Saturday, December 8, 2007

A Change in Circumstances

After some significant upheaval this week, it shakes out that I will no longer have Internet access every day. I'll still post on weekends and, when I can get away during the day, I'll pop in somewhere that I can get on and post on weekdays. I can't promise daily posts but I'll keep going. Thanks for sticking with me. You never know how long it will be before things change again!

It's been so long since I posted that I barely remember how. We watched The Shawshank Redemption last night and I was reminded of how many people speak of Stephen King as a hack because he doesn't use many big words and does use a generous sprinkling of coarse language and topics.

I hope that a good many of them saw that movie and then read the short story on which it was based. Perhaps it will open their minds to the idea that you have to put those words together just right to build something that effective out of nothing at all. Stephen King may never win the Nobel Prize for literature but that doesn't make him a bad writer. It makes him accessible.

I meant that to sound more like encouragement and less like a defense of Mr. King. He's certainly come up with a stinker or two of his own, as have all of us. But judging a writer by superficial circumstances can lead to miss some great writing.

Read everything. Read in styles and on topics that you don't think you'll enjoy. Pay attention to what works and what doesn't in books, short stories, and articles. Read on-line about any topic that strikes your fancy. If you avoid reading snobbery, you open up a world of writing possibilities. You will uncover new words, and new ways of putting them together.

Gee, can you tell I've found more time to read this week? Maybe being off-line isn't all bad.


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