Words, Words Everywhere.

Lots of words. Thousands of them. None of them for sale. I wrote them all, but they've been given away and I don't even know how many of them will ever be read.

In the past few weeks I've marked lots of essays and written hundreds of school reports. Then there's been the proofreading, corrections and tweaking to get the comments just right. It's not a pleasant job, but one that has to be done. It's one of the compromise aspects of my career, one of the roles I must do if I want to do the actual teaching stuff.

The creative side of my writing is still quiet, although some would joke the reports I write are fiction. But one of my mentors tells me to take those 'report' words, use them. There are narratives in there. Hopes, dreams, success, failure - all you have to do is sort them out. Use some, twist them.

He's right, of course. He usually is. And he's far more experienced with words than I am.

I will play with those words. I will contort them, slash them, hack them within an inch of their lives.

Another experiment. Will it result in anything useable? Who knows? But that is what experiments are about. And it may plant a seed, something that leads to something that leads to something else.

They are, after all, only words.

What Big Words You Have, Grammar!

I spent six years teaching English in Japan. I didn't work within the education system, but for private conversation schools. Mostly solo or in small groups, my youngest students were around 3 years old, while my eldest was well into his 80s. It was fun and interesting, and very educational. Those students, who had been studying English since they were in primary school, had varying spoken abilities, but generally their grammar knowledge was far in advance of my own.

I recall the first time I was asked whether a particular word was the 'past participle' or not. I panicked, not even knowing what that meant.

But during that time I studied and learned and picked up a great deal of grammar.

By the time I went to university to study English teaching, at the ripe old age of 37, I knew much more grammar than my fellow students. This certainly served me well, and I can remember a couple of time I was asked by the tutor to explain a concept to the rest of the class. EFL experience helped a great deal.

Now that I write none of this knowledge and experience is wasted. I don't always get it right, and there are times when I've written something that's more obvious to me than my beta readers, but generally I'm told that my pieces, even the first draft, are very clean.

Personally I think a writer should be interested in language. As an English teacher I  encourage my students to develop more sophisticated writing styles and reading habits. I also try to engender a love, or at least an appreciation, of words and language.

Sometimes I even succeed.