"I'm So Tired of Grammar" by xjuggernaughtx on FiMFiction.NET

Seriously, does it ever end? I feel like I work and work and work on it, and there's always more rules. Always some new reason my stories get rejected.

I don't mind the rejections all that much. If a story isn't up to scratch, then it isn't. But it would be nice to feel like I'm making progress. I never do. I feel like I'm just as lost in the grammar sea as I ever was.

And it's all well and good to say that I shouldn't care about acceptance, but that's just not how I'm built. Not only does it keep me motivated, but almost everything that I've written would be unknown if I hadn't have tried to get it into some sort of "exemplary pony fiction" site or group. Most of my stuff had maybe a hundred views before it got onto EQD. It does not sit well with me at all to spend weeks and weeks writing something to have eighty people read it. It doesn't work for me at all.

So I've worked to try and get better, and I have. My stories are much, much better. But my grammar somehow isn't. It probably has to do with my nature. I hate confinement and rules, and I feel like grammar is a tool by which mathmatical people try to understand art. It can be quantified. It can be measured. It has definite rules that can be put in a book.

But grammar is a tool to help make sure that the written word is understandable. It's supposed to help the reader, and I'm good with that. Where I start getting angry is when it's used the other way. The knowledge of grammar is actually taking these readers OUT of the story. If they had no knowledge one way or the other that zig-zag wasn't supposed to have a hyphen, they wouldn't care. However, they DO know that, so they get irritated by it. Or the misplaced comma. Or the smart quote facing the wrong way.

So I will begin again. I will dig back into the rules, read them, and hope to comprehend. But each time I do this, I lose a bit of love for what I'm doing. It's not fun at that point. It's work. But I'm trapped by my own personality, and since I'm not a writing super-genius, it's what I have to do if I want to reach my goals. I just wonder why my goals and my happiness aren't in the same place. If I try and choose one or the other, it ruins both. It's tiring, and I'm starting to feel very worn down.

Weren't ponies meant to be fun? Where did I lose that? I'd love to go back to when I just wrote whatever, but then I see The Carrot Dog Fight of there with its small viewership and I hate that I'm not doing everything I can for it. It represents a lot of work. Not just by me, but several other people. I hate not seeing it thrive.

Maybe I just need a writing vacation.