I hate punctuation… I'd kick it’s little ass if I could. Punctuation has been FFF-ing up my life up for over thirty years. 

I got my first diary on Christmas Eve when I was eight years old— the same night, my dad shot himself. From then on, I wrote endlessly… a stream of consciousness… using my own little flow of dots and dashes. 

As a kid, we moved constantly. I changed schools 8 or 9 times before fifth grade — so I missed compound sentences, comma splices, and conjunctions completely. 

In middle school, my stepdad was obsessed with my report card, and punctuation kept me grounded for six weeks at a time— I missed most of the spend the night parties, slow skates, and football games on Friday nights. Every boy I liked broke up with me because “who wants to go with a girl that can’t go anywhere.”

The worst blow came when I was in junior college and entered a statewide essay contest. My American Literature teacher, Mrs.Ross kept me after class and said, “I’ve got some fantastic news! You won the contest!" 

A couple of seconds later, Mrs. Clark (the dean of the school ) knocked on the door. 

I overheard her talking to Mrs. Ross out in the hall. "Yes, we all agree she wrote the best paper, but we can't give this award to someone who doesn't understand basic punctuation and grammar. Honestly, I don't know how she graduated high school."

It went from pride to shame in seconds. 

I’ve felt insecure and embarrassed about my skills ever since. But, I found a way to make it as a writer, the one place I could without understanding punctuation-- -As a SONGWRITER! And I've been doing it professionally for twenty-five years.

I made the “Songwriters Bad Grammar Hall of Fame” and went #1 on Billboard with my song, "My Best Friend," recorded by Tim McGraw (and written with my friend Bill Luther.)  

The first line says, "I never had no one I could count on, I've been let down so many times."

The name of my last publishing company with Warner Chappell was "The Queen of Dot Dot Dot ... Music." That's because I still feel dyslexic and use… the ellipsis or his buddy Dash wherever I don’t know what to do.

I know there are a lot of comma counting out there-- who know all the rules and love to point them out. Honestly, when I see someone sprinkling semicolons everywhere-- I think what a dickhead. Spelling and math, the answers stay the same, but people are still arguing about an Oxford comma. It's getting better because most texts are just a three-paragraph sentences.

I don’t know who made up these stupid rules (the nitpicky parts), probably the same people who decided bullshit was a bad word. 

Some of my favorite sentences from literature are run-ons. 

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." Jack Kerouac

I know the easy ones— use a period at the end of a sentence, and my two other favorites- the … the ( parentheses) and !!!  

It’s the comma that’s a little bitch! I know to use a comma when you take a pause, or make a list-- example--apples, bananas, and grapes.

Emailing editors and literary agents — I was on eggshells that my mistakes, would be like glowing neon splatters under a black light in a motel room. 

Finally, l found one punctuation rule I could remember for these little shits. FANBOYS - it's an acronym for FOR, AND, NOR, BUT, OR, YET, and SO. And FANBOYS follow comma girl everywhere she goes. 

Or that's what the fucking teacher said, and then an editor I worked with on my book told me, "Remember with commas- when in doubt leave it out." 

WTF!? 

I don't know if I'm the only one that struggles with this, but I would love to.