My problem with the period.

What is my problem with the period?

Cute Punctuation Graphic

If you read much of my writing, you’ll notice that I do a lot of things to keep from ending a sentence; like add more stuff to it, including lists and such.

I seem to hate using the period, so much so that from time to time…

…I use an ellipse to join two hacked paragraphs together.

So what’s my problem with it? Do I have an issue with ending things? Do I have closure issues? Do I like long, rambling sentences that just seem to never end, meandering through hill and dale, eternally searching for grandma’s house, but never actually arriving there, only to take another turn when the reader might assume we have arrived, until my poor, hapless reader, like the kids in the back seat, start whining “are we there yet?” and “when will we ever get there?”

Short answer: no.

The problem is that I am a story teller. I make my points and teach through telling stories. I was doing that through the years when my dyslexia made reading, and writing, very difficult. So I learned to tell stories. People seemed to like the stories with long, detailed, descriptions, and the wonderful twists and turns.

So that is how I write.

I assume most writers were writing like they were telling stories — and, perhaps, never actually told a story out loud. So their writing style was more properly formatted. Those of us who did not have that benefit have lousy writing styles. Just ask my editor, Haydee Dabritz, who has to plow through my unending prose, trying to make it palatable for the rest of humanity.

I really isn’t that I do not like the period; it is simply that I just keep talking over it until I’m finished — because in story telling, when you finish, it is someone else’s turn, and I still have more I’d like to say…