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Tag Archives: boldness in writing

Craft & Mechanics of Prose

As stumbling is the motion of all skating, so skating is the motion of all imagining: picturing requires “a pitch / Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves.” When the sound of sledding or skating is given onomatopoetically, it is usually given as a hissing sound—“We hissed along the polished ice in games,” says Wordsworth—or a […]

Farewell, My Lovely

Raymond Chandler is fast on his way to my short list of writers. I love his clipped style and imagery. The metaphors are fantastic. Lines like, “My voice sounded like somebody tearing slats off a chicken coop.” He and Dashiell Hammett invented a truly American, truly new style. I’m taking it at face value that […]