{"id":5561,"date":"2009-08-29T13:33:41","date_gmt":"2009-08-29T17:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5561"},"modified":"2009-08-29T13:33:41","modified_gmt":"2009-08-29T17:33:41","slug":"wordsfail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/wordsfail\/","title":{"rendered":"#wordsfail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somewhere, in the so-far unseen pages of your work in progress — or the pages of WIPs gone by — somewhere lurks a phrase so graceless, a metaphor so aluminum-foil-on-dental-fillings, a sentence so raggedy-ass, a title so forgettable or a character’s name so laughable, something<\/em> that made you realize you may be a writer but you’re also a doofus. Come on. You know it’s there. Maybe you’ve got to rummage through old rough drafts, crusty short stories and anguished poems from high-school or college days. Or maybe you found it in a paragraph you wrote just the other day but didn’t find until revising this morning (and, when you came to, immediately hacked out with scissors or carving knife).<\/p>\n

‘Fess up — in the comments here, or on Twitter with the #wordsfail hashtag.<\/p>\n

Groans encouraged — groans of empathy, damn it. Because if you’ve written nothing like this, it’s only because you’ve forgotten the key word: yet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To kick things off, here’s one from me. This excerpt comes from close to 30 years ago, a faux-Irish-brogue poem called “Sodden, Betrodden, and Noddin’.”<\/p>\n

I was leanin’, it seems, besides on me dreams,
\nRather close to the fellow next to me.
\nFull six foot he sat (when not wearin’ his hat),
\nAnd his face it was tired and gloomy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note especially the way you need to read the second line to force the rhyme with the fourth: next TO<\/strong> me<\/em>. Alas, at that point in the stanza you don’t even know line 4 is coming up. So you’ve gotta get to the last line, realize your mistake, and back up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhere, in the so-far unseen pages of your work in progress — or the pages of WIPs gone by — somewhere lurks a phrase so graceless, a metaphor so aluminum-foil-on-dental-fillings, a sentence so raggedy-ass, a title so forgettable or a character’s name so laughable, something that made you realize you may be a writer but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,5,50,372,713],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-onlineworld","7":"category-06_writing","8":"category-language-writing_cat","9":"category-style-and-craft","10":"category-humor-writing_cat","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1rH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5561"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5565,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions\/5565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}