By Laura Anderson (Laura gave us permission to share this) (thanks, Laura!)

1. Make the honest attempt not to utilize protracted, time-consuming and/or
overwrought phrasing when a diminutive word or two could be employed
to do the job equally well.

2. Your going to have to work on you’re use of homophones.

3. Eschew ampersand & abbreviations, etc.

4. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are often unnecessary.

5. Remember to never split an infinitive.

6. Contractions aren’t always appropriate.

7. Foreign words and phrases are not always apropos.

8. Sweeping generalizations are always false.

9. Eliminate quotations where possible. As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously
said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

10. Comparisons are often as bad as clichés.

11. Don’t be redundant repetitive, or say the same thing over and over again.

12. Be more or less specific.

13. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

14. Obscure analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

15. The passive voice is to be avoided.

16. Avoid clichés like the plague – they’re old hat.

17. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

18. Who need rhetorical questions?

19. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

20. Don’t never use a double negation.

21. capitalize each sentence and end it with punctuation

22. Every sentence a verb.

23. Verbs have to agree with its subject.

24.Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

25. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading that a great deal of
repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing your work.

26. A writer ought not to shift your point of view.

27. A preposition isn’t a good thing to end a sentence with.

28. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.

29. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!! It’s amateurish!!

30. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of ten
or more words, to their antecedents.

31. When dangling, avoid participles.

32. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Dig?

33. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns
in their writing.

34. Always pick on the correct idiom.

35. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.

36. About sentence fragments.

37. Don’t use commas, that aren’t necessary.

38. Its important to use apostrophe’s properly.

39. Check you hyphens in any multiple-word-phrase.

40. In letters compositions reports documents and things like that we use
commas to clarify a string of items.

41. Watch for irregular verbs which have creeped into our language.

42. Don’t write a run-on sentence you’ve got to punctuate it.

43. Slang and profanity such *ss.

44. u gotta no this aint a txt msg 2 ur bff.

45. Ellipses are unprofessional…almost always.

46. Only use specialty punctuation – like semi-colons, single quotations and
hyphens; if you’re absolutely sure you’re ‘doing it properly’.

47. Good working is worth you taking ownership of verbs.

48. Finish your thought because if you don’t.

49. Make sure and use the correct verb phrase if you’re going to try and
communicate.

50. Only use ‘that’ for clauses which restrict the focus of a sentence or which
supply essential meaning. Additional information, that doesn’t change the
meaning of the sentence, should be set apart with commas and use ‘which.’

When BSG began, i fell for starbuck as a femme superhero but needed the entire story to pan out before i declared the distinction. Lo and behold, with the finale of BSG: I have a new femme superhero.

I’ll try to be brief with this one….

A scene i can’t shake from the BSG finale is the one to which i feel the most connection. I think about this scene daily. I write about it in my diary. I actually did re-watch the scene and jot it down word for word, as it was nowhere to be found on any of the wiki quote databases. Without knowing why other bloggers and reviewers aren’t honing in on this scene, i can only imagine that we all connect to different stories. Maybe life is just this simple and this is mine. A toast to Starbuck, one of our new modern femme superheroes. the beautiful, strong and lonely swan song Kara Thrace, fierce enough in the end to remain true to the core of her being. Fearless enough to stay true to herself, to know who she was, to embrace challenge and stay true to her core. I will remember. I never forgot. Focusing on the what of Kara Thrace is the wrong angle. I suggest focusing on the how, who and why – I have found solace in my passion for her character. I am inspired by Kara Thrace as i am Beatrix Kiddo. Staying true to one’s self is not the popular path, but we carve our best futures by knowing who we are and honoring our core selves, even if lonely, challenging and painful. Starbuck’s jungian plight is the balance of light and dark.

I would rather be whole than good.

I am not afraid of who i am. I am not afraid of being alone. I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of disappearing. I am the breakfast club incarnate. I am the girl who makes snow from dandruff. Don’t you forget about me. As you walk on by. Will you call my name?

And thus, the scene from BSG which resonates with me more than any other moment in the entire finale:

LEE ADAMA: “youre tempting fate”
KARA THRACE: if i have a fate then it is set. and thinkin about it isn’t gonna make it happen any faster
LA: “flying when you’re thinking about dying isn’t a great way of doing business. you’re gonna get scared, you’re gonna start second guessing yourself”
KT: i’m not scared
LA: “BUT…you said you think about dying everytime you get into a cockpit”
KT: uh huh
LA: “welll…hello…”
KT: it doesn’t scare me Lee, that’s what you don’t get.
LA: “what, so it’s Kara Thrace: fearless warrior …right?”
KT: No. I know fear. And i get scared, just not in that way
LA: “so what does scare you?”

KT:
(pours drink)
(apologizes for pouring drink)

…being forgotten.

1.  creative outlet; expression
2. share music, literature, movies, tv, entertainment that i enjoy
3. in retrospect it feels like a published photo album, logging a snapshot of writing over time
4. it’s scary
5. sense of community with other bloggers
6. my friend christopher may made me do it
7. i learn from my blog (ex: using certain languages for design)
8. exercises writing skills or lack thereof
9. data. i love data.
10. pure and total enjoyment