www.barbaraspencer.co.uk
Where Less if More:
Words is ’ornery critters,
as Captain Ahab would say or perhaps it was Mr Micawber – it was someone
literary anyway. Whoever said it, they were right.
Words can be the most
obstinate of all entities, point blank refusing to do what you tell them – like
a badly trained dog.
I have four chapters that
need sorting. You know what I mean. Instead of A jumping to C and then F before
returning to B, I need to place them seamlessly side by side: A,B,C,DE,F.
But the extra words and
phrases needed to do this? That is not happening any time soon and definitely
not to my words. For two days I have battled with them. It’s like trying to
park a Rolls Royce in a space large enough for a mini; they sit half in and
half out, and gaze reproachfully. The cocky ones thumb their noses at me.
If words can create that
much trouble, I simply dread having to re-route paragraphs. Undoubtedly, that
will be like trying to moor the Queen Mary off the Brighton Pier when the tide
is out. It ain’t going to happen.
These extra words,
sentences and paragraphs know perfectly well their place in my new book, most
likely, better than me … only they refuse to cooperate.
Nothing for it … Waving a
metaphorical white flag, I click and paste those obdurate words in a file
labelled superfluous to requirements!
Ha! You never thought I’d
call your bluff and do that now, did you?
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