|
LIFE SENTENCED
Thursday Nov. 19, 2015
What is better than bread, sweeter than wine, tastier than fine chocolate?
Better than anything carnal I’ve known.
Worse than grieving when it fails, better than anything when it works.
Longer lasting too …
Writer’s conundrum. Not to paint feelings on pages or eviscerate their own belly, but rather to write that magnificent moving sentence. One which lasts. And lasts. Spectacular sentence. Short. Or one that runs on and on. Memorable, memorize-able, inspiring deep thought, triggering immediate reaction, one to be quoted, tweeted and often repeated. This elusive sentence should define life, be life, solve some need or end a quest.
I have acquired this quest, this compulsion, this need, for writing to be part of daily life, perhaps defining it. I doubt this quest for spectacular sentences ever ends, hope it doesn’t.
I get a charge out of loading my column each morning on Medium, because as I load it, I get a cue from them telling me the timing.
Most mornings I get a ‘two minute read’. Sometimes ‘three minutes’. Rarely longer. There is a reason for that – not their notification, but my writing shorter pieces this past couple of years. Time constraint would be an easy excuse – one everyone would understand, but that’s not my reason. Trying to say more with less, reduce and distill a sometimes tireless internal dialog into short digestible intelligent bites has become a goal – not for reader convenience, though that seems to have contributed something for them – but for this writer to become better disciplined, in terms of form and message. Tighter. Smaller.
Less is more. So much more.
That kind of thinking …
Mark Kolke
written / published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: -5C/22F, clear and calm, no moon in sight – just magnificent stars, and silence in the air but my brain is busy … a longer walk than usual is no substitute for going to the gym, which I’m likely not doing today … too busy getting ready for a Toastmaster conference in Saskatoon this weekend; Gusta enjoyed her workout, do doubt looking forward to romping with all the other dogs at the kennel tomorrow …
|
|
