All About the Dew

2010-11-22T11:20:00.000-08:00

Books Reviewed Here!

If you are a Publisher, Publicist, Author or Dude off the Street with a good Southern book, one written by a Southerner or even just residing in the South, contact the Dew for a review!

dewonthekudzu@gmail.com

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Recently the Dew has received a few requests for a review of books in electronic form.

While the Dew itself is a product of the electronic age, Idgie is not. :)

At this time we will not be reviewing Ebooks.

Thank you.

2009-05-15T07:26:00.001-07:00

What is a writer?

This has always been a bone of contention between people with opinions.

Many believe that true writers sweat over their words, feel deep angst over every sentence. That they are only viable writers if they have no other interests, careers and nearly starve to death tapping out 2,000 words a day. The words must be deep, meaningful, full of mystery and knowledge.

This of course drives inexperienced writers to back off and and feel that they'll never be considered to be worthy of reading.

To this I say, "Bull."

Writing is pure enjoyment. It's expressions, dreams, memories, humor, desires and fears. It's free flowing thinking on paper. No writing should be labeled as too mundane, silly, odd or dumb.

We need our great historical novels, our short humor books, our love stories, our poems, our 3 paragraph stories.

All writing is important to someone, maybe a lot of someones. I personally wrote for years and really enjoyed those simple emails that came my way - "You made me laugh", "You made me cry", etc. No one ever said that I solved a mystery in life or wrote a great historical tome that would last for eons - but those simple notes made my day.

This is why I started the Dew, beyond having a positive showing of the South - to encourage writers from all experiences and levels of advancement to feel comfortable sharing their work.
I think novelists should be able to throw out a pithy, humour filled page long story if they want. I think someone that has never sent any writing out for publication before should listen to their adult child who says they write good stuff. I think a 20 year old who thinks they might just have something should give it a shot.

The Dew is here for everyone, including myself, and I hope to hear from all of you!

Idgie

2009-01-15T16:09:00.000-08:00

Why does the Dew spell Ya'll the way it does?

Sometimes I feel like this is "The Most Heated Language Discussion Out There"!(not really, but the amount of email I receive telling me I'm spelling Ya'll wrong is mindboggling.)

This has got to be one of the most contested words in the English language these days. The amusing part is I don't think it was even considered a word until a few years ago when Webster added it to the dictionary.

So here's the issue. It was always slang, and slang by it's nature, is spelled however that region says it. I grew up in Mississippi and have always spelled it ya'll. All my friends spell it that way. It could be because we didn't really say "you", we said "ya" so we spelled it that way.

Basically, everything I have read says that you spell it the way you do depending on your region and your accent. The "you" or "ya" have a lot to do with it.

I've checked definitions for it, and found 15,000 different answers.

I will say this, everyone can spell it how they want for all I care. I will not correct them. I will not even edit it in any article for the Dew if it's spelled differently than the way I spell it.

But I am awfully tired of receiving rude emails from total strangers telling me I'm incorrect. Here's the deal, you do it your way, and I'll do it mine! Sound good?