Because it's fun to cut yourself

I hain’t been writing fer shit lately (I won't use the w.b. word on principle). Have to muscle it up for this effing blog even. So, being the stupid sombitch that I am, I figured the sure cure was to start picking apart my “writing,” such as it is. Here's my first go-round.

I believe I rely on the word unsatisfying, and render it exceptionally unsatisfying as a result, because it is an equation. Not merely an empty word like nice or weird, but an equation of a word like unsatisfying because it appeals to my need to use logic as a ruse and a dodge. That word enables me (and boy do I know about enabling) when asked by an astute reader “what does that mean?” to draw myself up and state, not say but state, “it is that which does not satisfy, depending upon what the conditions for satisfaction are,” implying all the while that a truly astute reader should know what those conditions are without having to be spoonfed by me (the classic dimunization of critic move). It is exactly the copout of poorly crafted postmodern fiction, which believes merely embracing meaninglessness has meaning. (It doesn’t.)

It is the kind of shortcut you don’t realize great writers aren’t taking until you wonder why their prose stands erect while yours flips floppily flaccid (yeah, take a bite into that with a feminist critique – juicy!).

Specificity. It’s hard. That’s why we get married. So we can approximate and be understood. (The reason used to be sex, but we have that anyway, so we really needed a new reason.) * I shit you not, but True Companion by Marc Cohn is playing on the coffeeshop radio as I pen these poignant lines about matrimony.

Yo, actors. Give me a shout out. Specificity. You dig, right?