Ladies and gentlemen, pray be upstanding — and then recumbent in sheer, panting orgasmic lust — for the semi-colon: the most misunderstood, underused and under-appreciated ‘member’ (cough) of the punctuation canon. Forget your full stop, cast aside your comma and shove your colon up your ass, because it is time for us to examine why the semi-colon should be the recipient of both our heartfelt hosannas and our wanton, salivating desire.
Archive for February 2009
Beautifully Clear, Concise Writing
That Snaps Like Bacon Grease
In Writing style on 26 February, 2009
“I have made this letter longer than
usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter” — Blaise Pascal
By World-Renown Journalist, Author,
Editor and Self-Aggrandizing A-hole
Robb Todd
The Editor
In Fiction on 24 February, 2009There was this guy. We’ll call him Michael. He ran this small literary magazine. He tried to publish underground writers. Mostly he published bad writing. There are plenty of them out there. Bad writers. He always wrote these funny rejection letters. Read the rest of this entry »
Literary Lust
In Poetry on 21 February, 2009Long, slender fingers tap tap tapping on an old, dusty typewriter
Abstract ideas coalesce into a moist and shameful longing
Each sentence is an invitation typeset in desire
Expertly punctuated with a heavy sigh
Voice
In Writing style on 21 February, 2009I talk in a voice. It’s not the highest voice. It doesn’t scream “GIRL!”, but it is feminine in quality, and medium in tone. When I sing karaoke, which is not often, I pick songs in lower registers: Neil Diamond or Bruce Springsteen. Boy songs. Read the rest of this entry »
It starts with a blank sheet
In Process on 18 February, 2009This site — like paper or, more often these days, like the document one is presented when booting up a standard word processing package — is white. Very white. I sometimes wonder if that’s my first mistake in the act of writing. The sheer, unadulterated whiteness I place before myself.
Nothing is original
In Web stimulus on 17 February, 2009Nothing. There’s nothing original. So I might as well give up now. Goodbye.
That’s what I often end up mumbling to myself, usually an hour or so after I’ve finished writing something new, once the initial elated feeling that it was the most powerful piece of prose ever committed to pixels has dissipated, to be replaced by the awful realisation that someone, somewhere, probably did it all before. And did it far better, too.