It’s time for another edition of The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by Ninja Captain, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

The question for today: Since it's back to school time, let's talk English class. What's a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

I can’t think of a writing rule, but just using proper, stifled, passive phrases and sentences-which works for school papers-doesn’t work for writing a story. Eliminating words such as “was”-I had to learn that.

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My...