70. Progress Report VII

I am writing 100 posts in 100 days. Every tenth post I do a little reflective report on the prior ten posts. The goal of writing every day was to force myself to actually write things. Beyond captions for my photos. And ideally my writing would be witty and educational.

My fashion post was probably my favorite of the last ten. But I forgot to make some key points on fashion.

Like about how I am a milliner.

I made the hat. Ok, I crocheted it. I’m not really a milliner.

And my thoughts on Fashogs. Fashogs=fashion blogs (until I can come up with a better neologism for them). So maybe there will be on “On Fashion: Part Deux” or maybe not. It seems whenever I say I’m going to write about something, I then avoid the subject like the plague. Take my apocalypse hat. I took pictures of each stitch and started step by step instructions and my poor crochet-lusting readers are holding their breath, yarn and hook in hand with (much) less than a yarmulke to show for their efforts (and patience)!

But fear not, there will at least be a lesson on pom pom making. Or have I now cursed it away?

In October…My favorite month of the year…I wrote of haunted gingerbread castles to come, foraging for paw paws and other native edibles, and those things never did materialize in print (doesn’t “in print” sound so much better than “on screen”?) and instead I just took a week off from blogging. So I’m not going to predict what I will write about in the next ten posts. I’m going to focus on improving my writing style. Because the best writers can write about their dog sneezing or the funny thing that happened on the way to the post office (or wherever) and the story is wildly entertaining. Then I’ll need only inject a few doses of obscure references, tips or trades and voila: amusing and educational.

Baby suggested I consult Aristotle on the matter.

Aristotle, On Poetry and Style

Apparently, I’ve read it before. As certain passages were already conveniently highlighted. Even a few brief notes in my own hand lurked in the margins. Here are a few choice passages:

Diction, to be good, should be clear without being common.

Very well put.

Such inappropriately poetic language is both ridiculous and frigid: its verbosity also makes it obscure; the accumulation of words which add nothing to the sense beclouds what lucidity there is.

Huh? I’m beclouded.

What Aristotle is trying to say, baby, is that you can use a thesaurus and fancy up your words, just do it sagaciously.

Oh, I see.

Aristotle lived 384-322 B.C. amazing how relevant his ideas still are to writing style! Though I do disagree with many of his assertions. Such as:

The poet, like the painter and other makers of images, is an imitator, the object of his imitation must always be represented in one of three ways: as it was or is, as it is said or thought to be, or as it ought to be.

I am a maker of images and sometimes I have no object of imitation at all. I could continue with more thoughts for and against Aristotle’s musings but it’s getting a bit heavy for a Friday night.

These things the poet must keep in mind.