But what I’ve realized is that though this is necessary if you’re going to be serious about writing, it isn’t something that happens overnight, not for me at least.

I needed that initial self-education, however, truly learning how and when to place commas, semicolons, colons and the like required a grammar consciousness constantly hovering over my writing. With enough writing and time coupled with grammar consciousness you begin to have it all fall into place with more ease.

I’m an English teacher and translator by trade. My gramar advice? First of all, ask yourself who you are and why you’re writing. Sean knows, and that’s why he writes powerfully, and can ghostwrite too. He’s not afraid he’ll lose himself when he’s writing for someone else. His true self, his writer self disables the ego. If you think you’ll be sad when the novel you ghost write hits the New York Times best seller list and your name’s not on it, don’t ghostwrite. It may be that your overriding urge is to express your own unique voice. That gives you more grammatical freedom.

I know, when I’m writing to express my own thoughts and feelings, that I have an overwhelming ache to make up words and reproduce intonation, the sound of internal speech, so although I have dozens of linguistics books from my degrees etc, I ignore them all and trust my inner voice. As Sean mentioned, punctuation is a tool to represent speech as well as to create clarity of thought and meaning. Exclamation marks and italics? Rashes of them!! If I want dashes – I’ll add dashes. Silence…? Dots do it for me. Alliteration? I relish it ridiculously – Sean and I will be sent to rehab for it someday. I’ve been accused of sloppy punctuation, but I don’t care. It’s instinctive but deliberate. I’m a grown up. I’m Scottish, too, and just let people think we all wear kilts and use semi colons a lot.

And read like your life depended on it. Read everything – as long as it’s good and you enjoy it. Devour good writing – from kids’ books to Obama oratory – and you’ll absorb sound grammar by osmosis. After all that, if you still want to be able to talk about grammar as well as be able to use them, check out EFL ?ESL grammar books (English as a Foreign/Second Language) Because they’re designed to be understood by students whose first langauge is not English, they’re easier to understand.

Throughout much of my high-school career I have struggled with proper grammar. I have been ridiculed ( all in good faith) by my teachers for not knowing where and when a comma is needed.

Did I let that discourage me?

Nope. I kept on writing.

Look I have a great deal of wonderful ideas up inside my head, and if it takes a few grammatically incorrect sentences to convey my powerful message so be it.

You see I truly believe that if you write with your heart the grammar will eventually take care of itself. Sure you can’t right lik dis. But as long as you have a somewhat coherent flow to your writing you should be fine.

Since beginning to write regularly my grammar has improved tremendously. This just goes to show you must write with your heart and the grammar will soon follow. Thanks for the wonderful post Sean. I’m glad to know I’m not the only person struggling with grammar. (Apologizes for my grammatical mistakes.) -Bud Hennekes

Hope all is well,

-Bud

(I mean, the first time I heard about a “past participle” was in SPANISH CLASS. I still have no idea what that is!)