| MY FINAL YEARS! |
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| Somerset Maugham ...It was not till some years later that it dawned upon me that it was a delicate art that must be painfully acquired.� The discovery was forced upon me by the difficulty I found in getting my meaning down on paper.� I wrote dialogue fluently, but when it came to a� page of description I found myself entangled in all sorts of quandaries.� I would struggle for a couple of hours over two or three sentences that I could in no way manage to straighten out.� I made up my mind to teach myself how to write.� ........ |
| George Orwell Dying metaphors ...A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual images while on the other hand a metaphor which is techically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness.� But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn out metaphors which have loss all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.� Examples are: ring the changes o, take up the cudgets for, toe the line,...stand shoulder to shoulder with, no axe to grind...... |
| George Orwell Operators or verbal� false limbs These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentece with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symetry.� Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate agaist, make contact with, be subjected to.... |
| GREAT WRITERS ON WRITING...... |
| Somerset Maugham I have never had much patience with the writers who claim from the reader an effort to understand their meaning.� ... There are two sorts of obscurity that you find in writers.� One is due to negligence and the other to wilfulness.� People often write obscurely because they have never taken the trouble to learn to write clearly.� .... Another cause of obscurity is that the writer is himself not quite sure of his meaning.� He has a vague impression of what he wants to say, but has not , either from lack of mental power or from laziness, exactly formulated it in his mind, and it is natural enough that he should not find a precise expression for a confused idea.� This is due largely to the fact that many writers think, not before, but as they write. ....The idea acquires substance by taking on a visible nature, and then stands in the way of its own claritficatio. ....It is flattering to believe that they are too profound to be expressed so clearly that all who run may read, and very naturally it does not occur to such writers that the fault is with their own minds, which have not the faculty of precise reflection. |
| Somerset Maugham ...BUT WORDS ARE� TYRANNICAL THINGS, THEY EXIST FOR THEIR MEANINGS, AND IF YOU� WILL NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THESE, YOU CANNOT PAY ATTENTION� AT ALL. |
| Somerset Maugham Anything is beter than not to write clearly.� there is nothing to be said against lucidity, and against simplicity only the possibility of dryness. |
