Punctuation Paralysis

Punctuation Paralysis

Or how to bring creative writing to a full-stop

English, as a taught subject, has been a part of western curricula for hundreds of years.  As a language, it has been the medium through which the likes of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens and JK Rowling have informed and beguiled the masses.

The teaching of English has evolved through the rote learning of verbs, adjectives and the fifty two uses of the humble comma, to more free-style forms of self-expression and exploration.

It may not be the most lyrical language to listen to, French is far more enchanting, Italian more passionate, but as a tool, it is certainly more versatile and flexible in its application.

So imagine my horror when I discovered my 8 year old son sitting staring at a lined sheet of paper as though it were a Blue Ringed Octopus. Tears welled in his eyes as his stubby HB pencil with the well chewed end, fell from his grip. ”I can’t do this.”

The sheet of paper contained a single unfinished sentence.

We chatted about what he wanted to write, it was a fantastic tale of Pirates taking over the local canoeing club to earn enough money to buy their ship back from the Shrimp King.  It was funny, and his quirky use of language was delightful. But with arms folded tightly across his chest, his face screwed up the way only kids can manage it, declared he couldn’t write that story.  I reassured him that all he had to do was write it the way he’d told it to me and that it’d be great.

 Nah, he wasn’t buying into that one.

“You just don’t get it Dad,” he thrust the piece of paper away with his hand.  “I don’t know where to put the commas.”

There it was. The Demon finally had a name, and that name was, Punctuation.

The ubiquitous nature of this problem results in kids, as well as adults across the English speaking world fearing to put pen to paper or digit to keyboard. Sadly this results in millions of stories, memories and ideas failing to be born; literary miscarriages that will never be read.

My son was stressing so much about a comma, that he was literally unable to write, to express his creativity in his own inimitable way.  A passing, and well-meaning I’m sure, comment by a supply teacher, that “punctuation was the most important part of writing”  had sowed an insidious and undermining seed in my sons head.  What a horrible way to feel, but then something similar had happened to me at school.  A sixth-form teacher (UK version of year 12) told me congenially that I shouldn’t worry, that I just had to accept the fact that I “wouldn’t amount to anything academically.”

Fortunately for me, I’m contrary by nature and set out to prove him wrong. Seven years and two degrees later, I was satisfied, sadly the 6^th Form Teacher in question died two weeks before I graduated from my Master’s Degree.

It’s taken three tear and fear filled months, but finally my son has started to ignore the red circles that leap from the page like welts on the skin, and to focus on the idea; he’s telling the story in his own words.

And you know what?  His creative writing is that much better for it.