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ELEMENTS OF DIGGING STYLE
Friday May 29, 2015
Frogs leap, chimps swing from branches.
Birds fly.
Writers write.
Can’t help ourselves.
Not obsessive-compulsively (or is it?).
Cannot escape – any more than we escape blood course through our body – neither blessing or curse, contains far more of life than simple happiness.
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” – Dorothy Parker
Writing for self – is this pain/nirvana contradiction where learning gestates, growth spurs, joy occurs and excruciating satisfaction can be found.
Like finding nuggets.
Tons more ore …
More we dig, more ore we work, more nuggets.
Writing isn’t about nuggets or finding wisdom. About more digging ways – into something I don’t understand, how I dig myself out of things I thought I did …
Writing isn’t misery, but I couldn’t imagine any better way to deal with misery than to spill it on this page.
What I’ve learned more succinctly than I might ever have imagined, is that is in inescapable.
Live breathing to a live person – it isn’t something you think about. You just do it.
Writing is air.
Writing for writing sake only in hot air.
Writing for readers to be entertained, enlightened or moved to action is futility. If it happens, it happens. Most often a ‘near-miss’ is the best one might expect.
Digging doesn’t cause happiness.
Anymore than writing causes or cures anything.
Like breathing keeps writers alive, though friends might want to shoot us to put us out of our misery.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: 8C/47F, cloudy with high risk of rain; road damp from overnight showers, Gusta sniffing a hot rabbit trail chose a somewhat schitzoid path, I followed/limped along – air so fresh, so fresh, impossible to imagine anything but a fantastic day ahead.
Reader feedback:
BEYOND TO DO
My favorite musing, Mark. “To-Done!” It’s nice to step back momentarily and enjoy what’s To-Done vs what’s To-Do, to silently appreciate yourself rather than silently stress yourself. Oftentimes we make so, so, so much look so, so, so easy. Like ducks on a pond my mentor used to say. Like magicians - Ta-dah!...... “Ta-done!!!”, CR, Calgary, AB
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