Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Simple is Better

Simple is Better

Last night I got drawn into a sensual prose piece that went on forever. It was mostly a man’s harangue at his girlfriend who had already made up her mind and had little more to say. She sits next to him in the car and motel saying little as he waxes on and on.

I haven’t posted it yet….it isn’t really finished…The prose flowed more like free verse poetry and when I broke it into lines the epistle ran for fifteen pages. Most was a one sided view of their relationship but a third got into some of the physical aspects.

Then I wrote another vignette and got about halfway through…. About a writer who interviews a hooker in order to develop a sketch of a character in his novel. How when he expands and embellishes the sketch she becomes the new character with the characteristics he improves upon to make her more interesting to the reader. It is really turning out well.

I don’t know why the sudden interest in the sensual motif. It comes in spells and has little to do with the affection Linda and I show to one another. Our human sexuality is such a powerful and overwhelming force that it seems to lurk out there on the edge of everything I write… and often right there in the middle. However, I am finding that as I grow older that the spirit remains even though the old curmudgeon finds himself on the backside of the physicality curve.

One of the things I have discovered is that less is better. That is a truism I try to get across to my students, who get carried away with all forms of modifiers. When I edit my work if I see a line like…“ She looked at him with steely eyes and addressed him in a voice, fraught with contempt...” gets changed to “She gave him a hard look and said with contempt…”

The Greeks were said to have written like this….”The red sun set on the horizon” instead of “As radiant beams of daylight settled upon the distant waves, the soft ambient glow of muted sunshine, shimmered across placid waters and sank languidly below the distant horizon.”

I don’t know about you but I like the first version better.