Grammar? Don't Take it Seriously.

There’s no such thing as “bad” grammar. That’s according to my great friend and mentor, Eddie Salinski (celebrated writer and welder). Eddie, who admits to no formal schooling of any kind (except for welding classes}, says rules held religiously by grammarians are “the devils’ spawn” and as such, toss needless obstacles onto the carefree path to writing brilliance.
 As his shocking premise began to sink in, it suddenly became clear to me why Eddie’s writings always stand out as shining beacons of depth and clarity.

“Forget the technicalities,” said Eddie, looking heavenward toward the top branches of a giant maple in his backyard. “Just go with the flow.”

“Go with the flow,” I repeated mindlessly.

Eddie put a hand on my shoulder, as if to calm me. He went on to explain that, in his view, stuff like verbs, adverbs, predicates, conjunctions and what-not just serve to confuse the writer. It’s all crap, he said, adding that all we have to do is string along one word after another and throw in a period or comma once in a while.

“Nothing to it,” he said, picking at an incisor with a stout blade of crabgrass.

What about editing?  Eddie pointed to a scraggly milking goat chewing on an old overstuffed sofa in his front yard.

“That’s my editor,” he said.  “Tessie reads my stuff, spits out the crap and puts the rest in a neat pile that I send off to some idiot in New York.  Then I wait for the checks to roll in. They always do.”

Tessie looked up at me in agreement and then dropped a steaming load of punctuation.

“So don’t get your undies in a damn bundle over crap like this,” he exclaimed. “Let your guts do your writing and you won’t go to far wrong. If some clink wants to dress up your stuff, let him, because it won’t make any difference in the long run.”

“Your guts, man,” he said, patting his thin stomach area. “That’s where it’s all at.”

That’s a lot of talking, for Eddie. I left him standing there in his front yard, Tessie now chewing on one of his faded tennies.

I realized then and there that I have my work cut out for me. After all, if I’m going to sell any books at all, there’s a whole lot of grammar I’ve got to get out of my system.