The Thorn Remains

On November 29 2012 02:34 Chef wrote:
Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that if people are just going to quote it when they wouldn't have noticed otherwise. I held my tongue in the I Am a Father thread and should have held my tongue here too. There's more that's sort of awkward/doesn't quite work than the bowels part, and I encourage you to write in a more natural style than pulling out a dictionary to raise the level of your diction, but it is well and nice just to try to write something more creative than your standard girl blog. The bare bones of what I see is "I'm lonely" and "I was in love with THE IDEA of her [as the cliche goes]" and I'm not so sure the $10 words are adding any flesh to it.

So the rose has wilted and you're hanging onto the thorny stem. Maybe the pain would wash away if you threw it away too. What so great about a rose anyway? Go find yourself a nice daffodil. Someone hands you a rose, you know what that means: "I love you!" It's no more symbolic than the words themselves. Someone hands you a daffodil, what the heck does that mean? Maybe something interesting. The rose is a guaranteed femme fatale. She'll drag you into some weird noir murder plot on the pretense of erotic possibility. Oh no, I got shot! I guess that's the risk we take to live out cliches. I can feel my self-esteem deflating, like a child's birthday balloon. I didn't get what I wanted, and I'll cry if I want to.

On November 29 2012 16:15 lazyitachi wrote:
Hahahaha... Sorry wordmaster.
I shall bow down to your eloquence, you cunning linguist!

Please reserve a thought of me in the heart of your bowel when you accept your Pulitzer!

On November 30 2012 06:02 Chef wrote:
Gregarious means fond of others. Likes to be in a group. Like animals in a herd or flock. The OP is only thinking about one person and doesn't say anything about hanging out with friends the way gregarious would suggest. If we think of this situation and the word gregarious, we would normally be describing trying to get over someone by spending time with friends. Not really what the OP is doing.

It's a state of mind, not a description of actions. You can easily wish to be with friends without actually being surrounded by friends.

You're making assumptions that are not supported by the text, nor by contextual knowledge of the author's circumstances (which you don't have), nor by authorial intent (which, again, you don't know). A lit student should know better.

You're mistaking iridescent from incandescent. Iridescent is a lot of bright colours. Like iridescent summer clothes. reds, yellows, oranges, light blue etc. The OPs emotions I would say are all very dark. blacks, blues, maybe very dark reds (for self-frustration/anger/conflict). Iridescent can mean shifting colours, similar to how the OPs understanding of her shifted, but it only shifts once. Iridescent opinion would be one that moves a lot, and goes happy, sad, frustrated, excited etc. It would have a broad range like a rainbow.

Iridescent doesn't necessarily mean bright, it can also mean a spectrum of colors, especially if you learned the word first through a scientific context. Nor does it mean colors shifting on their own, but rather how colors shift as the observer shifts. There is absolutely no limitation on how many times it shifts as you seem to suggest. It shifts as many times as the observer moves. You are deliberately choosing definitions (or parts of them) that make the text sound silly just to further your point.

Not to mention that, once again, you have zero idea about what the OP's state of mind actually is, and are merely making assumptions that make sense to you. Unfortunately, these assumptions are supported neither textually nor contextually.

So to me, using the word gregarious instead of lonely, which is what you might say if you're feeling like suddenly the illusion of the person you've imagined has been dissolved, is an odd choice that needs to be justified (and isn't so far as I can see). He says iridescent, and you're probably right about what you imagined. We probably wanted a word like burning, maybe. Burning works better with terrible, and violent.

You like to jump on the "let's not fool ourselves" theme, so let's not fool ourselves here. There is no "we" here lol, this is "how Chef would rewrite p4ndemik's work, unilaterally, with no input or collaboration from p4." This has all been an exercise in disguising a lecture on "how Chef thinks everyone should write" as constructive criticism.

On November 30 2012 06:27 Mothra wrote:
Have to agree with Chef, as much as I'd like not to. Honestly mistaking a word is not so bad, but flat out misusing them, especially when simpler words fit more naturally, is kind of glaring. This might be trimmed down into a nice poem, with the image of the wilting rose and what not.

his criticism is simply nitpicking on trivialities in an attempt to sound like a seasoned, world-weary editor of a literary magazine and live out whatever unfulfilled fantasy he may have

A lit student should know better.

On November 30 2012 06:33 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
I don't disagree with the basic premise of such a criticism, nor do I think the OP is some perfect form of writing that is immune to any criticism; however, the "use simpler words" criticism is the laziest, most unhelpful and uninvolved advice ever.

Whenever someone posts original writing, you always get a fleet of self-important, condescending "lit students" who regurgitate stock advice like "use simpler words." It's true that it applies often, but not always. Then we get a situation where someone glances at a work, sees "big words," and automatically go through the "see big word -> tell author to use simpler words" process, without stopping to actually consider the text. It is both unhelpful and extremely disrespectful. If Chef had accompanied his criticism with real reasoning and a demonstration of having made an effort to consider the text, there would be no issue here. Instead, his criticism is simply nitpicking on trivialities in an attempt to sound like a seasoned, world-weary editor of a literary magazine and live out whatever unfulfilled fantasy he may have. What we see here is not someone reading the work, considering it, and then offering advice on where the diction is imprecise or inaccurate. What we see here is the opposite: someone deciding a word is misused, and then finding evidence to support it. It's the difference between a deduced conclusion and seeing only what you want to see.