They Don't All Have to Be Doing Cartwheels

Today's feelings about sentences.

Hi friends.

I’ve been busy over here generating a lot of new work this past week, and I’m shifting into editorial mode for the next few days. I dumped about 2500 words into a new document for the essay I’ve been writing. It’s absolute chaos in there and I can barely bring myself to look at it and yet…I must.

Sometimes we just have to push through whatever pile of messy words we created for ourselves, because there’s probably some good sentences sitting in the midst of it all. Even if we have just a few, it’s a starting point. If we have a few, it means we’re capable of more.

Eventually all my sentences have to be good, of course. Not just a few of them. What do I mean by good? It can mean they’re doing cartwheels, but it can also mean they’re simply precise and functional. Sometimes a sentence just has to get a character across the room. Or sometimes they have to answer a phone or flip a light switch or some other basic activity that makes the action move forward. I don’t need ten-dollar words for all that. I just need to make sure the sentence is clean and effective and gets the job done.

Today I woke up and thought: It is time to get the job done.

You know, some days these letters are just pep talks for me. I write them down here so I can stop writing them in my notebook. (Or talking to my dog about it.) On these days it just feels nice to know I’m communicating with someone besides myself, in a life that is often just me alone at my desk. Thanks for being out there.

Hi, it’s me

Also here is a dog

As for the rest of today’s message, I sent out a bonus prompt to all the Mini 1000 paid subscribers this morning, and I liked it so much, I wanted to make sure all the paid subscribers over here got it, too. So here we go: