Overwriting and Playing with Words

Today has been interesting. When I have a cold, my brain always works differently. When it comes to people, I am less patient than usual. But when it comes to the arts–writing or drawing–suddenly I have way more focus and patience. It could be due to the fact that my brain slows down to half its pace and everything clouds over.

So, it has been an interesting day for editing here and there as time permits. Honestly, I have maybe made it four pages forward today. Maybe.

I worked this one paragraph over and over–yesterday and today. It began as maybe 40 words and then grew to this:

Plus, I have pleasantly discovered that after consuming a bottle or two [of wine], you care a lot less about trifling, less-than-perfect details such as: crunchy turkey (just because the oven goes to 475F, it does not necessarily conclude that it is good for the turkey—cooking calculations having been performed favorably or not), chunky mashed potatoes (the softening rate of cooking potatoes is not as uniform as I had hypothesized) and the absence of things like stuffing (next time I need to add more flex time into my meal preparation timeline) and cranberries (evidently cranberry marmalade is not an accepted substitute). Therefore my wine discovery has been of particular importance especially since I am the one solely responsible for the culinary mishap called ‘Christmas Dinner’.

I have to admit, it was quite fun. But quite LONG. (Note to self: Do not try to combine the writing styles of Meg Cabot and Jane Austen.) So, I pasted it in an email and sent it to an ever-suffering email writing buddy. (Ever suffering as I do not let the poor man alone and am always pestering him due to his grace about this that or the other thing about writing.) And of course, he told me that it was waaaaaay too long and to cut it back. Damn. I knew that but I wanted to hear that it was brilliant and to keep it and not to pare it back to what it once was originally which was something quite like this, (which in fact is what it has returned to once again):

Plus, I have pleasantly discovered that after consuming a bottle or two [of wine], you care a lot less about trifling, less-than-perfect details such as crunchy turkey, chunky mashed potatoes and the absence of things like stuffing and cranberries—an important discovery when you are the one solely responsible for the culinary mishap.

Oh, the hours we writers spend whittling the time away with our ‘brilliance’ and the joy of playing with words…is it any wonder we snort when we laugh?