It's ALIVE!!...we hope.

Interesting...I learned today on a literary agent's blog the importance of keeping one's writing "tight." The idea is that one should avoid excessive and unnecessary modifiers or dead weight that slows down one's story. A list of ways to do this (and words to avoid) followed.

Let me stop here and say that I never realized there were so many 'rules' to good writing. In the past, I simply read and decided whether or not it was worthwhile to continue.

I suppose one could see a parallel between a written piece and the human body. A good story might be likened to a healthy body, which gets no particular attention except when it is ill.

Whereas a normal person might consider a story 'good' and not question why, a writer (one who studies the craft of writing, anyway) discovers that a good piece is composed of a number of systems working together and operating well as a whole. The difficulty, then, is that rather than the existence of one Creator, there are thousands of would-be writers (yours truly included) who may never get their 'body' breathing. :)

One more testimony to the greatness--the unattainable genius--of God. He gets it right every time.

I'm learning that a good story really means that the reader doesn't feel as if he/she is reading at all, just experiencing what is written without noticeable effort to plow through thousands of words. This takes talent. In my view, skill alone (that which is taught and learned) is not sufficient.

Let's hope I've got the stuff it takes. :)