The writing here is not art, per se. He rambles, and there are grammatical and spelling errors, and the only organization seems to be chronological. This is fine, of course. I'm interested in the content and can therefore forgive a lack of polish.
But I was reminded that even the most haphazard writing can yield powerful prose. During the post describing his anxiety about suddenly being alone in a country where no one speaks English fluently, Jake writes the following:
I'm pretty sure I spelled Caucasian incorrectly and I felt like an idiot and it was in pen.It's its own paragraph, following some general situational descriptions. And it works, profoundly.
It's short and simple. The lack of commas to separate the three independent clauses adds to the effect of feeling overwhelmed. Ending with "and it was in pen" is so much more powerful than starting with that fact; you get the mistake, you get the emotion, and then you get the "oh shit, he can't fix it, either".
Wonderfully executed.
4 comments:
And likely an accident, to boot. ;D
Come Heather, could you be looking too hard for something to shine in that muck of bad writing? :D
Hey, we can learn from happy accidents just as well as we can learn from serious, crafted work.
And no, I wasn't looking for good writing there, particularly, which is why I was pleased to find some.
Heather, I can't find your email address - thanks for your comments on my new template - can you take a second and tell me how the sidebar looks now? I am still working on the colors - just if this font is better than the small capitals. Thanks as always.
My email address is hiding.
Post a Comment