“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
I’m going to invent bacon toothpaste and never have to work a day again in my life because people will brush so much we won’t be able to keep it on the shelves and nobody will ever get a cavity ever again. Dentists will hate me, but the British will love me the way I love bacon. Any all pork, really. Mmm, pork belly is just the most delicious fat you could ever put in your mouth.
Everything I just wrote could have been leaner but it’s just not right to not be effusive when talking about bacon. The words should snap in the air like bacon grease. But listen. Real strength is in clear, clean sentences that let verbs do the heavy lifting. Especially when you’re starting out. Find your voice after you’ve learned to cut the wasted movement in your sentences, otherwise that one sentence you wrote that shines off the page will get lost under the layers of fat you surrounded it with. Your writing is not bacon, sadly. Otherwise I’d eat it.
I would write more about this, but that’d make me a hypocrite. Worse still, a pretentious bastard. Who am I to tell you how to write? In fact, I’ve already said too much. I need to start over with this entire thing, so I’ll do that after I put a period right here.
Memorize ‘The Elements of Style’ by Strunk & White, read ‘Jesus’ Son’ by Denis Johnson, start typing. You’re welcome in advance.
Robb Todd is a writer and editor in New York City. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming in 3:AM, Laura Hird Showcase, flashquake, The Beat, Two With Water, Six Sentences, and Very Bad Poetry. But what he really enjoys writing are third-person bios about himself. Makes him feel important. Visit his web site: robbtodd.com.
the only judge of writing is the writer
The daily battle I wage between clear, concise writing and letting my imagination go into overdrive is a conflict that just makes me want to go down to the local spit ‘n’ sawdust pub and buy seventeen packets of pork scratchings.
mmmm.….bacon.….
imagination is only good if you can do it right
in Texas, we call pork scratchings Pork rinds i believe, either that or I’m way off
Pork will guide you through this. It loves you.
dude there’s lines thru your shit.
Hilarious.
brilliant
is the orwell joke an old joke?
the orwell joke is something orwell said:
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
when he could have easily cut three of those words, at least
My Writer’s Craft class had an on-going bacon theme. I handed this article to my Writer’s Craft teacher, and I’m told it now hangs proudly next to “Hilarious Hamlet Essay Circulated In Teacher’s Lounge.” in their Teacher’s Lounge.