I had an interesting invitation the other day, it was from the organizers of a literary conference, and they were holding a seminar on how the Internet had changed the language of writing. A researcher had come across my blog writing about my decision to put productivity and content on the blog above proofreading, correct punctuation, spelling and grammar.

I do some proofreading, and I often go back and correct typos.

I do not believe grammar and punctuation have much to do with good writing, and I made a decision when I started the blog that it would be a full account of my life. I wanted there to be a steady stream of relevant content, even if it meant there misspelled words and subjunctive clauses in the wrong place sometimes.

When you write as much as I do and as often, typos are somewhat inevitable. To proof my writing more carefully would diminish the content drastically. So would waiting for proofreading software.

My decision was one of the best i have ever made. Internet writing is fast and informal, and my blog has grown steadily ever since I started it in 2007. Subjunctive clauses are not important to my readers either. The blog has four million visits a year.

I should say I always hated the teaching of writing and grammar in American classrooms, it always valued arcane rules over the real values of good writing – emotion, clarity and authenticity. I started teaching writing because I was sick of people telling how much they hated the writing classes they had taken.

The teachers of writing generally, and I am generalizing, teach their students how to feel stupid and inadequate, not to gain confidence and write with honesty and excitement.

The Internet culture values productivity, also. People like to see new stuff when they come to take a look. So do I.

I have seen so many people and students shut down over the years by the fear that their language or grammar is not perfect, they learned to literally be terrified of any kind of writing that had any kind of errors or was not, in their minds, letter-perfect.

The professor who invited to the conference said they wanted me because it seemed that I was able to be successful, attract and audience and write well,  even though I often write  that grammar and spelling were just not that important to me. I think she was trying to compliment me, perhaps to lure me there.

There was no chance of my going. I was imagining one of those academic panels – it was at Yale – on how the Internet has brought about the death of literacy, to which I am sure I have greatly contributed.

I have never done well with snobs, from the border collie ones to the literary ones. I just don’t fit into groups, and never really want to join them. On those rare occasions when I give in and do join, I am gone in a flash, as soon as someone tries to tell me what to think or say.

Groups and labels teach people not to think, and I love to think. Generally, the combative, intrusive and intensely argumentative tone on social media kills thought, shuts thinking down in an instant. It is a way to declare, not think. My blog is a monologue, not a dialogue, and it helps me to think.

bedlamfarm.com is to me, a memoir in the classic literary  sense. No true literary person would see it that way. The literary snobs have always turned their noses up at blogs.

I have embraced a new tradition of writing that is pushing many of the old traditions aside. Most writers I know are horrified that I have committed so much of myself to the blog rather than to classical ideas about writing, like books. Blogs are not considered books, and my blog would never be considered what it truly is, a new kind of living memoir.

In not spending hours agonizing about clauses and spellings, I am committing a kind of heresy It is just not the way writing is supposed to be done. In the ten years or so of the blog, I have received perhaps a dozen complaints about typos and misspellings. I am grateful to be free of that pressure. It has nothing to do with good writing.

Lots of people would disagree with that. Writing is never supposed to be about what the people want, it is abaout what the writers want.  That’s why Amazon has upended the publishing world, it cares about what people want, not what publishers want.

I told the kind person inviting me that I have chosen to live apart from argument, as opposed to discussion and genuine debate. I couldn’t accept the invitation because my idea about writing is not an argument. I wouldn’t urge or argue that anyone else should do what I do, nor do I need other people to argue with the way I do it.

It works for me, I love my blog, it fits my manic and sometimes disassociatve writing style, and my need to share my life fully and openly, something I could never really do in a book, which is somewhat outdated the moment is it is finished. I am proud of my blog, if I am ever to have written a great work, this is it.  Sometimes the blog is very good and sometimes not so good and sometimes very bad, just like life.

But it is always authentic and real. Some people even pay me for writing it.

I never met an English teacher who thought I could write well, or told me so. Every one of them wanted me to study grammar and sentence structure, something every student I ever knew hated. Every one of them made me feel frustrated and dumb.

Writing should never be something anyone hates to learn, it should be pure voice, joy and affirmation. It is about finding one’s voice and place in the world. It is about knowing who you are, and fearlessly searching for the truth.

The blog is, despite its clunky name, a re-thinking of what writing is. It is informal, impulsive, and because of its timelessness, very real. Blogs are about the return of the individual to writing, you don’t need critics, reviewers, marketers or publishers. You can just do it, at whatever length and in whatever form you like. You can proofread for hours, fearing a mistake. Or you can proofread in minutes, and then go write something else.

I love books, but this is the right form for me.

You can spell beautifully and be a wonderful writer, you can spell horribly and be a wonderful writer. It depends on what you are writing.

For me,  is not an argument for me to debate at  some Yale University conference.

People will either read my writing or not, and as someone who has taught writing for a long time, I am firm in the believe that writing is grounded in the heart and the head, not the elements of style. There really is no right or wrong, only what works for you. Or for me.

More writers have been shut down and killed off by teachers and their subjunctive clauses than all the tyrants in the world.

I don’t need to go and argue that idea, and I can’t recommend it to anyone else. It is not an argument.