I hate grammar. I think I might have mentioned that here before. I just find it so incredibly boring! I can find no interest at all in the different parts of speech, all the rules, where to place commas—all of it. And yet, I just spent a great deal of money on a grammar course that I now have to force myself to begin going through.

Why do I do this to myself? For the same reason I go to the gym—because it’s good for me. (At least at the gym I can listen to an audio book or podcast while torturing myself; in this grammar course, I need to pay close attention and really focus to learn, no interesting distractions allowed.)

With this course, I hope to improve my own writing. I hope to learn to be a better editor. But doing this is definitely going to be painful!

And yet here I am. I’ve sunk all this money into this so I damned well better get the most out of it I can. If I do, I’m certain I’ll earn back what I spent on my next editing job. It’s just getting through the material that’s going to be difficult. Once the information is in my head and I can apply it appropriately, I’m hoping expecting it will pay off.

I also hope that by torturing myself in this way will enable me to make it so other authors don’t have to go through this pain, i.e. they’ll hire me to check their grammar for them. Even as I contemplate retirement (my husband only has two years before he can retire and when he does, I will too), I am still ramping up my skills and trying to grow my business. I wonder about the intelligence of this, but two years could mean earning enough to take that retirement trip we’ve been talking about for the past five years.

So, what’s the point here?

It’s that I’m certain you hate grammar as much as I do (unless you’re an odd one like my daughter who loves grammar—honestly, sometimes I wonder where she came from) so consider me taking this course as taking one for the team. I’m going to do this for you, so you don’t have to. I’m going to force myself to learn all this incredibly boring, nit-picky stuff so that you (or your writer friends) can hire me to edit or proofread your work and know that no reader will scratch their head and wonder exactly what you meant when you left out that comma or misplaced a modifier.

Please think of me when you write those wonderful words—“The End”—and then know that you have to look back through all that you’ve just written and edit it (which you should do whether you hire an editor or not—sorry!).