By way of brief intro, there has been a lot of jabber around my socials on brevity in writing/blogging/et al. By way of a Friday joke, I made this status update, not expecting any responses. But since I got some, it now officially constituted a dare.
Click here for the rest of that FB conversation:>>
So here goes, 144 words on the subjects recommended by my FB friends: unicorns, froglickers, 151, manatees and Zillow.
On Brevity in Iambic…
The pundits tell us that we must write short
I tell them that the Unicorns are real
And that redacted thought is not a thought
But a reflection of another’s zeal
For smaller words; and even smaller feelings
Unless the brevity expressed is such
That beauty shimmers off each letter’s edge
And beckons us to wade the very depths
Of unknown streams; where magic is a hunch
That manatees are us, removed at birth
That stories in six words are only told
By those with rare gifts, and rarer still
In spaces where complexities of thought
Are yet to be disdained, as if we shill
For the appeasement of the common sheep
I’ve been accused of licking stranger frogs
Than measuring my syllables or words
I’d rather tilt at windmills that are Zillow
Or down Pirates’ Rum, 151
Than calculate my future readers’ worth
Thank you to Melina, Coleen and Marc for humouring me:-)
Do you follow rules of some kind when writing, and if yes, what are they, and what makes them not arbitrary to you?
