This ! Makes the Sentence Shout!

2024.10.15

Good morning that wonderful way.

How is it today?

Still too soon to tell?

How's your spelling?

Grammar in check?

All engines go?

So you know, just so you know, wordplay and away we go.

New keys this morning.

Did you know that? You can replace the keys on your keyboard. Mechanical boards, at least.

A big deal if you're a writer.

Instruments matter. Comfort matters.

There's also the switches.

On some the switch, the piece that goes up and down when pressed is replaceable. Different amounts of pressure needed to make each letter show up. Speeeeed.

Comfort matters.

I change mine out every so often, still searching for an irreplaceable favorite.

These are comfortable today so we'll call it a win and move on.

Make a date with yourself. Know during that time you're going to write. Something. Keep the same time everyday and stick to it.

Perhaps one day you'll only write one word. Make certain you do.

Quality is the thing. Not the meaning of the sentences, how you feel putting them down.

If run run faster faster is comfort for you, sounds best your song, then Go!

That's not comfort for most, though.

So many books on writing these days are about sprinting and speed and quantity.

Quantity matters, but it's a quantity of quality that matters most.

Quality comes from a concerned comfort.

If you wouldn't want to read it, you shouldn't write it.

That's your first rule. If it doesn't interest you, you'll be lucky to have a reader at all.

You should like to make sentences.

Simple, like you just found out from your first grade teacher.

Subject and verb all strung together by thread-like words and punctuation marks.

Look at this! It's called an exclamation point. It's how you make the sentence shout!

That gets your first grade self excited. If it doesn't, pick another activity. There are so many other ways to spend your time. Ways you find interesting.

I read everything I can on people's ideas of what writing is about, the best way to do it, how to shape stories. Because I love to do it and automatically have something in common with the author.

Books titled things like, "How to Write 5,000 Words in an Hour!" break my heart a little.

"There's more to life than speeding it up." Gandhi said.

He was right about so many things. This is one of them.

The trick, one of those books tells you, is if you really want to up your word count you have to turn to dictation. That will really increase the number of words.

The only trouble with that is speaking isn't writing. But congratulations to you for talking so fast.

Different neurons are fired to make the words, if you want to get all science like about it. So the output is different, because the manner of expression is different.

I can tell immediately by the author's voice whether or not they spoke an article or story through a dictation service or wrote it.

A writer's ear hears it.

I tried it a few times without dictation. A lifetime writing. I type fast (or incredibly slow). I hit over 5k an hour for fun.

It wasn't.

I've thought of writing a sequel to 'How to Write 5k Words an Hour.'

I'll call it, 'How to Get Anyone to Read It.'

With speaking our words are limited by what our mouths can do.

The sentences will never be as good. Dictated words are caged letters. They never got where they were going, falsely arrested along the way.

Like a game of telephone, they lose a little of their meaning having to jump through shapes of air to get to the screen.

Speak a short little image of a childhood memory into a dictation service. Revisit the same memory after a couple of days and then write it down only. Speak the lines in your head, if you like first, but don't manipulate breath. Just type or make lines with your pen.

Same memory, different medium.

See what you think. How it sounds.

If you prefer the spoken one, change careers.

Journalism, news of the day journalism, lends itself to dictation.

That's fine. People ask, "What's happening in the world?" They want a quick reply in the form of how they asked.

The exchange goes better.

If this makes little sense to you, consider typing in an internet chat group, "What's the current news?"

Then, have someone call you back on the phone to tell you.

Different.

The space between a keyboard key and the screen that shapes the letter is like the ink in your pen.

Set a date. You wouldn't stand up another person you set a date with, don't walk away from yourself.

Sit.

Write a few words. Write them fast. It does help to scrawl whatever happens to be on your mind. Even a: "What am I doing here? I know nothing worth reading will come from this..." Even that is a good start. And finish. But do write something.

It will take sometime, many dates, before you can write well slowly.

It's a matter of trust and comfort.

Your dreams have to trust your ability, your consistency, first.

Stuffy stuffy grammar girl will be there for some time. She's a beast from an unholy land. Shut her up and shut spell-check off. The content of the words is the important thing.

There's a reason for the pun. The best content comes from a place where we're the most content.

If you're angry, be content that your writing sounds it.

You wouldn't write a love letter that sounded like a daily news article.

Be in the state of the story, poem, journalistic piece and put words down you'd like to read.

What I know is my greatest comfort comes from the place and action of putting words in a place where they can be read anywhere anyone can read them.

The act of which is the thing I couldn't imagine living a life without, and the one thing I'll miss the most.

There are so many more seeming worldly lucrative activities to be doing.

But for those of us who truly love it there is no act more life affirming than setting words down to share our dream of life.

It's the best way to sound out we're alive.

Words, for us, are the purest way to sing.

Take care, create something that means something to you to share with someone else, and have a better day.