This is part 3 of a limited series I’m running called “Write Answers Only” in which I reflect on hinge moments in my vocation as a writer—and offer them to you for your own vocational journey.
Writing is the articulation of ideas. Grammar simply ensures those ideas are intelligible: able to be shared and understood.
As an undergraduate student at Fairfield University, I worked in the Writing Center. Students would come in at the behest of beleaguered professors to “get help.” I’d sit with those students, one at a time, and review their papers.
The easiest route for me and the one most preferred by the student involved a red pen and a close read: “You need a comma here. This isn’t the word you want. Make this two sentences.” And so on.
Simple grammar. Basic proofreading. Important, but not what the student really needed. And not even what I was supposed to be providing.
The professor who oversaw the Writing Center insisted that grammar would come; that grammar was a secondary concern. In fact, she went so far as to insist that good grammar could not save a piece that hadn’t been fully fleshed out, a piece that struggled to articulate its core ideas.
And so, rather than obsess over misplaced punctuation or inconsistent verb tenses (after all, for many students who visited the Writing Center, English wasn’t even their first language), we focused on ideas.
What are you trying to say with this piece? What do you want to say with this piece? What do you really believe? What excites you about this topic?
Perhaps put another way: What does God wish to say through you in these words, in this time, based on all that has gone before in your life?
Wrestling with those questions leads to better writing. Wrestling with those questions sparks something within us, a passion to share some idea, some unique insight. Once that passion has been lit, of course we’ll want to finetune it, clarify it, crystalize the words and their expression—that’s when we correct grammar and edit sentences.
But without that passion, that deep desire to say something, to offer the gift of our unique understanding of the world, why bother moving a comma around?
Good editing, I believe, is like spiritual direction. You don’t tell the writer what they think, what God is doing in their lives. You provide the space for them to stumble into realization, you offer questions and a ready ear—and then you collaborate with them to birth that sacred realization into the world.
I like the way you describe the process of eliciting purpose and ideas from the student writers. I was educated in the time when precise conformance to grammar rules meant that one was "proficient in English." It got me good grades and scholarships, but it took a grad course in my fifties to break that restraint.
Another insightful essay, Eric!