Thoughts I have at 8:38 in the morning

By Dogberry's Watch · Jan 16, 2020 · 317 · 2
  1. I had a dream the other night that I'm thinking of turning into a short story and then posting that up here for critique. I've only entered poetry contests and haven't put much else of my work up here aside from blog posts and journal entries. But the blog posts and journals are more stream of consciousness and not all that good "writing."

    I do want to get feedback eventually on stuff I write, but I'm also very shy when it comes to showing it. I feel like I know how to write, but when I put the pen to paper, or cursor to page, I go all ordinary and use the same words over and over.

    The writing program I use has a feature that shows me how many times I've used a certain word, and I check it every now and then. I'm determined to use that function when I go through and final edit things so it's not all basic writing and is the kind of work I want it to be.

    Not lofty, just more intelligent sounding than if a kid read their diary out loud. But that's the struggle with first person, isn't it? Everything reads like a diary entry unless you find the magical way of making it not.
    Rzero and Moon like this.

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  1. GrahamLewis
    Working as an editor, one thing I watched for was, ironically perhaps in the context of your blog, the concept known as "inelegant variation," when an author deliberately uses a slightly different word or phrasing to describe the same thing, simply for the purpose of variety. That can be annoying and distracting for the reader, and usually weakens the writing, That of course applies to essential words and phrases, not to what I would call "background words," the ones that carry the water, so to speak, for the essential ones.

    Of course we also watched out for, and tried to strike, those pesky waste-words, like overuse of that, or one of the, or which is, not to mention excessive use of passive tense.

    I know what you mean about letting your blog-writing be stream of conscious and not constrained by edits and re-edits, but at the same time I would suggest that writing is a discipline, and the more you treat as such, the better you will be for it, and the self-edits will become a lot more "automatic." And whatever message you hope to convey in your blog posts will be more clear to your readers.

    As always, IMHO.
    GrahamLewis, Jan 16, 2020
      Dogberry's Watch likes this.
  2. Dogberry's Watch
    I think for the purposes of the blog posting, as long as I'm not making glaringly obvious errors, they'll stay stream of consciousness. But when it comes to the actual storytelling, I will focus more on better control of what is said.
    Dogberry's Watch, Jan 16, 2020
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