Catching Idle Butterflies

Eating words � sometimes not so tasteful

I could write everything I want to say in a private journal, either online or in a notebook, for no eyes other than mine, or my family after I’m dead and need to clean out all my crap I’ve been accumulating for the last 30-odd years.

It’s safe, because then no one has the opportunity to argue with my opinions. I can happily go through life (and death) thinking “I was right.”

By plastering my words here and other places for the world to see, and at the same time give them free opportunity to share their point of view, I sometimes am forced to eat my words. While I may learn something new – always a good thing – I see what I wrote and think, “I so want to delete that right now! How silly of me!”

I leave it, though – most times. Some have been bad enough they needed to be removed. Not in this case though.

While most people agreed with my entry yesterday, at least on some level, Budroe presented a whole new point of view that after reading it seemed so obvious, I should have seen it before.

Here it is in it’s entirety so you don’t have to click on the previous entry’s comments:

Your interesting entry caused me to ponder a question. This is usually a bad thing, amongst rational humanoids, but I digress.

Which do you think is easier, or better, or of greater value to society? When producing wine, one must understand grapes, soil, climate, and agronomy. Chemistry is good, and so is the ability to recognize a quality cork.

How much moreso is it to create distilled, clean, refreshing water? I believe one of our biggest problems is that we tend to prefer one over the other as consumers, yet want only vintage status for our products of water.

Sadly, the only thing that most consumers are looking for is something wet, and we seem to not understand that. It is always a surprise when an unknown wine has a surprising bouquet, or a fiendishly addictive taste.

Many people now pay lots of money for the very same water they can retrieve from their tap. But, the inferred or implied value is an easy sell because it is "distilled", or "pure" or in a pretty green bottle. Even when we know it is water, we don't want to believe it is ONLY water.

So where are we, as writers in this conundrum? We are just trying to string together the perfect words to communicate our story. It is not so much for us to determine the vintage, or the distillation purity of the product. That is for the reader alone. I still trust readers. Make sense?

In His Care,

Budroe

The last paragraph grabbed me, especially about trusting readers. I will say to start I hope I didn’t imply I don’t trust the reader, because that’s far from the case. If so, I apologize.

Okay, with that out of the way . . .

I heartily agree with Budroe here. We shouldn’t worry about where our product will end up – on the expensive wine rack, or in the water cooler of the nearest convenience store. We write our story, period. Yes, we keep the reader in mind when we write, but the reader will determine whether or not it’s wine or water.

But I’m repeating (butchering is more like it) what Budroe wrote, so I will end it there.

Change ‘o subject.

I’m close to finishing my NaNoWriMo novel I wrote in 2005. I'd say another 5,000-7,000 words, 10,000 at the most. I decided I needed to finish it before I tackle my other novel (the one that needs to be rewritten). I'm tired of putting it off, so I had to give myself an incentive to finish it. If you wonder why I haven’t been commenting much in your blog, that’s why.