I’ve been involved in a course about the development of education over the last hundred and twenty years or so. It has been a real eye-opening experience. For me, it goes a long way toward answering my questions about why people think like they do. The most import revelation was why I felt unhappy with the educational system into which I was thrown. It explains my fifty-some years of love for the idea never to let my schooling interfere with my education. Schooling never instilled in me a...

There are those who say there are no rules to writing. This argument is usually based on the individual who breaks the rules and succeeds. e.e. cummings pops immediately into my mind. The truth is that there are exceptions to every “rule”. Exceptions don’t negate the rules of good writing. Those who break the rules in the course of successful careers know the rules better than most. It is because they know the rules so well that they can make the exception work for them. Breaking the rules,...

There are times when I wonder if editors are friends or foes. I mean all they seem to do is pick apart my writing, pointing to every little misplaced comma and misspelled word. They don’t like my sentence structure, my word choices, or my idioms. If I write that I saw a bear on the way to work this morning, some editor will ask me how I knew the bear was going to work. And how do they remember from five chapters ago whether characters made a left turn or a right turn to get to the saloon? I...