But no, it's just the spring rains, driven by gusty winds whipping the hillside opposite my building.
It is really, really pissing down -- rain has been falling in a steady downpour all day. But wrapped like suman in my trusty raincoat I went about my day quite enjoying the fresh dampness of the air: lunch with a friend, a stop at the tailor's to collect repaired trousers, and then on to pick up magazine proofs I am to read tonight.
Anyway. Someone sent through Raymond Carver's "Principles of a Story" -- a compelling essay for anyone who writes for public consumption. While the essay was addressed to short story writers, one passage in particular spoke to me:
That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones...If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise or inaccurate for some other reason--if the words are in any way blurred--the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. The reader's own artistic sense will simply not be engaged.
This is because for countless years I was an imprecise writer; bridles were a foreign country. I hurled words and feeling onto the page with very little craft involved. It is only lately that I started learning about the power of factuality, selectivity and precision. How to show, not tell. How to bank my emotion, thereby allowing the reader to call forth his.
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