Writing should be fun

“Kuya George how do I write an essay about blah, blah?” “Kuya George, help me, I need to write a reaction paper on blah, blah. “Daddy George, help me with this blah, blah.” “Papa George how will I say this in English?”

“Just write”. I tell them. “Just write.”

“My grammar is poor and I fear that the teacher will fail me.” “I’m ashamed of my spelling; the teacher will surely fail me.” “I fear this, I fear that…”

“Just write.” I tell them. “Just write.”

Write the first thing that comes into your mind. Write the first word that comes into your mind. Write in whatever sentence structure, no matter how unconventional it maybe, that comes into your mind. Just write and don’t bother me. This is what I always tell them. Don’t bother me, just write.

The greatest hindrance to learning how to write is the things that should have made writing easy—prescription and rules.
For example:
George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language gives these six rules.
1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive when you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I like Orwell’s Politics and the English Language for it is a valid criticism of “dragging” English but when he starts dishing out rules like these, his essay becomes pretentious. He has no right to give any rules on English for English is and will always be arbitrary and dynamic—its behavior changes with time, geography, and culture that use it as a second language and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, not even the king and queen of England.
When I read his essay, I can’t write for days because I always think of “what will Orwell say of my compositions.” These rules turned my mind legalistic and not creative. Writing should be fun. Rule number six is the only rule I subscribe to, the rest are for the grammatically dogmatic entities with buttocks injected with botox (butolin toxin relaxes the skin).

Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style has twenty one rules on writing. Twenty one! (My copy of The Element is a second hand third hand third edition that I bought for nine pesos. Who knows, the fourth edition may already contain three million rules.)
1. Place yourself in the background
2. Write in a way that comes naturally
3. Work from a suitable design
4. Write with nouns and verbs
5. Revise and rewrite
6. Do not this
7. Do not do that blah, blah, blah
8-9 blah, blah,blah
Twenty one rules that will bother you when you’re writing, “Am I over doing this, under doing that, how many verbs have I used, how many nouns, no adjectives, must keep the adjectives to minimum, too many qualifiers, am I too breezy, am I orthodox or catholic, maybe I’m explaining too much, are my adverbs aardvark or are they awkward or backward, whose speaking here? A spirit?, am I using fancy words or 24 karat words, dialect this dialect that, avoid this, avoid that, be this be that...for dos for kwatro naman that’s why I am majoring in English because I hate formulas and here you have all these formulation and doctrines that will kill creativity anytime. Rule number two is the only rule I subscribe to. The rest are for the bland people who have enough space in their heads for all these rules.

John Trimble, not to be outdone by the other English-men and grammarians, has twenty six rules to confound student writers--twenty six rules that will promote impotence and allergy to writing.
1. Write with the assumption that your reader….blah, blah…
2. Write as if you’re actually talking….blah, blah, blah….
3. Substitute the pronoun that for which blah, blah, blah,
4. Use occasional contractions…
5-26 blah, blah, blah
The rest is too long and too technical and too much.
I subscribe to rule number two alone. The rest are for the nuclear physicists to decipher.

So many rules on writing, so many how to, so many how not to, I’m not saying these articles are worthless or useless, in fact anyone who wants to write must read all these things once in a while. What I’m trying to say is, if these prescriptions and rules start to bother your writing, if they start to make you impotent, if they start to make you legalistic, if they start to turn you into a linguistic Pharisee, if they start to have a voice of their own, if they start to hold back your hand from writing, if they kill your expression, if they destroy your spontaneity, if they start to irritate you, if they make your head spin, if they blur your vision, if they give you diarrhea… if, if, if, if, ..Then throw them away. Read them for entertainment and for nothing else for there are so many things to say and there are so many ways to say it!

John Holt (I love this guy) says: We learn to write by writing, not by reading other people’s idea about writing.
Getrude Stein when asked by a reporter “Why don’t you write the way you speak?” to which Stein replied “Why don’t you read the way I write.”

Writing should be fun and rules are meant to be broken.

Nah, to be honest, I’m just trying to justify my bad essays.

(“What is happening to George?” My siblings maybe wondering aloud, “Even his writing is nihilistic”, to which my mother would reply, “Aren’t you glad you’re brother’s learning how to write German!”)