EXIT STRATEGY - Ryan Potter

Nathan Bransford had a great post a few days ago. He asked a simple question: How important is creativity over craft? Well, that one simple question has generated 200+ comments to date, a healthy number even for Nathan's popular blog. Obviously, then, this issue is a hot one among writers.

Now, I could take the easy way out (many who commented did) and say, Well, it's both, of course!

But it isn't both. At least for me it isn't.  

Find the story and write it the way you see fit. There. That's my one-sentence defense of creativity. Seriously. If the writing rules you learned in school get in the way of how you want to tell a story, then it's time to throw the grammar book out the window. Creativity sets your story apart from all the others. Without it, you have nothing.

Look, I have no clue what  dangling modifiers and past participles are. And you know what? I really don't care. Writing is a feeling as well as a process. Writers (and readers) know when something's wrong with the writing. It's a sense that builds and improves over time. The more you read and write, the stronger that sense - that feeling - becomes. I think you unconsciously learn the rules of grammar that way. To put it another way, reading and writing are the only two grammar classes you'll ever need.

As for the meaning of dangling modifiers and past participles, I'll let the grammar purists obsess over those.

In the meantime, I'll be reading a great novel and writing what I want to write.

RP