Strunk & White's Rule #17: Omit Needless Words

"Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.  This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
-Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

The trouble is, how does one omit needless words when one has been unable to write?  I'm working on it, but finding the time has been difficult.  I forgot how exhausting the first week of school is, particularly in Fall Quarter.  The inevitable amount of loafing that occurs over the summer atrophies all of those mental endurance muscles built up during the academic year.  The compartments in which one sorts duties to work, family, and sleep weaken.  I've done myself the huge favor of adding an additional responsibility:  blogging.  What I really need to do is find balance.  A warning about this came this week:  Find balance, or your body will stop you.

I woke up at 1am this Thursday with the sensation that a grain of sand had wedged itself between my left eyeball and eyelid.  I took out my contacts immediately (I know, I know...you shouldn't sleep in your contacts, but my O.D. gave me these nifty "Night-Day" contacts and said they'd be fine) and tried to go back to sleep.  Instead, I spent an hour alternating between flushing my eye of whatever foreign body was trapped in there, and trying to convince myself that I was just imagining things and my eye was perfectly fine - just really dry from wearing my contacts for too long.  Eventually, I did fall asleep, but spent the next hour of sleep dreaming that my eye was somehow keeping me from getting something accomplished.

My daughter woke me up twice that night - at 3am and again at 5am - and each time I checked my eye in her bathroom mirror.  I must have been rubbing it in my sleep, because each time it was progressively pinker.  By the time my alarm went off at 6:30, my eye was a bright shade of scarlet.  Foolishly, I put my contact in (the grain-of-sand sensation was the same, with or without the contacts) and went to school.  Ten minutes after I logged onto my computer, the pain became nearly unbearable.  I ran to the bathroom to check my eye yet again.  This time, I noticed something off:  two cream-colored spots on my cornea right in front of my iris. 

So I called the doc.  He took a picture of my eye.  It looked something like this: 

Corneal ulcers, otherwise known as the reason you shouldn't sleep in your contact lenses.  And, just like an ulcer, corneal ulcers are exacerbated by stress.  There was no balance this week, thus I have two ulcers on my eye.  They are also a pain in the ass.  I have to put antibiotic drops in my eyes every two hours.  My eye hurts if I stare at a computer screen for too long.  It's also incredibly sensitive to light, and when I look too quickly in another direction, the entire left side of my face hurts. 

Lesson learned.  I can't wear my contacts for a week or so anyway.  Long story short, this is one of the many reasons why my writing hasn't been as normal as it should be.  It's all my fault - no one to blame for this temporary handicap but me. 

Take care of yourself, take care of your eyes, and find balance.  I'm sure there are plenty of words in this blog that should be omitted, but my eye is tired.  I'll edit later.

Going public...the door really is open

In On Writing by Stephen King, King quotes one of is first editors, John Gould:
"...write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.  Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.  Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.  Or criticize it."

So, here it goes.  There isn't much here, yet.  I don't know if I'll be able to post with any regularity.  Be kind, and don't keep the door shut for too long on what you write.

A New Regimen for a Right-Brainer

What begins as a noble effort to stick to a regimen of regular writing may, in the end, have the same fate as my past attempts at stick-with-it-ness when it comes to writing.

A few of years ago, my lovely dad passed the role of family record keeper to me. He gave me a black bag full of family records - which he still stores at my parents' house - and a red, leather, bound standard diary. Once a day, he told me, write down what happened.

The diary has college-ruled pages and one date per page, with a few pages at the back for notes. Whenever I look at those narrow lines, I picture my dad's perfect, pencil-written script. Always a mechanical pencil. My handwriting is legible - barely - and I've always had trouble keeping my pen within the lines. Always a pen. Blue ink.

I buy a new red diary every January with a new resolution to write a few lines about what happened in our lives each day. And every January first, I end the day with a diary entry.

I rarely make it into March. Sometimes, around mid-June or July, I decide to try again. This valiant attempt to resurrect my promise to my dad doesn't last more than a week.

But I still go to OfficeMax or Staples every December to buy a new red diary. Sometimes I even buy a special pen (special, as in it comes in its own package and isn't one of twenty-four).

So, as I embark on this renewed attempt at cataloging the bits and pieces of my somewhat vanilla life and my journey toward published authorship, I shall promise myself one thing: at least once a week, I will log onto this blog and spew a few thoughts. Who knows what the various topics will be...at this point, it's anyone's guess.