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On Writing

This blog catagory is intended to analyze and appreciate fine writing, be it prose or poetry.

  1. The Cumulative Sentence (Writing Blog #4)

    I presented in my last writing blog (#3) the idea of maximalism in writing prose, and in writing blog #2 I showed how large expansive sentences created a “back filling” effect. Now I want to show how large expansive sentences create a cumulative effect, where the accumulation of modifying phrases define in detail the idea. I look at such a cumulative sentence as a blossomed flower with each modifying phrase as a petal.

    What I’d like to use as the example sentence is the first stanza ...

    Updated 03-28-2010 at 10:43 AM by Virgil

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    On Writing
  2. The Beauty of Maxmalism (Writing Blog #3)

    I commented back in Aunt Shecky's Word Blog#8 (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=9631) that spare minimalism in writing is actually lacking, and that maxmalism (no movement called maxmalism actually exists, but it stands in contra distinction to that often praised prose movement which owes its roots to Hemingway) creates better prose. I want to flesh this out a little more. I'm going to do this by comparing two writers, Hemingway in "A Big Two-Hearted River" and William ...

    Updated 03-26-2010 at 08:32 PM by Virgil

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    On Writing
  3. Backfilling - Writing Blog 2

    I've been reading Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and I came across this fabulous sentence that has had me pondering it and breaking it down for days now.

    The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winter’s morning, Peter Quint was found, by a labourer going to work, stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained—superficially at least—by a visible wound to his head; such a wound as might have been produced (and as, on the final evidence,
    ...

    Updated 03-26-2010 at 08:33 PM by Virgil

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    On Writing
  4. On Writing - 1st Entry

    All my blogs have been uncatorgorized but I have been intending to start a blog on writing ever since Antiquarian (remember her?) was around. But I never go to it. Antequarian left and I needed her proding to do this. Losing Antiquarian from Lit net was one of the biggest losses we've ever had, and I do miss her. She really focused on writing, and to be a writer is to write. To be a great writer is to write greatly. All that stuff about analyzing literature is academic and meaningless for ...

    Updated 12-20-2009 at 01:59 PM by Virgil

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    On Writing