Into the Fire

Once upon a time children were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. As with most children, some had leanings toward the reading and writing and others favored mathematics. Still others grasped whatever subjects were thrown at them. There was a dress code, and there were report cards with grades from A+ to F. There were teachers’ pets and students who struggled right along with those who excelled. There were disciplinary measures in place for bad behavior, and they were exacted if necessary by the principal. The pledge of allegiance echoed from all classrooms every school morning. The primary weakness in the system in those days was a lack of knowledge concerning learning patterns and dyslexia. I’m sure some teachers sensed the differences in the way students processed and applied information, but the extensive study of learning styles and disabilities hadn’t been formalized into practical application.

Okay. Who knows the depth of learning for students across this nation today? It’s been reported that teachers at some high schools have been grading papers/essays submitted with shortcuts used in text messaging. If you read enough comments across various formats on the web, you will see just how poorly the language, spelling, and vocabulary skills have become. Proper grammar is past tense in these methods of communication and conversation.

So what does that mean to those of us who diligently learned our grammar lessons and have chosen to write fiction? To a degree creative writing gives us a license to compromise those strict adherents to proper grammar. Most publishers use The Chicago Manual of Style for “grading” what is and isn’t deemed acceptable for putting words in print. The freedom to break the standard of a more formal or strict style of grammar usage goes far enough to bring some diverse and unique styles into literature. Often depending on the age of writers, it can be apparent how little the formal methods of correct grammar were ever grasped and used—perhaps because in classrooms responsible for teaching English they were never regarded as important enough to explain and/or enforce. I’ve known some very bright high-schoolers who can neither write nor speak nor spell our English language properly. However, I’ve received corporate letters with basic grammar and spelling mistakes in them as well.

This is a long way around to my points. You know I’m a stickler about “the rules” of writing. I’m a rebel against their restrictive, formulaic nature and because the current rules are trendy and have only some validity in determining what “good” writing means or is. But one important and valid exception to my rebellion against these so-called rules is this: I believe in order to break their rules effectively you have to know how and why you break them. Good grammar is a disappearing art form, but it’s worthy of learning to insure the basic knowledge of real communication in both speech and the written word. Yes, a novel can be written in slang, ebonics, or whatever style a writer might choose. Someone will read it. Someone will like it. Someone will hate it. Anyone can get published if they know how.

The argument for bettering your craft lies in the zeal to produce what some call excellence. To never quit learning. To always seek improvement. As a writer, it’s next to impossible to be satisfied with all the words we write. We can love a story, our characters, our plot, our first paragraph, our ending, but we’re rarely sure we’ve gotten the very best out of ourselves. The perfectionists probably revise to the extreme seeking just that goal: the best of themselves aka excellence.

Excellence is like happiness. Fleeting. Rare. Celebrated. Contentment on the other hand acknowledges our humanity—our limited abilities to catch brilliance in every effort. It keeps us pressing on with words, knowing no matter how good we might get, someone will exceed our efforts. It’s humbling. And important.

Excellence hinges on different scales rendered by judges who fail to see their own prejudice. Most of us who’ve taken the time to absorb literature over many years recognize what we consider quality and even a mastery of language skills, but those very words we’d rate as supreme are ridiculed by others—just as we do the same for their preferences regardless of the individual arguments presiding over both pieces. That’s not to say there aren’t congruent scales to mesh the choices because saying there is no viable standard of excellence is to brand all literature with either a stamp of quality or a lacking of the same. But excellence has qualifiers by those who mark it and those who seek it. Those qualifiers simply must accompany the evaluation. We can explain our reasoning for proclaiming the excellence in a piece, but we must always consider another’s explanation might conflict with ours for reasons that individual thinks are just as acceptable, just as reliable.

And in all of this, as Christians, we cannot gloss over the spiritual overtones of our efforts to write. Is this what God has called us to do? Do we seek to produce excellence for Him or for ourselves—for the recognition from man over the pleasure of God? These need not be mutually exclusive in the result but they most definitely are separate in the intended goal. Is our table of excellence based on our efforts to please God or on the evaluations of man?

The spiritual element in the evaluation of our methods and goals outweighs all others. Our life is in Christ. Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

For your glory, Lord. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.