By way of a bit of bonus content, I decided I should quickly follow up this week’s latest post with another one in which I put my money where my mouth is, by sharing an example of me putting all that I think and feel about long sentences into practice.
If writing long sentences is the crime that readability analysis (including on this site) makes it out to be, then many of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century writers who have had a big influence on me are serial offenders.
What does it mean to be a “professional” writer? Is it that you devote lots of your time and effort to writing? Or that you get paid for writing?
In order to say yes to one thing, you have to say no to another. That’s how time is protected. That’s how the art gets made. But it starts with you, saying yes to yourself, for yourself.
On the basis that you’re supposed to write the books you want to read, that’s precisely what I’m setting about doing.
One of the big surprises from the Enzo Mari exhibition was discovering the number of different ways Mari had ventured into the world of literature.
On a recent trip to London, we finally made it to the Design Museum so we could catch the exhibition of work by the Italian design legend Enzo Mari.
The computer I’m writing on is not in the best of health today — it’s just come back from a service to investigate a defective trackpad, and is now functioning even worse than it was before.
When someone asks me what the last good piece of theatre I saw was, I often struggle to come up with an answer. But more than that, I often catch myself quite unnecessarily jumping in to say what I’ve seen that I didn’t like. When I get started on that, I often find it difficult to shut myself up again.
It can be hard enough sometimes to find the right words to express yourself in your primary language - and it takes even more energy and courage to try doing it in a language you may have learned alongside, or much later in life than, acquiring your first.
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