A Stilted Progression of Clauses Awkwardly Assembled
When Writing Seems… Forced

Do you ever write something, knowing with each adjective (carefully plucked from the trusty ol’ thee-saurus, o’ course) that you’re writing rubbish? I wrote this opening paragraph yesterday:
Late afternoon lay upon the lazy squares of clover and fennel, speckled here and there with placid bovines swishing practiced tails at the hovering masses of gnats and flies. Clouds of insects congregated at odd intervals low above the fields, buzzing noiselessly, their wings white with the light of the descending sun.
The problem with it, methinks, is that it tries too hard to be good. How much description do we need? Does the reader care about the bovines? Aside from their cameo in that opening salvo of hot trash, they weren’t going to make another appearance. So… why did I add them? And the insects “congregating”… Am I asking the reader to torque his brain and tease out a subtle religious leitmotif?
Whenever I attempt to channel Coleridge, I end up with a stilted progression of clauses awkwardly assembled. It’s more “high school journal” and less, well… good.
I’m no English professor, nor do I have decades of proofreading experience under my belt, but something about that day-old prose — much like yesterday’s bagels — seems off.
For me, it boils down to one thing: it isn’t genuine. That writing isn’t me. It’s me trying to become someone else. It’s me trying to sound good. Granted, this is practice, so I’m allowed to try, ain’t I?
I don’t know what lesson to take from this: that it’s ok to write dumpsters full of refuse (because practice makes passable), or that I’m always capable of writing well as long as I’m not trying.
I actually think there is no lesson, because we’re all just random collections of atoms floating through a vast darkness. No, I don’t know if I believe that, although I do find De rerum natura compelling. I don’t know what the lesson is, only that I don’t like what I wrote yesterday and I don’t know what to do about it.
It’s impossible to bat 1.000, but damn, sometimes you feel like an idiot, standing there at the plate and watching that perfect pitch whizz by for strike three.
This is but a small piece of my lifelong daily writing practice (Day 125–26). If you enjoyed this, you may also like some of my other writing.
