Mrs. Pruett, ninth grade English, Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1962-63.  This is always my answer when asked “Who was your favorite teacher?”

She made us work.  We were the accelerated English class, and she stocked one of those metal storage cabinets in the corner of the classroom with 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English textbooks for us to use.  Whatever we were studying, we were supposed to research all the rules from those texts as well.  So, at the end of the year, we had technically completed all of our high school English.

Mrs. Pruett was about 110 years old, shorter than any of us students, wore coke-bottle-lensed glasses, was missing the ring finger on her left hand (I never did know the story behind that), and loved her students unabashedly. She let us know of our shortcomings, lauded our accomplishments, and drove us to improve. She pushed me to run for class vice-president. I didn’t win, but that wasn’t important. Trying was the important thing.

I wrote my first short story for her, and got my first lesson in creative writing. I knew nothing about plot (it’s still one of my issues) and simply related an incident that happened to me just a few days before the assignment. She hated it.

“What’s the point?” she asked. “Did you learn anything?  Did you get angry, or feel sad, or get even?  You have to let me know why this was important to you and make me feel that, too.”

I have never written anything without a point since.

Over the years, I have heard a lot of writers advise us to write every day. “It doesn’t matter if you write in the morning or before you go to bed. You don’t have to write for a reason – you can bash your boss or describe your new wallpaper. Free write. Whatever pops into your mind,” they say.

I can’t do that. Mrs. Pruett won’t let me.

Writing words for the sake of words only increases your vocabulary. To become a better writer, you have to put that extra effort into it. If you want to write about random things, find a way to bring them together. Justify your words. Choose precise language to communicate your exact feelings, to make your reader react.

Resolve the issue. Did that new wallpaper remind you of something? How can you fix the problem with your boss?  What do you want the reader to understand? Why are your words on that paper?

There’s a fable by Harry Nilsson titled The Point, about a child with a round head in a population of pointy-headed people. Shamed and ridiculed because his head did not have a beautiful, sharp tip on top, in the end he became a hero. The resounding theme of the tale is ‘you don’t have to have a point to have a point’. Nothing happens without a reason, and everybody, every thing, has relevance. Sometimes you have to discover it.

So, blogging is my version of that free write. I start with a memory, like my favorite teacher, and make a point.

Maybe you’ll recall something similar and respond.

I think Mrs. Pruett would be proud.