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Writers Group – All Welcome!
July 16, 2022 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
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Join us for free monthly meetings & creative writing discussion. Advanced registration preferred.
We will provide open discussions at our monthly meetings. Everyone’s voice will be heard.
July 2022 Prompt:
This month let’s focus our thoughts on why we need to capture our words, experiences, behaviors, memories, grudges, happiness, sorrow, etc., and present them, first to ourself, and then to others. More succinctly, why do we write?
As I pondered the question, I reached back to an essay I read years ago, and often reread: WHY I WRITE -by George Orwell (first published in 1946.)
Orwell offers suggestions and guidance, as he details, for his reader, what to grasp in written form, and what to avoid. He warns, But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
A bit of Orwell’s advice:
…But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following will cover most cases:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figures of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will due.
iii. If it’s possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Orwell: I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought… the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.I look forward to our literary sharing on July 16th!
-Ruth
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