Writing is my passion. But in reality, I’m not sure that I had a choice.

 

The best place to start is before I was born. My mother, Melissa, always loved reading. It may have come as a direct result of the number of times she moved as a kid; she loves to mention the fact she never lived anywhere longer than two years until she was a sophomore in high school. Hardly popular in school myself, I understand the companionship provided in a good book that classmates often withhold from kids who can’t be considered cool by any contortion of the word.

 

I’ll come back to Melissa’s influence later. My personal relationship with writing began at four years old. When I realized I couldn’t understand much without being able to read, I pestered my parents to buy me the DIY regiment for reading Hooked on Phonics. According to them, I never begged for anything more before or after my strange obsession with the program. Our neighbors’ son had it but never got “hooked,” fortuitously leading to it falling in my possession.

 

From there, everything changed. My parents love to tell the story of them waking up to me listening to the cassette tapes that accompanied its flashcards, repeating each sound our boombox directed me to. I heard every tape, read every book, and filled out every worksheet until I was satisfied, finally able to explore the world that reading opened up to me.

 

Now, back to Melissa. After a string of government and nonprofit jobs, she pursued a career allowing her to work with English as a language fundamentals teacher for children with dyslexia. Her love of reading and writing is something she imposed, maybe even forced, on me. Each summer, she made me keep a journal that I had to log something in almost every day. Obviously, I resented the fact that it was mandatory, but I must have derived some pleasure from it or else I wouldn’t still be writing a decade later.

 

Years after my journal-keeping days, I inevitably started writing for letter grades in school. Though I recall my mother insisting on editing my papers, I’m sure she will contest her insistence when I show her this. “Edit” is a weak word for her method. It was a red pen dissection, if not decimation, of every sentence I wrote. She would rewrite entire paragraphs in a voice far different from my own, an act I absolutely resented. This lead to the development of my own voice, something I’ve been told — but still don’t fully believe — is a strength of my prose. For every sentence she rewrote, I responded with a rewriting of hers, a ping-pong game that ended too many times in my prideful temper flaring.

 

As much as I hated it then, I’m grateful for it now. At 21 years old, I realize my mom aggressively challenged my writing out of love rather than spite — a love for me and my budding passion for writing, but also for her love of language she imparted onto me.

 

Though I owe much of my love for the English language to my mother, my relationship with writing ventures far outside kin. Beginning in elementary school, I had a handful of teachers pick up on my talent and love for the craft before even I did. My neuroticism makes it difficult to believe praise I’m given, especially on creative endeavors, but the encouragement offered by my teachers was never lost on me. Mrs. Partridge loved my stories about race cars, Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. Caruso loved my poetry, and Mrs. Wolfsheimer loved my literature analysis. Without these figures I hold utmost respect for, I may have given up writing to pursue the instant gratification of solving a math problem.

 

This all leads up to 2018, maybe the most formative year in my writing journey. I serendipitously became a copy editor for The Breeze in March. Reading and editing around 30 articles per week plugs almost every gap in my free time — working in the living room room, filled with my dearest friends drunkenly yelling at whatever horror movie or shitty reality show is on the TV, is a common occurrence. To my dismay, my six roommates rarely share the frustration shown in my manic interjections spewing from my grammar-demon-possessed mouth while editing articles. The position also gives me night terrors in which I’m doing nothing except cutting oxford commas in accordance with AP style, only to create sentences such as, “We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.”

 

I also met several people this year who share my love for language in different forms. Until now then, I didn’t have friends to compare, discuss, and critique writing with. Having a UNC English major — a member of the insufferable “don’t start a sentence with hopefully” club — pick apart the first thing I wrote for The Breeze led to the editor-in-chief enthusiastically praising my most recent piece. The feedback I’ve received from peers who share my passion and surpass my ability has been invaluable to my growth as a writer.

 

These same people have inspired and helped me to branch out to new styles and return to old ones: poetry, a passion I regrettably abandoned once it stopped being assigned in my English classes; local news stories, something I found I enjoy writing far more than I expected; music reviews, a fun but if not worthless pursuit I picked up easily due to my steady ingestion of Pitchfork articles as a teenager; and lyrics, a fun if not worthless pursuit I did not pick up easily despite my steady ingestion of Pitchfork articles as a teenager.

 

My writing has evolved as a result of others. We all learn from reading, and as an avid reader at many points of my life, I certainly have learned much from it. But my biggest strides as a writer have come from others’ hands on my work. It is impossible for me to properly assess my own writing, but seeing others’ critiques of it is the best option I have.

 

When you are criticized for the same things so many times, you realize you should change your writing. Almost always, problems in writing stem from a disconnect between what the author is saying and what the audience is hearing. Luckily, a majority of these problems can be fixed with proper grammar. Now that I truly consider myself a writer, I realize the value of adhering to the rules of written language. And since I can’t really do things halfway, I am a full fledged “grammar nazi” — a term I find obnoxious, but apt.

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Despite many writers’ romantic ideas on language, it is both an art and a science. The way we present our words is a creative act unique to every individual; however, the goal of these words is to communicate in the most effective way. Grammar creates a framework for language to best convey our abstract thoughts.

 

It has evolved over centuries in order to make writing consistent. The reason the Romans used uniform measurements across their sprawling empire is the same reason we rely on these boundaries of writing. It’s a miracle there is we have a uniform measurement to create a physical documentation of something as infinitely complex and individualistic as thoughts; to disregard the intricacies of this system seems counterintuitive, self-defeating, and ungrateful.

 

To think language shouldn’t change is ludditian; I have no problem with the addition of new words to authoritative dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster. Although many of these may be informal or irrelevant to subjects worth writing about in Standard Written English, there is no harm in documenting or even using them in some instances. The world constantly changes, and language should — and does — reflect change.

 

However, the need to change grammar to reflect the world is rare. Grammar is less concerned with how we describe the world than how we write about it. Writing structures shift far less than words and have been relatively undisturbed for centuries. To change writing simply to mirror speech falls into the trap of thinking the two implies they are one in the same, in which they are not.

 

In spoken language, grammar is irrelevant. Speaking is most often a fluid expression of thoughts, a stream of consciousness that can shift mid-sentence to communicate more effectively. It is an improvisational back-and-forth in which understanding can be reached faster through responses to the audience and strings of incomplete thoughts than through precise vocabulary and attention to grammatical nuance.

 

On the other hand, there is no back-and-forth in writing. The speaker has one chance to reach their audience through carefully chosen words, ones that must be meticulously arranged for clarity and concision if they are meant to be read. Grammar lovingly gives us the framework for how to best organize our thoughts. In a sacrilegious sense, grammar is God — everything will make sense if we surrender ourselves to Him. Writing perfection in heaven awaits! All we have to do is accept His Love!

 

This is not to say all use of improper grammar is punishable by excommunication. Some of the most beautiful and engaging writing bends grammatical rules in stunning, novel ways. But authors who enthusiastically break traditional writing structures such as James Joyce and Allen Ginsberg know more about grammar than anyone. To eschew the guidelines of any art form requires a complete understanding of them — see Miles Davis, Pablo Picasso, or The Beatles. These artists mastered the conventional before venturing into the avant garde, the latter regarded as their best work. Pointing to writers who don’t follow strict grammar rules as a reason to disregard grammar is ridiculous and in the end, limiting to a writer’s growth.

 

 

 

Two quotes occupy my mind in talking about my relationship with writing. One comes from James Murphy, lead singer of LCD Soundsystem and my favorite lyricist at the moment, the other from Stephen King. In an interview, Murphy said, “Crazy people don’t make music; music makes crazy people.” As someone who has lived with exclusively musicians throughout college, I laughed at his statement. However, I think his sentiment applies to anyone burdened with the need to create.

 

There is no quantitative measure of good writing — or good music or good art for that matter. Even a 10 from Anthony Fantano or four stars from Roger Ebert doesn’t mean everyone will like what you created. There is no perfection in art, ironically pushing artists to endlessly pursue it. If artists are perfectionists that can never achieve their goal, it only makes sense that they’re crazy people.

 

Writing definitely makes me go a little crazy. The more I write, the better I get, but the hungrier I get to be even better. I’m not happy with my abilities as a writer, and I likely never will be. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the pursuit of perfection. I’m still proud of some of my writing and I always love the process; I’m usually just underwhelmed by the final product. This will change as I continue to improve, and more of my writing I’ll be enthusiastic to claim as my own, but for now I’m still figuring out my place as a writer.

 

The second is in a forward to King’s “On Writing.” In a dedication to his editor, he opines, “To write is human; to edit is divine.” As a copy editor, obviously I love this quote, but I’ve already talked at length about how much I love grammar and editing. The other reason this quote stands out to me is that, in my creative writing at least, I’ve been aiming to be less “divine.” I think my obsession can muffle my voice and take away what’s “human” from my writing. Of course, nothing I turn in for this class will see any less editing. But in pursuing the more creative side of language, I need to let go of the control Strunk and White provide in order to express myself more naturally.

 

 

 

My journey into writing has been a long one, but one I love. I didn’t know it would be what I wanted to do for the rest of my life until recently, but I look forward to what it will bring. I want to be surrounded by writers — I want them to be my coworkers, my friends, my spouse. The benefit of endlessly chasing perfection is that there is no end to my journey. I want to write a novel and a screenplay and a poetry anthology and a memoir and just about anything else there is to write — all while being a staff writer at some hip publication where I can write about anything I find fulfilling to write about. To only do one of these things would be a dream, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try to do them all. My passion for writing is still budding, but I know I can make it bloom into something I’ll be happy with when I die — even if it isn’t perfect.