h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wow.
So many ideas.
So many brilliant expressions of those ideas.
Like a giant moss-covered boulder gathering momentum.

You made me think. Few do.
And I remain amazed and bedazzled by your balanced dance of logic and language.

Perhaps I have not made myself clear...


~jwf~

Thanks, ~jwf~

This one was a bit of an experiment to find out whether I could start light and vacuous and darken it subtly.
I'm not fond of it. It reads a bit heavy-handed to me. I'll return to this rolling-boulder treatment again, but next time it won't be so overtly callous. This would have been more effective if my glee at the reader's discomfiture hadn't showed through quite so much.
A balanced piece (purely rational living is too cold, anarchic living is too hot) would also have been preferable, and I have some half-formed ideas.

A teacher-friend once showed me an essay one of her class had written. She thought it was sick; I thought it was brilliant. It was supposed to be a purely descriptive piece about the sights and sounds of a fairground, but the writer added in a throwaway paragraph where a child crawls under a ride and (presumably) gets dangerously close to the machinery. The description that followed was wonderfully ambiguous; the thin scream of the well-lubricated gears and the flushed-pink stickiness of candyfloss. I'm annoyed with myself for forgetting the last sentence, but it was consummate : something about tomorrow's anticlimax when they strip down the machinery after a frantic night of flashing lights and blaring loud-hailers.

Anyone who can think can write, don't you reckon? Once the ideas flow, the delivery is just practice and experimentation till you know you've got it.

I was quite amused by Shazz's substitution of 'bother' too

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>> ..more effective if my glee ... hadn't showed through quite so much. <<

Audiences love to see a little personal revelation, a little loss of self restraint, a little raw emotion. Never pull your punches and always share your glee. You are a living human being with real feelings, so express them and never let 'conventions' get in the way.

Any hesitation or reservation will be seen as a lack of conviction. But hey, why am I telling YOU about speaking your mind?

Your frankly expressed opinions are always a refreshingly honest change from the politically-correct pussyfooting, back-pedalling and calculated subtleties of those without the nerve to say what they really think. Tell it like it is!


~jwf~