If you were a “good student” in school, you may sometimes find your creating writing strangled by the long-ingrained impulse to write correctly. Sometimes I forget to allow my characters to stumble, to speak in fragments, to say what comes out.

Speech, thankfully, is not robotic and grammatically perfect; it’s sometimes rushed, sometimes painful, often quirky or unconventional. Author M.T. Anderson is a master of capturing authentic voice. Am I legally allowed to pull a quote from one of his books and post it as an example? I don’t know.

Every time I read him, I’m reminded how much I need to let go.