I just finished reading Strunk and White’s The Elements Of Style. Bad move. Now I know how much I suck.
It’s not nice to suck this bad; frankly, it sucks. And it really sucks when you realize how much you suck so late in the game. My sucky words have been in print for years. How many grammatically and stylistically lamentable passages have I been responsible for so far? Hundreds? Thousands? All my editors must be illiterates. Bastards. Why didn’t anyone stop me and say: “Brevity begets forcefulness,” or “Don’t write anything you wouldn’t actually say,” or “Don’t coin your own verbs by adding ize at the end.” I’ve been inventalizing my own verbs the whole time!
Christ. There’s something to be said for getting an education. Autodidact? Autodickhead, more like it. This sucks.