I’ve been hearing a lot about a bad boy who’s been hanging around lately. Bad boys of writing are tapes in our head that tell us things that undercut our productivity. This particular bad boy is more of a nuisance than most because he thinks we should remember every detail about writing we learned in school.
The Every Kid Bad Boy says “What’s wrong with you? Every kid knows when to use a comma. Why don’t you?”
Everyone knows them and hangs out with them. They are the bad boys of writing. Handsome and seductive fellows, they have weaseled their way into our thinking. They’re conmen really — conmen in the true sense of the word — they play a confidence came.
The bad boys take advantage of us because we wrote so much in school. They mess with our heads because we learned to write on cue. We confused the act of writing with the art and craft of writing. We don’t do that with wearing shoes, or living in a house or driving, but we do that with books and writing. So the bad boys of writing have a field day.
It’s time we showed the bad boys that we can beat them at their game.
Meet Bad Boy 1: Just write and it will be spectacular!