If you want to get good at something, you do it correctly, over and over. For writing there's no substitute for having written a lot.

Writing on deadline is even better. You do one draft, and it's correct the first time. And you do it several times a day, five days a week. In a year you won't recognize what you used to write. The best, most accurate communicators I know had crap jobs for small/mid-sized newspapers at some point in their careers -- three five-paragraph stories per day by 4 p.m., every day.

It's also a great place to work under a good editor, which means s/he has a command of grammar you can only imagine at, and is utterly without mercy. You will write better to avoid the chopping block, and you will learn there is nothing inherently "special" about the words you put to page -- unless they're empirically good.

I doubt I'm going to be able to get a job writing professionally anytime soon, but that's what I wish I could do.

And your stories are compelling.

Keep on keepin' on!

I'm sure your writing will evolve; I know my poetry has. Of course, poetry is a whole 'nother kettle of fish...but evolve it does. I have much to learn too, but I am enjoying doing that. Some days I feel the strength of my words, and I'll bet you do too.

Maybe I should look at it that way...sort of like a journey. You know that old saying, it's not the destination...

I've had a couple of beers and a good conversation with an old friend today. My imagination is working. Maybe I'll have a little story for you all this evening.

You never know what will get your imagination working. Sometimes I find a piece of music will do it...Conversations definitely do it.

"a whole 'nother kettle of fish!!!"

but wtf's a 'nother???'

The same considerations go into a sonnet or a bit of free verse as go into an essay or a piece of fiction. Poetry tends to demand more economy but budgeting is a factor no matter what form you are working in.

if you study poetics and not just grammar, imo, and it will be more fun. That gives you an array of filters to see your work through -- timing, emphasis, metaphor, sound as well as grammar. The real value of grammar is when you make it do what you want, after all, not if you are correct in some academic sense although it is nice to feel as though you know what you're doing formally.

I began to think.'

HAPPY to hear it, Tobin!


P.S., Much to my/our chagrin, 7th Grade English teacher, Mrs. Miner, taught us DIAGRAMMING!!! Early in the year we thought she was a tyrant but, as I recall, we ended up liking, or at least, admiring her. (Will check with my classmates later this year, as we've got a high school graduation reunion coming up in September.)

AND, a few years ago I noticed, and I think that others did, too, that the NYTimes was messing up, grammar and spelling-wise. It was ASTONISHING at the time, but this was after their decline had begun, after What's her Name shamed them so with her miserable Iraq war/Bush admin coverage; they just couldn't/can't afford to maintain their former high standards, I guess.

In England it's the second one. In American university it's the third.

Really, I don't know. They might all be correct depending on the tone you want to set for your essay or DU post. Maybe you can tell me.

I've not seen grammar used as an adjective, although grammar-less certainly could. So I think the first is technically incorrect but doubt too many Americans would collapse in horror after hearing it.

The second seems most correct to me--seeing it in writing, but like most people, I don't always speak as I write (and I certainly don't always write with grammatical precision)....
I would probably say it as the third choice.