While I’ve been ill I haven’t managed to do any work; either my own or for my clients. For a while there I was so ill I didn’t even care. Then, as my health began to improve, I was frustrated but still unable to think long enough, or clearly enough, to do anything. In the past week I’ve managed to do a little reading. Unlike my usual style of devouring a book in a matter of hours, one tome lasted for several days. I put it down to the phenomenon of falling asleep after every chapter. This is no comment on the quality of the story-teller; I fell asleep after getting dressed, after feeding the dog, after going to the toilet… However – put it down to not-well-therefore-crabby – I became more and more irked by the wanton recklessness with which basic punctuation and grammatical construction was tackled.

Now I don’t blame the author (entirely). I don’t know about other countries but here in Australia, beginning in the 70’s, education went through a mini-dark ages,  during which spelling, grammar, punctuation and legibility were all sacrificed on the altar of “free expression”. Teachers, like me, who dared to correct the scrawled mess that was supposed to pass as a story, were accused of repressing the child’s creativity. What a load of cr*p! If a builder doesn’t bother to lay any foundations, ignores the need for support beams and doesn’t use any bolts, screws or hinges because “they ruin the design”, people wouldn’t say: “He’s just expressing himself.” They’d complain that he’s a shonky builder and should lose his license. And, rightly so.

Of course, this attitude rested on the ridiculous premise that “everyone can write”. It’s true that everyone can learn to shape letters, form them into words and place them in sentences. But, not everyone can craft a great story. Not everyone is a great novelist. That idea makes as much sense as saying that everyone can be a physicist, or a brain surgeon, or a theoretical mathematician. It’s true that many writers use the technique of writing the first draft without any correction – just letting the story flow. However, they then go back and edit and shape the “creative splurge” to form it into a story with shape, definition, clarity and meaning.  For this they need the “boring” tools of grammar, punctuation and spelling.

No, I don’t entirely blame the author, although it’s not hard these days to educate oneself about these things. What really burns me up is that the publisher of said annoying tome is a well-known publishing house. How did they let this stuff get through? Where’s the quality control? I know many companies have got rid of their editors, to save money, (Don’t get me started!) but they can still request the author to submit their manuscript to a private editor. I know that some great writers break the rules, but they do so knowing what rules they’re breaking and why. It’s obvious in their work that they know what they’re doing. It’s also obvious when a person doesn’t know what they’re doing. The frustrating thing is that it needn’t be that way.

Okay, I feel a little better for having vented. I know I’m a little bit obsessed with this stuff, but literature is important. Science might represent the brains in the human body and theology the spirit, but the creative arts represent the soul. It expresses the emotions, the personality, the essence of what it means to be human. I think it should be expressed in a way that is clear, beautiful and profound.

I’m back to work next week, if only for a few hours a day. I miss wielding my red pen. (It’s so satisfying!)