I Don't Hate Writing! I HATE ...

GRAMMAR.

So—anyone who knows me knows that I am not really a rules person. I have rules in my house for safety reasons (i.e. don't play in traffic, don't play with the stove) and for moral reasons (i.e. no swearing, be careful what you watch on TV or in the movies). My son is a night owl just like Jim and me, and will be up late at night and sleep in in the morning. We do school around his sleeping. I very rarely wake him up and if I do it is usually because of someone else's schedule.

Even with my theater kids, I only had a few hard & fast rules. (If you guys are reading this, what is the first one?—"If you can see the audience, the audience can see you.") Some of the others again are for safety reasons depending on the environment—whether we are in a rehearsal space or at the theater itself, during a show tech week.

I guess what I am trying to explain (not very well) is that rules have a place in life and when they are necessary I understand and work within them.  BUT...

Let's face it, English grammar has TOO MANY RULES!

When I was in high school (sorry Miss Kelso and Mrs. Smith) I hated writing.  I had to remember the commas, the periods, the semi-colons, colons, paragraphs, indentations, capitalization, etc. The rules never seemed to end. Did I learn them? Yep, I did. Do I as a homeschool teacher work towards helping Stephen learn them? Yep, we do. Do I still hate having to remember them? YES!

When I'm writing a letter, a story, or this blog, my brain goes so fast that having to put commas and periods and the rest of the punctuation stuff in is a problem. By the time I remember what is supposed to go there and I get it all in I have lost my train of thought. My brain is going so fast that my fingers are already having trouble keeping up. I have so many typos (sorry Mrs. Fowler) that I have to go back and fix all of those. I can proofread. I have had to proofread papers written by a girl who is hearing impaired. Her first language is Hindi, her second language is American Sign Language, and her third language is English. Just reading the first paragraph of her papers gave Jim nightmares. I was able to do it, though. I can proofread other people's stuff but I can't my own. My brain automatically sees what is supposed to be there. Not what is really there. (Anyone else have this problem?)

So, at the top of this page, it says that sometimes Jim will be writing stuff (probably not) but he is helping to keep this going. Here is how.

I write this stuff just as my brain says it:  typos, incomplete punctuation, grammatical errors and all. Then I send it to Jim who edits it and fixes all of the stuff I know is wrong but hate to fix. Then we post it. God put us together to be a team, right?

I am thinking I have to be careful about Stephen reading this because then he will have ammunition against me because I don't use punctuation when I write, yet I have to explain it to him. The difference is I know how but choose not to. He is still learning how! There is a difference, right?

So, to wrap this up, here are some things you have learned about me today:

I don't like rules just for the sake of having rules. I think it is silly.
I don't mind writing as long as it is not slowed down by a bunch of rules.
I will teach my kid how to do the stuff and then it is his choice what to do with the knowledge.
God put Jim and I together to be partners in life—and in grammar!

Hope you all have a wonderful day!