I don't hate semicolons, I like them. But I've found that most of the time when I believe I've stumbled on a great place to fit a semicolon, when I look again later, I think a period or emdash is better there.

All respect to Kurt Vonnegut, of course, and his opinion has shaped how I understand and use semicolons myself, but I don't see more than the tiniest modicum of shame in using a semicolon where another scratch would do.

Most writers, especially today per fashion, hate the idea of seeming pretentious or forbidding, and mostly so do I. But people also read the way they watch violent movies: to exercise something otherwise unused. It's a bit like the hamster chewing to hone perennially growing teeth, scraping them down on wood (or cage bars?) to adapt and accommodate them. When we speak, we're often mucking about far from the high watermarks reached in our culture's language. We may not use a semicolon this decan or moon, but we want to know why they're used, and see a good example. Just to keep our feet wet.

So a writer who shows off a little isn't doing what a reader doesn't want. We want to learn. We want to stand in awe, a little.

Most of my usable energy every day is spent writing. At times I've broken out of that, but I don't feel more productive at those times, unless I happen to be on a short-term project that's really captivating me and helping me turn the gears.

I've made almost no money writing, and generally am not thinking about publishing or selling my words. Often I'm not even thinking about sharing them, or an audience. You could say I write for the future world - for the person who would understand - any person, no boundaries in place from the start.

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Mostly I fall short, and usually the writing is more of a nervous tic or a hint of OCD - I must write these thoughts before they vanish, much as I might idly avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, not because I feel any fear, but because it's a way to play in the moment.

"DON'T step on the CRACKS / or you're FALL and break your BACK!"

That's the frame of mind I'm in when I write.

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You could say I spend most of my life playing with thoughts and words, because somehow I've been privileged enough to be able to scrape by sort of somewhat somehow so far.

Even when I'm "at work" and teaching, that's a way of playing with words, too.

Oh, words and feelings, ideas, lives - maybe I'm a megalomaniac.

I'm kidding, of course. If power drove me, I wouldn't be dead broke and writing away the hours.

This is poring

Detail that I can't ignore when I see it: "pouring over ABC." You aren't a liquid. That sounds gross. It's "poring over." You're absorbing it, let's say (for the sake of a mnemonic) as if through your pores. That's the expression passed down the generations. Spell-checkers won't catch the error of "pouring" where you should be "poring," though, so it's on you.

Now, to excavate this old metropolitan phrase a little further, the origin of "pore" (this verb we're discussing, meaning "to gaze meditatively") could be a mutation of the verb "peer," which sounds reasonable and likely given the evidence. Or the origin could be the ancient Latin stem for the skin kind of pore, "porus," which means "passage, journey, or way."

If we go with the latter for lack of a definitive answer, then "poring over/through" a spy novel calls to mind absorbing clues through your pores (or sitting, meditatively transpiring through your stomata like a plant?) but on a deeper level could mean "journeying through." One of those two pictures is how I would recommend remembering it if you have trouble, as the image is vivid and points to the right spelling.

With a better lens on the microscope, though, my own interpretation is as likely mistaken as the "pouring" one. It seems the earliest known version, from the 13th century, is "pouren" - without "over" or "through" after it - meaning, basically, "to peer." The skin-type "pore," the noun, only appeared in English a century later, and with the modern spelling, fresh off the chariot from the Latin "porus." Is there time for "porus"-pore to mutate into the differently-spelled and rather different-meaning verb "pouren" when "porus"-pore shows up later in the historical record, not earlier? Probably not.

There's a smoking gun, and it's a verb with no obvious connection to Latin "porus," but a strong connection to looking.

So I'm pretty sure my "absorbing through pores" inference is as off historically (though it gets the spelling right) as "pouring all one's attention over and down the pages." It's really more like "peer deeply."

But if you write "pour over" or "pour through," while this is regarded as incorrect, you can take solace in the etymology pointing to "pouren" - so you might be right after all, even though the word has nothing to do with pouring maple syrup in the cup of tea a waiter just poured for you. However, you might have been poring while he was pouring - hell, maybe you were even poring while you were pouring.

The phrase "purple prose" is used to shame people into not trying too hard. But you know what? I'd say Shakespeare is relatively purple. It's natural when you write to want to impress; it's sensible to make an effort to distinguish yourself and your work.

When I write, I'm constantly steering around pretentious options as if they were submarines desperate to sink my battleship. Eventually I pare back so far I wonder if I'm talking down or failing to trust English to mean what it says. And still I'm sure I come across as pretentious. At some point you have to ask yourself: what does it mean to be pretentious, and how much is that a real problem rather than an imagined one?

I know from many tests and lots of feedback from people who know me a little or extremely well that I'm considerably smarter than average. Is that ego speaking? Maybe. Maybe I'm deluded. I feel stupid most of the time, and I try to go on outside evidence, but I suppose if I really am as stupid as I feel, I could easily be deceived, especially by myself. So maybe I'm not very smart; maybe it's only the Dunning-Krueger effect, despite what seems like an objective basis.

But let's suppose I actually am smarter than the average educated person. And let's suppose I'm smarter than some others who are seen as smart and successful. When I sit down to write - or stand up, or walk, or whatever - how much is it my obligation to hide this? If I'm presenting an idea that seems unrecognized or at least underrecognized, how important is it for me to write in a style that looks like everyone else's style? Or that makes everyone feel as if they could have written the same thing, if only they'd thought of it sooner?

One thing I love about Jimi Hendrix is that he wasn't by most objective standards an exceptional singer. He compared his singing voice, next to the juggernaut of his guitar presence, to a mouse standing next to an elephant. As it happens, I love the mouse almost as much as I love the elephant.

But when he "wrote" - played or recorded guitar work - did he avoid showing off his talents? Did he make sure you would feel you could do the same thing he was doing? Was he preoccupied with not alienating you? I don't know. But it seems to me he owned it, and his guitar swagger was part of his charm. He "wrote purple prose," and oddly enough, that's a lot of what was good about him.

Writers often start out like guitarists, trying to play the pen like a virtuoso. Then they run into technical problems, usually with their grammar and emotional and aesthetic skill. They might fool one or two people - might fool themselves - but sooner or later, they realize they aren't fooling the people who matter to them; to those people, they sound dopey, pretentious, arrogant, incompetent. They sound like they're trying too hard.

When they become aware of this, it embarrasses them so much that in humility they course-correct into an ethic that says virtuosity or any effort in that direction is arrogant and wrong, unless you are one of the chosen few gifted by the gods.

When I hear Shakespeare or Hendrix, I hear enormous skill cultivated over countless hours of purple. They didn't sheepishly quit and hide from ambition as if it were a sin. They ambited.

 

Powerful metaphors do two things: one, shine a light on something non-obvious about the target object or being (the "referent"), and two, hook this insight into what's already familiar, so you remember better.

When a calculus teacher compares derivatives to jumping out of an airplane and integrals to trying to jump back into the same airplane in the sky, this reveals that there's something massively unsymmetrical about the two opposite processes, something far from obvious at first sight. And since everyone's got images of jumping out of airplanes ready from watching television, yet few if any of the reverse (a somewhat shocking image), that's a very solid memory hook. It's the kind of metaphor someone can say once and people in the audience will have no trouble remembering for the rest of their lives. (It happened to me: my differential equations professor shared this metaphor one morning in 2006 and I'll never forget it.)

Something non-obvious about metaphors is that a good way to practice them comes from realizing that basically any two things can be metaphors for each other. There isn't any unattainable pixie dust that renders some things "metaphorable" with other things. You can take any two nouns or activities, compare them, and find links to mine for a metaphor. The dormant aromatherapy diffuser over there and a winking grizzly bear could be compared - it just takes some setup to highlight a thread of commonality (for example they both hibernate, and have steamy breath). The endless parade of answers to "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" is not really a function of a special connection between the two, but of the possibility of connecting any two things.

That knowledge - initiation into the metaphorical mystery cult through a brief demystification - helps you find the powerful ones. It's a curious case of lowering the bar to raise the bar. That's often true of creativity, but to say it's always true of creativity would be a dangerous oversimplification!

Most of the time when someone writes a final, one-sentence "Period" or "Full stop" (with or without drama and a weighty silence) they should take it out. "Period" is not much of a statement. I don't mean logically, only, but interpersonally. "Period" means you're gloating over your rightness. It calls to mind what the villain does at the end of the movie: they would have won, but they have to stop and gloat. So they lose. Period.

(It works better in speech, but only about half the time.)

This isn't some sort of grammar rule - nothing like it. But you rarely prove much by ending on a note that says "I'm self-satisfied and closed-minded." It probably will (and probably should) sound complacent rather than thorough and convincing. The irony is that speakers usually say "Period" about where they usually say "ecksetera" - when they've run out of ready examples and want to sound as if they're just getting started. If you give your reasoning in two highly debatable or unsubstantiated claims followed by "Period," that's par for the course, or sadly even better than average.

It also sounds unintentionally comical. You... um, didn't know you aren't supposed to read that part out loud? Oh! You're done talking. Oh. Ok. That's very interesting that you're done talking. Stunning announcement, really. Oh, wait... you mean it proves you were right? Good Lord, I must be in the wrong building. What's that? This is a mental hospital, you say, not the middle horse stables? Oh yes, quite, quite. Beg pardon. Will be on my way now. No trouble. I'll get the door myself.

It's a style thing. I'm just pointing out why I think it's poor style.

All I'm saying is: remove it and try that. If it needs something, try something else. Try not to punt by spelling out a common punctuation mark. That's like yelling when someone challenges your view with a fact: more volume isn't relevant unless we're having audio trouble, and it probably seems foolish or offensive. I know what a period is and how to spell the word. Also, I heard what you were saying before that. If you really want to call attention to a logical argument that is now, you believe, complete, and bracket it verbally, "QED" is a little more on point. Or if you want to be more colloquial: "I rest my case."

But "Period" tends to appear where "QED" or "I rest my case" wouldn't be appropriate, because the argument is not as resounding or airtight as the speaker would like you to believe. "I rest my case" projects the confidence of readiness for any objection that might come up. "Period" gives the impression of trying to silence any objection without having earned that respect.

The key problem with bothsidesism ain't that the truth ain't always in the middle, even though the truth ain't always (or even usually) in the middle. The key problem is that most questions don't fall along a single spectrum, let alone a single binary dimension. What I mean is that enigmatic, everyday, life-is-complicated-isn't-it thorns are usually far more complicated than "A or B" or even "somewhere on the trail connecting A and B." Just for a handy example, let's say A = "the world is spherical" and B = "the world is flat." The universe strongly resembles A rather than B, but when many people strongly believe B, there's usually something compelling about B other than, simply, "it's so wonderful to be wrong, isn't it?"

In this case, when you step outside and go for a walk, the ground is mostly flat. You could walk your whole life and keep the impression that, overall, the ground is flat, with some bumps and dips. People believed the world was flat because it was a compelling - and partly true - description. It was workable. People believed the sun went around the earth for much the same reason. Neither description is stupid or entirely inaccurate. They are good descriptions within a certain frame of reference.

Now, curiously, whether "the earth is flat" is a good, workable description doesn't have too much bearing on whether "the earth is spherical" is a good, workable description. Both have descriptive power up to some level of realism. "The earth is rock," likewise, has descriptive power up to some level of realism. That last has, of course, even less to do with whether "the earth is spherical" or "the earth is flat" mirrors reality, but we know from daily experience and education that all three can be decent approximations in practice. Earth is a "rocky planet" when compared to Jupiter (yet we ourselves are not rock, and neither are the oceans or the ozone layer). We park the car on level ground when the parking brake doesn't work. We look at a globe for sharper insight about the sizes of regions. Yet the earth is not entirely spherical, so that description is also false if we need to get binary at high resolution.

When A is "truer" than B, a scenario we regularly face, and still there is disagreement, it really helps tremendously to understand what's GOOD about B, and, additionally but perhaps quite differently, what's appealing about it to its proponents. I have no trouble seeing why people believed the sun orbited the earth. Whatsoever... None! It's the most understandable - and relatable - broadly erroneous belief in the world. And if all we can do is fault the belief and spite the believers, we are poor communicators indeed, and maybe sometimes not very good people.