This is an amazing book! I feel I am in the hands of a master.
He uses words like crepuscular, gelid, furcate, hirsute, revenants, and spavined, half of which I had to look up. (I won't say which half.)
As I'm reading, I'm thinking this is what I'm striving toward, this is superb writing. And then in the very same breath of thought, "Who am I kidding?" I can drool over the language all I like, but I'm never going to write like this. I'm having conflicting emotions. Awe and inspiration on the one hand. Defeat and depression on the other.
He did win the Pulitzer after all, and I'm just trying to finish my novel and get it published, so I suppose I should lighten up. Still, it's nice to see the possibilities and to dream...
...about one day using words like verisimilitude, aquiline, and chary in my own writing some day.
6 comments:
oh, I'd have to look up more than half. Let's fall on the side of inspiration. It's sunnier over there :)
So true, Tess. That's where I usually fall. Maybe it's all the rain we've been having out here in Oregon...
Lisa, if I could reach to Oregon I'd hug you. You just made me feel much less alone. I've read novels and wept at their beauty and sobbed because I yearned to produce work equally as moving but feared I'd never come close. You don't need to use verisimilitude to move readers. You just did.
Oh Lisa, I felt that way when I read Wee Free Men. I fully acknowledged that Pratchett could write a terrific adult novel, but it just didn't seem fair that his books for the younger set could be just as good.
Kristi, you make me want to give you a hug!
Thanks Kristi. We need those hugs, don't we? It's a hard road we've chosen, to write. Good thing we have each other!
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