Monday, July 18, 2011

Reduce, Reuse, Rewrite

In 2001, I joined 100words.com where, if you write exactly 100 words a day, every day, for a month, they’ll publish the batch on their site and preserve it for generations of attentionally deficient readers. Ten years and 733 stories later, I’m a whole lot lazier and, assuming all this practice may have actually made me a better writer, decided to spend July rewriting some of my older—and now hopefully better—stuff. This also gives me an opportunity to recycle an old joke from university: 90% of writing is re-writing, so buy Liquid Paper in the convenient aerosol can.

12 comments:

  1. For the month of July, the members of Exquisite Corpse are writing 100 words a day on each letter of the alphabet in turn.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey! I thought one of your rules was you weren't going to write about writing!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have done some reusing and recycling myself today.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Liquid Paper is fine; corrects some text. But how about a product that will IMPROVE the text. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I should recycle more! I do it so rarely.

    ROG, ABC Wednesday team

    ReplyDelete
  6. Love the humor at the last line.

    My R is about Raking Leaves, please come and see.

    ReplyDelete
  7. VEry interesting. What got me is the "White Out". In our age of cyberspace and computers, it seems more like a RELIC than an anything else. I love though how you use it for a "Rewrite".

    ReplyDelete
  8. I can't live without "Whiteout" stuff - some of my students use the newer style of dry white, but I can't get the hang of it. It also tangles. drat...

    Leslie
    abcw team

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've started recycling some of my old posts - I think I have a different audience now and hopefully my family and regulars will have forgotten them.

    ReplyDelete
  10. From the pre-computer days:

    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

    But helpless pieces in the game He plays,
    Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days,
    He hither and thither moves, and checks...and slays,
    Then one by one, back in the Closet lays.

    ReplyDelete

AddThis Widget (for sharing)

Crazy Egg (Analytics)