I can get behind the idea that you write freely, then go back and edit ruthlessly...but man! Now that I've seen your list, Lynn, and the other things pointed out on this thread, I'm afraid to go back and look at my stories. Might have to lay down, take two aspirin, imagine I'm in London...
ROTFL! I was with her until the London part. Maybe it's because I'm currently cold, but I can think of much warmer places to imagine than that.
Okay, this addendum is because I was chuckling so much earlier I forgot what else I was going to comment on here. Anyway, the intimidation factor that Lynne is talking about is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about finding that balance between being conscious of the rules and ignoring them completely.
Now, I know that most likely many of the language teachers out there are cringing reading this, but let's face it - most of us aren't language majors. Quite frankly, a lot of us are winging it whether we want to or not and we either wing it from the knowledge base we "own" currently or we choose not to attempt storytelling at all. So somewhere along the line if we choose to make the attempts, we have to almost blind ourselves to the absolute knowledge that grammatically and even structurally we're simply going to make mistakes and just dive in anyway.
Does this mean that during that same process we can't pick up new things and learn new ways as we have fun with the stories? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I'm a great believer in lifelong learning for one thing. Show me the individual who doesn't need to "learn" anything new in life and I'll take their pulse to make sure. Literally.
We simply have to balance out the sure knowledge that all of us can learn new things as we go along with the equally sure knowledge that not making the attempt if our interest leans that way is the true failure.
Back last fall I learned something new that really surprised me, so much so that it's is part of the reason why I have consciously decided to become more active in this fanfic arena again. I was doing some research and wanted to find the term that was the "writing" equivalent of literacy. I was quite honest in my search, so imagine my surprise when I found the actual definition of literate on Merriam-Webster Online: "able to read and write".
Now, I know that at its most basic that's simply about the "act" of reading and writing. On another level, however, it made me think about all the times I've run across discussions on and offline about how reading just for the sake of reading is not encouraged like it should be. Very true. But, using the above definition of literate and the same logic, if people become better readers the more they read, should not the same be said of writing?
And yet how many people are like I was and don't even realize writing is part of the same literacy package because people don't discuss writing for the sake of writing?
