Ten things in re: writing

[larryhammer]

1. It's all just words.
   
   
2. Sometimes they make a pretty patter.
   The trick's to make the pretty matter.
   
   
3. Sound does not make the sense, onomatopoeia notwithstanding.
   
   
4. The trope does not make the figure.
   
   
5. Rhythm has as little to do with meter as a territory does with a map.
   
   
6. Being convincing has little to do with being accurate. (See also true versus factual.)
   
   
7. Hebetude Bœotians can rock any world they care to.*
   
   
8. "Only connect!"
   
   
9.  
   
   
10. Words, words, words. Got that? Good.

* More Space Child's Mother Goose: See the little phrases go, / Watch their funny antics. / The men who make them wiggle so / Are teachers of Semantics. // The words go up, the words go round / And make a great commotion, / But all that lies behind the sound / Is [a] hebetude Bœotian.

---L.

Comments

[larryhammer]

I would have included nineweaving's quote about no transparent prose, but it didn't fit into the steps of the argument -- and it's implied in 1 and 10.

---L.