Thanks to faithful reader and all around groovy guy William “spuug” Graham, I now understand syntax diagramming.

Turns out, it actually is linear. You just have to identify the smallest elements of a sentence first (the words and their part of speech, or ‘word class”) then from there look for the smallest phrases that follow the phrase rules for English, then those elements form bigger elements, and eventually, you get to the basic formula for any English sentence, and then you’re done.

Why my professor couldn’t explain it like that I will never know. Perhaps our cognitive styles are just too disparate. And there’s an enormous emotional issue to deal with. As much as I like her, she’s still the authority figure, and I am still the sometimes too smart for his own good student who does not have a history of reacting well to frustration, and I went to crazytown over this business pretty much immediately, which makes it kind of hard to learn.

So she may have explained it to us in exactly that way and I was too messed up emotionally to understand or absorb it. I am relaxed with William, and he had the time and patience to explain it to me in a way that I could understand.

That means the world to me, dear. More than you can ever know. In my life, very few people have been willing to hang in there with me and teach me things I don’t understand and, most importantly, to stick with me till I get it.

So now I stand a fairly good chance of passing that Linguistics exam I have been dreading. Tuesday night, I shall walk into that room and give it my all and, hopefully, pass.

I might even get a C!

This upcoming week is really gonna be a bitch. I have three exams in as many days, plus a short story due on Tuesday (you saw the rough draft here) which needs a major overhaul if it is to be any good at all.

I mean, it’s a rough draft, and as such, it accomplished what it was supposed to do, which was to allow me to get all my ideas about the story out of my head and into text so I can think about the larger issues. I am not at all happy with the pacing of the story as it is right now, and the Ancient Caterpillar’s anger at the Crooked Giant feels like it comes out of nowhere, and overall, the whole thing seems lumpy and unbalanced.

So it’s time to polish that prose! I am actually looking forward to it. Unlike every other time, I was thinking about the editing stage before I even finished the rough draft. I would slap stuff into the rough draft thinking “that’s not great… I will have to fix that when I edit. ” and after that, I started thinking about how I was going to improve the thing for the next draft.

So perhaps the key to keeping me motivated enough to hang in there and edit the damned thing is to simply deny myself the feeling that the thing is done when I stop typing. It sounds quite simple when I put it like that, but trust me, it isn’t from my point of view. If I can get myself to the point where, on a deep emotional level, I know that my first stab at it is likely terrible and will need a lot of editing to be presentable, I will be able to view finishing the first draft as only being the beginning of a long process.

Well, maybe not THAT long. Baby steps and all. At this point, even producing a second draft would be major progress. I have decided that I am through with putting substandard product out into the world. I am a way, way better writer than that. Just getting my thoughts out of my head isn’t enough any more.

Funny as it might sound, I want to make stuff that’s actually good.

In saying this, I am committing to pushing myself to a higher level. I have coasted on my talents for a long time and it’s gotten me nowhere. If I want to even enter the game, I am going to have to put some effort into getting better at my craft.

Raw ability (of which I have loads) is not talent. Raw ability plus acquired skill is talent. Otherwise, you are nothing but unrefined ore, and worth about as much on the open market.

And by you, I of course, as always, mean me.

I think my story has real potential for greatness. It is, admittedly, a very odd and quirky little piece, but I am sure there must be a market for that sort of thing out there somewhere. The important thing is, I feel good about it. It’s something I am proud to have written, even in its current form, and that feels great. It’s certainly one of the most literary things I have ever written, underneath all the quirkiness. Levels of meaning and all that.

So I look forward to digging in and refining the thing till it’s the smooth, crisp, easy prose I want it to be. My goal is nothing less than the sort of deceptively simple seeming prose that gets the hell out of the way of the story and therefore goes down easy and settles deep.

In keeping with that ideal, I should reread “A Stitch In Time” in order to take notes. I am not sure I want my prose to be quite as breathlessly exciting as Madeline L’Engle’s, but that book never fails to draw me in and hook me hard. I just have to know what happens next, and next, and next, and so on.

And I really want to know the secret of that kind of lean, energetic, engrossing prose.

If I could write like that, I would make a million dollars.

Until then, I will keep writing to you nice people.

And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.