I recently came across this quote by William Zinser, author of On Writing Well. Said he, “There’s not much to be said about the period, except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.”
I mentally reviewed my writing. Each word is a precious child that I cling to forever and ever. Pull out my four-generation family group sheet and I can show how each word is related by blood and sweat and tears.
Then, I wondered if my writing was like the freeway last Saturday during the snowstorm– snow packed roads, cars out of control slipping and sliding and crashing and bashing. Do my words slide out of control over the page? Crash and bash each other?
Maybe I need to be like a vulture and pick strips of carrion* from my writing and leave naught but the desiccated white bones of nouns and verbs. Maybe I need to arrive at periods sooner than I am wont to be. Not pellmell lickety split dashing through a sentence but maybe with more poste haste than normal. Maybe.
That book has been on my to-read list for the greater part of my life. ‘Tis about time I read it . . .
*carrion – dead and putrefying flesh (pretty good noun to describe the fleshy parts of my sentences, eh?)