My Open Letters – To the Editors… All of them

Thank you for the work you’ve done with my words

Tidying up all the woulds and shoulds and countless areas of grammar and syntax

You have no idea just how much frustration you have saved me

Even if it meant frustrating you

I understand that sometimes starting a sentence with an ‘And’ is bad

Or that changing from past tense to present tense can be taboo

I also understand that without your work my writing is at times

Entirely unintelligible and confusing.

As much as I do understand this and need it

There are a few areas of writing that you seem to not understand

And I feel it necessary to help you learn them

Just as you helped me

I speak of all the times I’ve turned a noun into a verb

Such as grammar into grammaring, and many other verbings

Or the times I’ve used a verb as an adjective or adverb

Like devouring into devourly

And don’t even get me started on all the words I created

By combining one word with another

to produce something like confuzzled which is

Confusing and puzzled

I know everyone might not know these words

Or understand why I’ve changed one into another

But it’s how the words came out and

Nothing is wrong with them

In fact my decision to use different spellings of words we all know

Like Moar and Lurvly from More and Lovely only prove

That language is evolving and growing and most of all…

Changing

We may have rules around language

But how I use it is up to me

If I want to make new words or new meanings for known words

Why can’t I?

Who told Shakespeare he couldn’t make

Those thousands of words he added to his plays

And more importantly, exactly who would he be

If he listened to them?

I know I’m not the greatest writer

Or even have the best grasp of all that language has for me

Or that I’m remotely of the caliber to edit other’s work

Like you

But I do know language and its creative power

I do LOVE language and all it offers me to explore

But most of all…

I enjoy it.

So I have to ask:

Do you?