I is no write no good

I am reading a book called “Revised Prose”

6+ years ago I was liberated from the jail called High School English. Fast forward to the present, and I am writing again. I suck. My writing sucks. My prose is a suck. I lack many of the important components of English. I’ve lost my confidence. My fingers type the words, but my brain is divided. One half scans each letter and the other filters each word. Is this the right word?`

What is the big deal? Why fret over “just writing”?

I want to write about epic memories and monumental feelings. No drawing or song, or picture can capture fragile human moments. I want the capture to be clear, captivating, and, put simply, to be enjoyable to read.

So Why Fight? To fight sentences like this:

“It seems that I have no way to give quarter to the movements of my heart which are often captive to an over-sensitized standard of literary perfectionism for composition.”

And convert them to

“My perfection debilitates my written communication of emotion.”

I have a lot of sentence fat. Not solely in writing, but also in speaking. Here are my top useless phrases.

“I think” – Why say “I think?” There is a name on the paper. There is a body forming words. No one will have problems identifying who is talking or who is thinking. This phrase adds uncertainty to the following ideas. “I think I’m happy” sounds more shakey than “I’m happy”. “I’m uncertain” replaces “I think” as a good alternate.

“It seems” – Yet another phrase killed with overuse. The meaning of this particular phrase remains fugitive. The best paraphrase I can think of is – “I see something similar to X idea, but I’m not sure….

“is _____ed (past tense)” – “Is bettered”, “Is marked”, “Is used”, bah! It’s a present tense “to be” verb with a past tense modifier. All the previous phrases should be replaced with their active counterparts. This is called “who kicked who?” Keep the active verb, and place the object and subject in the correct places.

Any prepositional phrase. Of course, in all honesty with all respect, who could imagine an idea of such preposterous assumptions of pride above a statement so clear with clarity? Hee hee

Summary: This is why I hate journaling. I like my memories. I like having a complete record. I just don’t like the way I immortalized them with words.