My tenth grade English teacher, Miss Nagle, taught me to write. In those days before computers, I hammered out my papers on a Smith Corona, which sounds like something that should be served in a long-necked bottle with a lime but actually was an electric typewriter. Miss Nagle was ruthless. Her red-penciled comments splattered the smudgy carbon-copied pages like drops of blood. She was a stickler for grammar, and after three years under her tutelage—first in her class, then as an editor of the school newspaper—I became a sentence structure snob, too.

By the time I got to college, I was a perfectionist about style, often at the expense of substance. Research wasn’t as easy back then as it is today when you can find any reference you need with the click of a mouse. It meant actually going to the library, which, for some reason, intimidated me. Many of my manuscripts came back with remarks like, “Very well-written, but needs more depth.” I often sat for hours in front of that Smith Corona, searching for the perfect word. Writing took forever. It was a chore.

But not any more. Blogging has completely transformed the writing experience for me. I don’t how it happened, but gradually I began relaxing my standards, and suddenly I started having fun. Sentence fragments! No comma after the third item in a series! Using a preposition to end a sentence with! Unnecessary use of exclamation points!!! Whoo! Now the ideas flow so freely I sometimes can’t type fast enough to keep up with them. Sorry, Ms. Nagle. You taught me well, but times have changed.

I’m not saying the only cure for a bad case of writer’s block is to ditch your Strunk and White’s (the style bible, not the bar where you go to drink your Smith Corona). But relaxing the rules sure can free up a lot of mental energy.

There’s just one thing I still can’t bring myself to do. I won’t split an infinitive. After all, even verbs have feelings.