The Correction

It has come to my attention that it has come to your attention that my writing sometimes contains an error—or to be more precise, “errors”—and I’m not even 100% sure the sentence you’re currently reading is grammatically correct.

There’s a very good reason for this: I am a moron.

On second thought, I am not a moron (yet another correction), I’m a moderately smart guy who failed to pay attention in almost any class I (or maybe it’s “he”) ever took. And now that I think about that, maybe it should be “have ever taken.”

Either way, it’s clear English classes were on the list of educational efforts that washed over me like water over a stone. My apologies to my teachers; you did your best, but my lack of interest was insurmountable.

Looking back, my main academic strength seemed to be consistency because I didn’t pay attention in science classes either.

And if ‘science’ needed to be capitalized in that last sentence, you also get my apologies, but now I’m wondering if I should have used single or double quotation marks around the word ‘science’ and/or “Science” and right there is part of the problem: once you start thinking about it this Rules of Grammar stuff, it never seems to end and that being the case I’ve decided not to think about it.

In the Greek myth about Sisyphus, he’s rolling a boulder up a hill, but never makes it to the top and the boulder rolls back down the hill and he has to start over again and the solution to his dilemma seems pretty obvious:

STOP ROLLING BOULDERS UP HILLS.

(In my personal experience, giving up is highly underrated.)

I do remember science and/or Science classes being taught in a room with stadium seating and long tables with a series of chairs and one semester or quarter or however they measure prison sentences in high school, spurred on by both creativity and boredom, I decided to spend my time drawing cartoons on the top, back-row table; starting all the way to the left and then, the next day, moving one seat to the right so I could continue working on my cartoon mural.

I think everybody else was cutting up frogs.

Wait…maybe that was actually biology and or Biology…I don’t know because I wasn’t paying attention.

And if you’re currently thinking “What a giant waste of time” I’d like to point out that I went on to become a professional cartoonist and I doubt even one of my more attentive classmates went on to make a living torturing frogs.

Danged If You Do, Danged If You Don’t

One of the many joys of writing in this forum is not having an editor hanging over my shoulder, which is great when I have a deeply philosophical thought to convey and I think “fuck” is the only word that adequately expresses my feelings.

I’ve given this profanity thing some thought and came to a realization best expressed by the following anecdote:

I was watching standup comedian Jim Gaffigan be interviewed and he talked about working “clean” and growing up in Indiana where if you repeatedly said “fuck” people would think you were mentally ill, but despite his decision to work clean, Jim said he still loved the incredibly profane Richard Pryor.

It struck me that for Jim to start using profanity because other comics did, it wouldn’t be authentic. But the same is true of Richard Pryor: if he didn’t use profanity it wouldn’t be authentic.

Every comedian, writer, actor, painter, musician and bad puppeteer is trying to be original and you do that by using your own unique experiences and the people around you and in my case I grew up with three brothers who cursed like sailors on shore leave.

So being able to use the words that come naturally to me is a goddamn blessing, but not having an editor kinda sucks when it comes to proof-reading.

As I’ve proven repeatedly, it’s very easy to mentally supply a word I didn’t actually write. I can read the same sentence a hundred times and still miss the missing word, which is why, when I still worked at The Kansas City Star, I’d find someone to read my cartoon captions and about once a month that unlucky person would ask:

“Don’t you need a ‘the’ in there?”

Fortunately for me—less so for her—a regular reader named Ann has voluntarily taken on the task of pointing out my misspellings and grammatical errors and, boy, does she have her hand full.

(And yes, I realize that should be “hands,” but I think Ann gets slightly disappointed when there are no errors to correct, so this otter mike hur dey.)

Proofreaders Are One Thing; Editors Are a Different Kettle of Fish

In my experience, Good Editors realize where you’re trying to go and help you get there; Not-So-Hot Editors wish you’d written your piece the way they would have written it and now would be a good time to remind everybody:

Those who can, write; those who can’t, edit.

(And if you disagree with that sentiment, feel free to write a pithy, humorous, yet thoughtful and concise comment in response, which I probably won’t read, but it will make you feel better and you might want to have someone proof-read it before you post it. Ann might be available.)

Anyway…

The Not-So-Hot Editors aren’t shy about “improving” your work and one of the reasons they got encouraged to stop writing and start editing is they know the Rules of Grammar and follow them religiously even when it doesn’t make much sense, an attitude that helps explain all nine Crusades.

Not the first time I’ve told this story, but it’s a pretty good story:

During one spring training I wrote that the Kansas City Royals had an away game that day and we’re getting on their team bus and heading for Peoria to play the San Diego Padres.

At that time the Star style was to name the state after the first mention of a city, which I forgot or, even more likely, never knew, so a helpful editor added “Illinois” to Peoria.

Which would have been a helluva spring training bus trip because the Royals train in Arizona.

My computer is now telling me “helluva” isn’t a word and that last sentence is grammatically incorrect and my computer thinks I probably meant to write “hello” instead of “helluva” and all I have to say about that is my computer can kiss my ass and if they ever come up with a laptop that can do that, I’d pay extra to own one.

I’m sure Apple is working on it.

Writing Versus Storytelling

Some cartoonist whose name I’ve clearly forgotten once said you have a thousand bad cartoons in you before you can draw a good one and I think the same thing about writing: you’ve got to vomit a lot of bad writing before you get to anything good or original.

If you want to take a shot at writing, I’d say go for it, but don’t be surprised if you’re not thrilled with your first efforts. If you decided you wanted to learn to play the banjo, would you be shocked if you couldn’t play Foggy Mountain Breakdown on your first attempt?

Also…

Don’t play the banjo.

It’s an incredibly annoying-sounding instrument and I’m not 100% sure accomplished banjo players enjoy the sounds they’re making (it’s like a set of rusty bedsprings being thrown down a long flight of stairs) and I think banjo players continue playing—and playing loudly—just to make sure the rest of us suffer along with them.

Anyway…

• Writers keep writing.

• Non-writers quit.

It’s pretty simple: no matter the quality, if you write you’re a writer, if you don’t write you aren’t.

Here’s yet another story I’ve told before, but get used to it, at my age I’ve told all my stories before:

I hadn’t written a lot or consistently until I was offered the chance to cover the Kansas City Royals in 2010 and then I had to write every damn day and was vomiting up a lot of bad writing and one night I tried to think of another word for “pitcher” and came up with “moundsman” which my laptop doesn’t think is a real word and definitely shouldn’t be.

I have never said or will say “moundsman” out loud and after 36 years of hanging around ballplayers, never heard one of them say it out loud either and to use it in a sports story is like reading a newspaper editorial with the words “balderdash” or “poppycock” or “piffle” which is really bad writing unless the writer is the Duke of Windsor.

It’s really bad writing because it’s not authentic.

So that night I decided to stop “writing” and start “telling stories” the way I would if I met you in a bar, which is not only possible, but fairly likely. I may not be a great writer, but after I’ve had a beer and a shot, I can tell a story with the best of them and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since that night in 2010 and I’ll keep doing that as long as my liver holds out.

But when you tell stories you don’t pay much attention to correct grammar or rules of writing, nor should you.

Just get the damn story out and if the story’s good enough the words you used to tell it won’t matter all that much.

Write Fast, Write Sloppy

I know some writers labor over each word and phrase and Ernest Hemingway was one of those writers, but let’s not forget Ernie blew his brains out. According to the internet, Hemingway wrote an average of 500 words a day and stopped at noon because he had to start drinking and walking around Key West being an asshole.

For comparison’s sake:

This essay is already over 1,700 words and I still need to draw a cartoon and rationalize the Manhattan I’ll have this afternoon and the Double Quarter Pounder I’ll probably have for dinner and watch a Royals game after all that and to show I’m way more productive than Ernest Hemingway, I started being an asshole at 5 AM this morning.

I’d like to keep the few brains I have exactly where they are so I don’t get hung up on a single word or phrase because if I do I’ll lose the flow of the story I’m trying to tell.

I want to get this stuff out as quickly as possible so it sounds as natural as possible so even though it’s technically incorrect I’m more likely to write “me and you” than “you and I.” Feel free to point out any of my technical errors, but if I decide—even if it’s technically incorrect—I like the way it sounds…

Me and you are just going to have to live with it.