hello again
i know i haven't written in a while. i tend to go in and out of cycles where i need to write everyday and times when i want to wait for a significant amount of time. it's a thing...
i am officially on vacation from work. next week, i will be in aruba. thank goodness.
i miss being in the ocean. the warm, clear water and the rolling waves make me feel the most alive. believe it or not, i fear the water. i have had many near-drowning incidents under my belt. but that has never and will never stop me from longing to be in the water. i love the irony of my greatest fear being the only thing that makes me feel more alive in the world.
my co-worker showed me the first few pages of this "short-story" that he is writing. i did not have the heart to tell him that i thought it was garbage. i figured, who the hell am i to say? the story was bizarre. but even then, it could have been gripping. instead, it rambled on endlessly with too much unnecessary expository information that crowded every paragraph. every sentence began with a description of the scene, plus the character, plus some over-reaching effort to relate or compare it to something else. for example...
"Jack was a piss-smelling hulk of a man, like a homeless, wandering Arnold Schwarzennegar trudging through the subway car as if he were a gored rhinoceros seeking revenge on this hunter who is nothing more than an immature imp of a child barely strong enough to clumsily hold the metal bat."
and it went on. i should have told him that you don't need to paint a picture with words using EVERY color of the rainbow. it's ok to have short sentences. it's ok to get to the point in fewer than 100 words in one sentence. i wanted to take a red pen to those pages. the only i did was circle two type-o's and told him it was cool and i couldn't wait to read the rest of it. it can only get better.
well, i am going to enjoy my vacation now. i hope all of you out there are well. g'nite.
i am officially on vacation from work. next week, i will be in aruba. thank goodness.
i miss being in the ocean. the warm, clear water and the rolling waves make me feel the most alive. believe it or not, i fear the water. i have had many near-drowning incidents under my belt. but that has never and will never stop me from longing to be in the water. i love the irony of my greatest fear being the only thing that makes me feel more alive in the world.
my co-worker showed me the first few pages of this "short-story" that he is writing. i did not have the heart to tell him that i thought it was garbage. i figured, who the hell am i to say? the story was bizarre. but even then, it could have been gripping. instead, it rambled on endlessly with too much unnecessary expository information that crowded every paragraph. every sentence began with a description of the scene, plus the character, plus some over-reaching effort to relate or compare it to something else. for example...
"Jack was a piss-smelling hulk of a man, like a homeless, wandering Arnold Schwarzennegar trudging through the subway car as if he were a gored rhinoceros seeking revenge on this hunter who is nothing more than an immature imp of a child barely strong enough to clumsily hold the metal bat."
and it went on. i should have told him that you don't need to paint a picture with words using EVERY color of the rainbow. it's ok to have short sentences. it's ok to get to the point in fewer than 100 words in one sentence. i wanted to take a red pen to those pages. the only i did was circle two type-o's and told him it was cool and i couldn't wait to read the rest of it. it can only get better.
well, i am going to enjoy my vacation now. i hope all of you out there are well. g'nite.