Lori D thank you for the encouragement! To everyone, yes, I shared that I am going back to school and some of the conclusions that I came to after reading some of the books being discussed in this thread. But those decisions that I came to for myself are tightly intertwined with my beliefs about writing instruction in general. For the past few DECADES I have been simultaneously working on my own writing and doing my best to share what I have learned with the people that had no one better to help them. For the past two decades, I have been rating my progress and that of any students by the general standards being discussed at this forum, rather than the standards that I used before TWTM was published. Even while at college, this forum had more impact on what I thought about writing than what my professors said about writing. I asked what is "good" writing. Some people repeated the exact things I have read innumerable times over the decades. Some people suggested some new ideas that I had never seen discussed before. Those new-to-me ideas probably were already being discussed, but I probably ignored them, because I was still so convinced that there was only one "right" way to write. Thank you to everyone that posted. Diversity of opinions is important. The world is a big place. "Good" is a big word. I learned what I needed to learn from this thread and I think some other people did too.

Yes, all of Dickens is in the Pubic Domain. I am overdue to reread Great Expectations.

This book is laugh-out-loud funny!

I am completing week 1 of the Artist's Way. Please, don't anyone be offended at what I am about to say! The assignment was to identify the sources that have made us doubt our ability to create art. I realized that certain people at this forum were at the top of my list, and that SHOCKED me. And then I remembered another person that posted here for years that said something similar when they left. I was homeschooling for years before TWTM was written and this forum was started. For decades now, I have been learning more and more, yet doubting myself more and more. For a time I thought that was good. It is not. All systems need diversity and redundancy. We need more people to write and paint and sing and add their voices to the conversation. It is never good when people are silenced and excluded from entering the conversation. My life is still in shambles from this move and I am still couch-hopping and officially homeless and I have lost my food stamps from my old state and cannot apply indefinitely in my new state until someone figures out how to clear some red tape. But on Wednesday, a social worker and one of my old professors are meeting with financial aid and everyone is going to try and figure out to finance me starting a creative writing major in September. I know I am a mess. I am going to write anyway. I am going to write the best I can now. I am going to stop waiting to earn my right to write. I am going to stop obsessing over each detail and start saying what I have to say, even if I do it "wrong". The Artist's Way says audacity is more important than talent. The Artist's Way also says the audacious will be most harshly reviewed by people with more talent and less audacity. I am starting to believe that we folk people need to make folk art, not just for our fellow folk, but to add our voice to greater general conversation. Time and time again, entire ecosystems are badly damaged because someone tries to rid the ecosystem of a "pest" or "weed". I might be a pest and a weed, but I think I am needed. I am going to throw myself out there. No more majors that allow me to write, but are not focused on writing. The Artist's Way has lots to say about "Shadow Artists". I am done hiding in the shadows. I am going to declare my intent to BE a writer. And if the school and the government and the charities want to help me write, then I will accept their help. My time in that filthy scary desert was not wasted. It served the same function as living in a monastery. I left that slum a different person than the one that entered it. I am ready for this.

Sorry I took so long to get back to this thread. I moved across the country this week, and the first few days had to be devoted to long overdue medical and dental care as well as normal moving tasks. This was an eventful move, but I am safe and that is all that matters. Thank you to everyone that contributed. Rosie, thank you for that link! Critterfixer, I read some of Craft in the Real World before I left. So far that book is excellent. Thanks! It is validating to know that other authors have already written about this topic, and have had some of the same questions as me, and already came to the conclusions that I have been leaning towards.

Thank you so much for telling your story and for the book recommendation. I can borrow Craft in the Real World from bookshare.org for free.

Links to the East African Guides https://overinthemeadow.wordpress.com/free-waldorf-guides/ Free Waldorf eBooks https://www.waldorflibrary.org/books/3/showCategory/52/ebooks I like some of this author's older stuff, but I have no idea what has happened over the years. Her OLD planning videos at Youtube are really good.

I homeschooled my younger child from 5th grade until college, but my older child finished 5th grade in public school and was in a new charter school for 6th and 7th. I pulled him from the charter school for 8th grade with the intention of sending him to the local high school for 9th grade. My oldest did not want me to teach him, and wanted a secular correspondence school. We enrolled him in American School for a GENERAL Diploma which he was academically prepared for, and wrote "N/A Homeschooled" when the application required proof of 8th grade graduation. In reality I lied and he just skipped 8th grade. By spring of what would have been his 8th grade year, he started the equivalent of the 10th grade and had a job. We decided not to enroll him in the local high school after all. He finished high school two years early, despite working more than studying. He started putting himself through college at 16 years old. He graduated with his AS in Business just after his 19th birthday with no students debt and a small nest egg of savings and joined some friends on the other side of the country. He did not get a classical education, but he did things his way, and I have no regrets at all. I don't know what would have happened if he did a traditional 8th grade year. It scares me to think about it. This boy needed to work. The type of work that makes boys sweat and bleed and cry. The type of work that turns boys into to men. We broke laws. We got away with it. This son called me on Mother's Day this year, and I cried in gratefulness that everything worked out as well as it did for him. We all made our mistakes, but it could have turned out SO SO SO much worse.

I am talking about many things. One of the things is fiction aimed at youth with an omniscient narrator. I have read many curricula that will not allow students to use an omniscient narrator. By most modern grammar textbooks, the punctuation is wrong. The sentences would sometimes qualify as run-ons. I could go on and on and on. It would be impossible to use most of this book as examples of correct usage if I used any of the popular writing curricula, even those curricula that include cherry picked sentences from classical literature and then instruct parents to have children copy more good literature. The Right to Write is a very good book. It is by the same author as The Artists Way. Julia Cameron is answering some of what I am asking, even in the first few chapters. This is a book that I plan to finish. Maybe what I am thinking about right now is the right way to write vs the right to write. That is not only a tongue twister, but it makes my head spin! LOL

I have a migraine. Last night I laid in the dark and finished my book by letting Alexa read it to me. The book is "outdated" and "wrong" and beautiful all the same. I can no longer accept that the majority of English literature is "wrong". If a students were to read these books and use them as a style guide, they would fail classes by rigid instructors. Something is wrong here. I think it is wrong to call so much wrong. What is my next step after coming to this conclusion? I do not know. To start, I think I am going to give myself more permission to write. The most successful abusers teach their victims to abuse themselves and to abuse others. I think I am done silencing myself and silencing others. In the 1960's, women burned their bras and girdles. My books are already gone as I make this move across the country, so I don't need to burn them.

I want to read this book. The Right to Write https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002JF1N2S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I just had another thought. Who is a worthy audience to write for? I have seen some works that were written for a marginalized population that were harshly judged as "wrong" by outsiders, when in fact that they had been received as correct by their intended audience. Are marginalized audiences disqualified from assigning credibility to a work? What does this idea have in common with the question about a tree that falls in a place where no one hears it fall? Does it make a sound? Can a work that is only useful to a niche market of marginalized people be "good".

Marketing: lots to think about with that.

I am realizing that "easily readable" is not a synonym for "correct" or "good". I am not sure where I am going with that, but it just struck me now.

Folk painting is often out of proportion and almost never uses perspective properly. But the painters had something worth painting and they did. Now. They did not wait until they earned the right to paint. They did not sacrifice other things to make the time to study the rules set by a culture that excluded them and sometimes even exploited them. They just painted. Without permission.