Category: Craft

Listen to what you write

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One of the easiest and most effective revision methods must be to read your words aloud. Should you stumble over the words, if they don’t have a pleasing rhythm, cadence and flow, mark them and go back to them.

Anywhere there is an awkward clunkiness, where the mood of the words is not as you intended, if they don’t touch the heart as you envisioned when you drafted them, go back and look at them with a critical eye rewording the passage.

Develop a more sensitive ear by reading great writing, listening to the words and the music they create in your mind.

For more information: https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/poetry/writing-rhythm/

Why ‘Zoetic Words’?

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My given name is Zoe, derived from the ancient Greek for life. As a girl, fascinated with words, I came across zoetic in an old dictionary. A rare or archaic word with the same derivation as my name, zoetic means living or vital. Also from the same derivation is zoetrope, the Victorian toy you see below.

Words on the page, of themselves, are little more than patterns of ink on paper and can be just as dry to read. Like a zoetrope, my aim as a writer and editor is to give life and vitality to black squiggles. Words ought to sparkle, shine, and move me to laughter or tears before I send them out into the world. There I want them to sing and dance in the mind and imagination of readers.

How could I call my business anything but Zoetic Words?

Words are alive

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Emerson was reportedly speaking of Michel de Montaigne, a sixteenth-century Frenchman and his literary idol. “The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences. I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the language of conversation transferred to a book. Cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive. One has the same pleasure in it that we have in listening to the necessary speech of men about their work, when any unusual circumstance give momentary importance to the dialogue.”

A great writer appears on the page in a voice as individual and distinctive as his or her thoughts. Relax into your voice. Be your unique self, open your heart and let your voice shine.

As difficult as to be good

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Many writers struggle against perfectionism. In previous posts we discussed omitting extra words, editing for clarity. Simple clarity is not in the least easy to achieve. It never has been. As far back as 1837 writer and poet Thomas Hood quoted “the easiest reading is damned hard writing”.

We know that no human is perfect. Neither can anybody be ‘good’ all the time. Yet we often make the mistake of expecting perfection in our writing. The number of articles devoted to defeating perfectionist tendencies toward gives us a clue as to the extent of the struggle. All anyone can do is their best and to strive to improve. At some time we have to say enough and submit.