netflix, but I want to be able to do work on it too. I want it to replace my netbook when I travel. It can’t completely take over until someone develops a word processing app with “track changes,” but copyediting isn’t the only thing I do.

To that end, I’ve been writing on it. I have a bluetooth keyboard that works pretty well. The return key is right where my pinky expects the apostrophe to be, but that’s muscle memory training more than anything else. That can be overcome.

When I write, I often use placeholders for names. I wait until the characters are developed enough to tell me what their names are, or at least what characteristics their names should have. I’ve written several stories where I’ve gotten away with not naming characters at all, but unfortunately that’s not always possible.

I go for the simplest of placeholder names: A, B, C…and so on.

However. This turns out not to have been the smartest strategy for writing on the iPad. Because now, after two full stories about A and A’s life, my iPad has taught itself to correct as to a’s.

Doh.

(I know a woman named A, actually. She is very cool, and you should hang out with her if you get a chance. Her name was meant to be a placeholder, too. So I guess the other lesson here is not to use A as a placeholder name because it might stick. In fiction or real life.)

So. Now my placeholders will be B, C, D…and so on, and not letters whose possessive forms are actual (and more common) words.

Just be aware: no matter what placeholder strings you like to use in your own writing, this could happen to you.

Thank you, predictive text technology!

Writer’s inertia is one of the big issues I face when I seek to set down a story. It’s not to be confused with writer’s block — I have the idea, I know exactly where it’s going…and in a way, that’s exactly the problem.

I write really solidly at first: I establish the set-up, get all the little pieces aligned, follow the roller coaster’s climb up the steep hill…and then I stop at the top.

It’s supposed to be a little pause to catch my breath, but it turns into a longer and longer pause, like I’ve stopped to appreciate the view.

It may be, as I was discussing with a writer and friend last night, that once I can see the rest of the story laid out before me and I know exactly how it’s going to end, I lose the drive to write the rest of it down. I know what happens, and on some level, that’s what’s satisfying to me.

However, if I’m intending to ever get a story published or otherwise share it with readers, I know that’s not enough. All the intentions and plans in the world won’t show someone what happens in the story if it’s not established on the page, and I know that.

So…how to get past the inertia and find the momentum again?

I like to tell writers that everyone’s got weaknesses in their writing, and the trick is in discovering and recognizing your weaknesses so that you can work around them. If you know there are certain words you always misspell, you’ll know to check your manuscript carefully for those words. If you know you have a trouble with evolving character names, you’ll know to check carefully to make sure that your characters don’t spontaneously rename themselves. And so on. I firmly believe that all problems that you-the-writer are self-aware of, are solvable problems. This one is no different.

There are a couple of tricks that I’ve developed to fight my writer’s inertia.

1. Stop writing in the middle, at a point where you know with certainty what’s coming next.

It’s intuitive to pause at the end of a section, or when you get to the end of what you’ve figured out. That’s too neat an ending for me. As difficult as it is, I try to only pause at points where I know exactly what happens next, with definite confidence. Places where, if I had to pause for a week, I could still come back to the file and know exactly what I meant and where I was going with it. That helps keep that forward momentum going. It’s much easier to start from a glide than from a dead stop.

This can mean stopping mid-chapter, mid-paragraph, or even (I know — it makes me twitch, too!) mid-sentence. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and if the rest of that sentence aches and rattles in your head for an hour, or a day, or a few days, it’s pretty unlikely that those few completing words will be alone when they come out onto the page. The words behind them will probably spill more easily, too.

2. Since I know how it’s all going to play out from here, there’s nothing stopping me from explaining it to someone else.

I can write a letter to a friend or a writing partner, in which I start to describe all the things that happen in the rest of the story. I go back and add detail. I add narrative and voice, and dialogue. Writing it out this way allows me to address the questions I have about the directions the story should take. I find that if I do so in such a stream-of-consciousness way, I’ll find myself providing the answers, too.

Before I know it, I’ve tricked myself into writing the part that wouldn’t come out. I can use that to get past my inertia, and if I’ve come up with some passages I like, I can snip the best of them right into my draft.

These are the methods I’ve found for getting myself back on the rails and finding the forward momentum to push through my inertia. Have you tried these tricks, or others? What works for you?

I was asked, in response to last week’s post, if I believe in the Oxford comma.

The Oxford comma, or serial comma, is the comma that sets off the “and” at the end of a list. It’s believed necessary for clarity by some, optional by others, and inefficient by yet others, and it’s one of the biggest debates you’ll see amongst writers, right after whether you should use one space or two after a period (answer: one) and whether self-publishing is a good idea.

The phrasing of the question is what particularly strikes me. Yes, I believe in the Oxford comma. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and have even used it. I know that it exists, and that it’s not just a myth invented to cover up for one of my parents dressing up in a comma suit and leaving punctuation under my pillow.

If the question was meant to be whether I use the Oxford comma, it depends. It’s the standard in fiction, which usually follows the Chicago Manual of Style. It’s discouraged in much non-fiction. So the answer is: sometimes. It depends on the style guide and needs of a particular publisher or project.

If the question was intended to ask whether I prefer the Oxford comma, the answer is yes. I prefer the disambiguation of it, and I just think it makes a sentence look more balanced and parallel if all items in a list, including the next-to-last, are treated the same way.

I’ll direct the interested reader to Wikipedia for more information. The examples listed there are clear, illustrative, and entertaining.