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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Practising the art

Well, by now, you - one of the eight reading this blog - should have guessed that this is an echo-chamber, not an auditorium. I'm not really trying to engage an audience just now: I'm trying things out; mainly to see how embarrassed I am by my writing when I read it the next day - always a good measure in my opinion.

So, the main things I've found:

  • I over-qualify, use too many adjectives. Half my writing is unwriting. Like embryonic development: where cells are shed from a mitten of undifferentiated flesh to define fingers and thumbs.
  • I have forgotten the rules of grammar for speech.
  • Parenthesised clauses feel like smug little asides from a knowing author to a complicit reader (don't you think?)
  • I enjoy writing sentence by sentence, and risk losing the paragraph's meaning.
  • I want to chop out great screeds of fine writing1 the morning after. But that wouldn't be in the spirit of blogging this stuff. On the other hand, I've cut some real self-indulgent crap, cheating or not.
  • I write at night. I hate it in the morning. It still makes me cringe a week later. After a month it looks like someone else has written it. That's when to judge.
  • Typography makes a difference. I just switched from helvetica to optima2 as the main font, now everything seems a little less immediate.
  • I love semicolons.
Any thoughts? I'd turn comment moderation off, but there'd be buckets of cock spam.

1 calling something fine writing is not complimentary, ask a sub-editor.

2you need to have it to see it.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:11 am

    I think ( and I'm *absolutely* NObody so don't worry about what I might say )that

    1) if you stop trying so hard, the work will flow more easily and will be more entertaining to read.

    2) Forget about typography!

    3) Write about things both real and simple at first before trying the more complicated things.

    4) Read, read, read.

    Sorry to be such a butt! Luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, thank you absolutely nobody. I don't want to write about things that are real or simple. I want to write space opera.

    Thanks though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Was that a bit harsh? Wasn't meant to be. Sorry if that's how it came across.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous3:13 am

    Nope. I laughed. Clearly, you have to write about what you *want* to write about. What would be the point otherwise??

    Sincerely,

    NObody

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks old chap.

    Comment appreciated anyways

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous3:38 am

    not a chap, though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Really? The not-chapness quality of you?

    You haven't found your way here through zefrank.com by any chance?

    If not, go and sign up for the ORG on the zefrank.com, it's a community of top people - I think you'd enjoy it (this claim based on the evidence of the 20 or so words you have contributed)

    ReplyDelete

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