the giddy grammarian

I sat next to him; it was very romantic. He had my complete and total attention. I was studying every nuance of his words, carefully weighing and assessing them. His first sentence had snatched my attention from reality like a hero snatches a damsel in distress from the jaws of death. In that moment, all I cared about was helping him achieve his dream. Unaware of myself, I leaned in closer to the source of the words. Instinctively, I reached out my hand and traced a smooth line beneath

a part of his sentence that sounded awkward. My face was only inches from the paper, and my pencil absentmindedly underlined the puzzling, fascinating words again. "Hmmm....this part doesn't sound quite right," I told him. "Yeah," he said. As I studied the sentence, flipping words around in my mind and trying possible variants, I realized I didn't remember what the author of the paper I was reading looked like. I glanced up quickly to remind myself. Oh, right. Blondish hair, nearly colorless eyes, nice smile. check. Back to the paper. Maybe if you changed the compound verb into a participle? beautiful. When the author of a paper is leaning over the paper, too, honestly evaluating my suggestion, and excitedly running his creative hands through the pile of words on the page. And when something I've said makes a rough path of a well-begun phrase smooth and the author laughs to find the blockage out of his way...I love it when I connect with a paper like that.

Let's be honest and girly for a moment (what else can I be in a pink blog?). By the end of the tutorial, I wanted him to ask me out. Not because he was stellarly good looking. I don't remember his name, although I asked him. And I don't remember that much about our conversation (although I remember clearly that he didn't put "spawned" in the passive voice, and that we eventually settled on the word "hatched" after checking two different thesauruses). And I didn't want him to take me in his arms, or to buy me a million roses. I wanted him to write to me. Because he had written the most interesting and compelling personal statement for his dental school application I had ever read.

I've noticed this about myself. Good writing is attractive to me. Incredibly. It's like a magnet, or maybe a black hole. I read a good point or well-expressed idea and I get all gooey inside. Machiavelli nearly spoiled me for other men after I read The Prince for the first time.

One of my favorite things about my last relationship was that sometimes he would read bits from his journal to me, or stories that he had written, and he was a good writer. Everytime I just wanted to curl up on his knee and purr while he read (like a cat, not a pole dancer).

Because let's face it, proclaim it, and celebrate it: good writing is captivating; it's seductive; it's sexy.