scribble penchant

A writing update:

Unlike last year, I did not truly attempt the "31 Plays in 31 Days" challenge this August.  I put in a half-hearted effort for the first week, then let it go.  I came out of it with one play that I consider to be good, and I offer it to you now:  The King's Ague

I don't understand plays.  I have trouble wrapping my head around them.  In theory, I feel, they should be much the same as writing anything else.  Put in a beginning, middle, and end, make sure there's an arc or two, and you should be fine.  But all that dialogue bogs me down.  It's just too fun to write, and it's hard to get around to actually telling a story.

I do love to hear myself talk.

But it's September now, and that's a bloggin' month.  I know it's been all-too-silent this year around these parts, and I can't explain it.  The words don't come as they used to.  You see, I thrive on novelty of ideation.  But as I age, I find, my brain prefers to dwell on just a few subjects.  A few years ago, why, I'd hop trains of thought like a hobo, aimlessly excited with each new discovery and where it might take me.  And I surely haven't lost my taste for that novelty, but the well-worn routes are comfortable, and it's harder and harder to deviate from the standard patterns...

Of course, that's death.  But it's not as if I need to remind you what death looks like.

October, I suspect, I'll take off from writing (except for a Disney review, I hope).  That gives me just this month to impress upon you how spectacularly I've grown since the last time I wrote thirty of these things in a row.

You see, marvelously, for the first time in this life of mine, I've found all the words I need!  Vocabulary is my magnanimous oyster,  my humming sycophant, my obsequious steward.  It's not about using big words, of course; that's just showing off.  What it is about is using words like a scalpel, not a hammer.  Incisively.  To maximize impact while minimizing collateral effect, and, ideally, to do so with a positive outcome in mind.  That's the way to write.

He was wrong, what called himself a philosopher.  For there is no process of discovery in the use of reason, what can be discovered, what is not already there?  What can be discovered, what is created new?  He was a thinker, and a rational one, but he built up; he should have been whittling down.