My Turn: The ink in my blood hasn't dried

The ink in my blood hasn’t dried, and so I’m back.

Before you proceed to the comics, obits or sports page, hold on. I’ve got a few carefully chosen words.

Maybe limited space is a good thing. I have just enough space here to continue to share my slice-of-life stories — after a two-year hiatus — and now only 200 words to get me into trouble.

That means less slips of the pen, right? Or maybe less space to get myself out of a hole.

Now, that line above is a fragment. An incomplete sentence. I know. I’m an English teacher and I strictly forbid my students from using fragments.

Ever!

I also forbid them from overusing exclamation points!!!

But I’m a journalist. Once you know the rules, you can break them.

And me being a newsroom veteran with 20 years of journalism under my sometimes rhinestone-studded belt, I know the rules.

I can break the rules because I know the editor likes fresh-baked brownies. Not that I would bribe him. Betty Crocker OK, David?

As I began above, the ink in my blood hasn’t dried. My former editor in Hobbs, Manny Marquez, said, “Once the ink gets into your blood, you’re hooked!”

Help! I’m drowning in ink!