Someone once called me a “word Nazi.” (You know who you are -- and no, I haven't forgotten.) Now, that stung, but the slur was founded on some truth: Clarity in speech and writing is important to me. I’m one of those people who thinks we would all benefit by rereading The Elements of Style every year (more of my thoughts on that book).

On the Word Nazi spectrum, though, I am at the opposite end from, say, Joseph Goebbels. I am the good-natured but ignorant farmboy who enlisted because he liked the uniforms ... not because he wanted to hurt anyone.

I don’t think I should go any further with that metaphor.

Eight years ago I tried to be a real editor, red pencil behind my ear, reading glasses perching on the tip of my nose, a secret code of proofreaders’ marks inside my head. I moved semicolons outside of quotation marks, and moved commas in. I wrote out some numbers and changed others back to numerals. I patiently explained the difference between “its” and “it’s” to engineers, programmers, and senior management. I scrutinized each “which” and changed suspect ones to “that.”*

I knew after a few weeks that I didn’t have it in me. First of all, I knew almost nothing of the formal rules of grammar. We didn’t diagram sentences in the Maryland public school system in the 1980s; I didn’t do that until my summer publishing program at the George Washington University. I learned a lot in those eight weeks, but not enough.

Secondly, an editor needs to be rigid. These are the rules, the editor says; we must follow them. I’ve never been good at enforcing rules, especially when they make other people unhappy. When the draft came back for the third time, with 90% of the initial mistakes fixed and 20% more introduced and the deadline days past, I wasn’t inclined to mark it up and send it back, demanding perfection. Was it reasonably clear? Sure, good enough for me.

Anyway, I reread the Elements of Style for my writing class. No, it' one of those overpriced distance-learning courses of dubious value. Well, not exactly.

I looked into those online writing classes. They were not cheap -- $250 to $400 or so -- and I had no way of knowing whether they would be worth the cost, especially at the general level I was interested in (“Fundamentals of Nonfiction,” “Finding Your Niche,” etc.).

But as I researched the alternatives, I noticed that some institutions publish their syllabi online. Hmmmm. I thought about the goals I had hoped a class would help me achieve: To write daily or almost daily. To give myself small assignments. To create deadlines. To try different styles and genres. To get feedback from others.

It occurred to me that I could achieve all but the last goal by making up my own writing course based on the online syllabi. Maybe it wouldn’t work, but what did I have to lose? First, I copied the basic structure of the classes I was most interested in, ones that dabbled in short fiction and short nonfiction and book-length projects. For each session I assigned myself reading from the books on writing I brought with me.** I also, of course, gave myself a writing assignment for each session.

I’m one week into my class. I haven’t done my first writing assignment yet, but I’ve been keeping up with the reading, and I’ve been writing more in general. I’ve also started an idea file, a folder where I throw index cards on which I’ve scribbled something earlier in the day, something I don’t want to forget.

I don’t know if any of the cards in my idea file will ever lead to anything, but they’re already changing the way I think. My memories flow more quickly and easily. They lie closer to the surface and are easier to tap into. Quite often now they come unbidden.

I remember little details from ten, fifteen, twenty years ago: The envelope my kindergarten teacher put our milk money in, and the way the school milk tasted. After-school Little Feet aerobics in the all-purpose room of Darnestown Elementary. The “best friends” necklace I shared with someone at Ridgeview Junior High, someone who I haven’t spoken to in fifteen years. If that’s all that I produce during this class -- a flood of memories, and a stack of scribbled notecards -- it will be worth it.

*Fun, totally correct sentence: “That ‘that’ that that that-lover used should have been a which.”

** I recommend all of these but not for everyone: The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White, and On Writing Well, William Zinsser, are for people who want rules and clarity and precision. If that’s too uptight for you try Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott, or Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldman.