A writer friend of mine told me recently that my blog posts were pompous. The funny thing was that he didn’t tell me this directly. He was under the mistaken impression that my posts were written by another poster.(I didn’t sign any of mine) Needless to say it stung, but after I got over my bruised ego I decided to take a look at my old posts with a cold eye and damn if he wasn’t right.
So the first thing I did was look up the definition of pompous and found these the most useful specifically in regards to writing:
1) Excessively elevated or ornate.
2) Full of high-sounding phrases.
3) Ostentatiously lofty in style.
I must admit my posts are guilty of these sins. I guess I was trying too hard to sound smart and clever instead of worrying about how to get my point across in the simplest way. Upon realizing this I felt a little like Ed Norton’s Character in Fight Club when he explains his concept of the “single-serving friend” to Tyler Durden:
So the first thing I did was look up the definition of pompous and found these the most useful specifically in regards to writing:
1) Excessively elevated or ornate.
2) Full of high-sounding phrases.
3) Ostentatiously lofty in style.
I must admit my posts are guilty of these sins. I guess I was trying too hard to sound smart and clever instead of worrying about how to get my point across in the simplest way. Upon realizing this I felt a little like Ed Norton’s Character in Fight Club when he explains his concept of the “single-serving friend” to Tyler Durden:
To read it now makes me wince a little in shame. So I consider it a lesson learned. Keep it simple, stupid. Luckily, God invented the delete button.
And this wasn't the first time I had used such pompous flowery language. Here’s an excerpt from the first draft of a short story I had previously written:
The dwindling daylight seeped through the branches and cast an arabesque filigreed of shadow and light everywhere.