Occasionally I have an urge to post nothing but scat.
No, not that, you filthy person. You know--Ella Fitzgerald bee-doodly-op-bopping for 32 bars on "It Don't Mean a Thing." That kind of scat, hep cat. Skiddly-diddly-oh-no!
That sort of thing doesn't translate well into pixels, though. It's more of an expression of a generally positive and somewhat overflowing creative urge, a sort of writerly, procreative yawp. Meeeee I'm making word-worlds! Thickening plots! Sharpening characters! Bee-deep-bop-oh-whoahh-zaaa!
No, not that, you filthy person. You know--Ella Fitzgerald bee-doodly-op-bopping for 32 bars on "It Don't Mean a Thing." That kind of scat, hep cat. Skiddly-diddly-oh-no!
That sort of thing doesn't translate well into pixels, though. It's more of an expression of a generally positive and somewhat overflowing creative urge, a sort of writerly, procreative yawp. Meeeee I'm making word-worlds! Thickening plots! Sharpening characters! Bee-deep-bop-oh-whoahh-zaaa!
See? Doesn't work in print at all, at least, not directly. That energy has to be translated into some kind of coherence, confined within the tale. Otherwise it's just 200 pages of someone telling you how creative they are...
I celebrate my words, and sing my words,
And what I write you shall read,
For every word belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I write and invite my words,
I write and type at my ease observing my page of written work...
See? It's crap, doesn't work at all. Among the worst things you can do as a writer is to be overly impressed with yourself. It makes you lazy, and you'll end up substituting cleverness for storytelling, and saying things like Well you might not be my audience when what's really happened is the reader got to your Big Big Idea and found that it wasn't worth the effort it took to get there.
Was that my Big Big Idea for this post? Heavens, it might've been. I'll have to go sit in the corner now and think about what I've done.
I celebrate my words, and sing my words,
And what I write you shall read,
For every word belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I write and invite my words,
I write and type at my ease observing my page of written work...
See? It's crap, doesn't work at all. Among the worst things you can do as a writer is to be overly impressed with yourself. It makes you lazy, and you'll end up substituting cleverness for storytelling, and saying things like Well you might not be my audience when what's really happened is the reader got to your Big Big Idea and found that it wasn't worth the effort it took to get there.
Was that my Big Big Idea for this post? Heavens, it might've been. I'll have to go sit in the corner now and think about what I've done.
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