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Oh, HUZZAH!
Friday, March 11th, 2005 04:26 pmI haven't gone off on anything in quite a while, so I believe I'm due. This post is left open because although it's not a fic, it is about writing.
Poking around on Fandom Wank, I just found this comment from an anonymous poster who signed "Tina":
One of the things that English majors learn, and that this person doesn't seem to get, is that with patience and practice, care for grammar and usage eventually stops being a stumbling block for a writer, because it becomes habit. Eventually you learn to catch typos almost automatically before you finish the sentence: if you don't, they show up like splatters of mud on a white linen skirt, and they offend your eye in the same way. The same goes for a misused modifier or a clunky sentence. You learn to question yourself: "Do I really know what I'm trying to say? Have I picked the best possible words to express it, and have I arranged them into the shapeliest sentences I can?" And after a while it stops being a drag, because it's a challenge that you get to love.
But that can't happen if you believe that the mechanics of writing are petty, and that it's beneath your creative genius to work that hard on them...or, God forbid, that it stifles feeling and creativity to care about them. One thing English majors also learn is that the language itself deserves to be loved and respected--which means that nothing about it is petty, that everything about it is worthy of attention, patience, time and effort.
Or anyway, they should learn it--the English majors I know seem to have managed to learn it. Otherwise what's the point?
( Now (to borrow a phrase) I don't want to get off on a rant here... )
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Poking around on Fandom Wank, I just found this comment from an anonymous poster who signed "Tina":
One of the things that English majors learn, and that this person doesn't seem to get, is that with patience and practice, care for grammar and usage eventually stops being a stumbling block for a writer, because it becomes habit. Eventually you learn to catch typos almost automatically before you finish the sentence: if you don't, they show up like splatters of mud on a white linen skirt, and they offend your eye in the same way. The same goes for a misused modifier or a clunky sentence. You learn to question yourself: "Do I really know what I'm trying to say? Have I picked the best possible words to express it, and have I arranged them into the shapeliest sentences I can?" And after a while it stops being a drag, because it's a challenge that you get to love.
But that can't happen if you believe that the mechanics of writing are petty, and that it's beneath your creative genius to work that hard on them...or, God forbid, that it stifles feeling and creativity to care about them. One thing English majors also learn is that the language itself deserves to be loved and respected--which means that nothing about it is petty, that everything about it is worthy of attention, patience, time and effort.
Or anyway, they should learn it--the English majors I know seem to have managed to learn it. Otherwise what's the point?
( Now (to borrow a phrase) I don't want to get off on a rant here... )
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
