Are you a writing wizard or a wimp?

Let’s recognize, celebrate and practice fabulous writing in 2009.

After that, she’s running home to pack. She’s slinging around a string of keys as noisy as anchor chains. A string of keys like a cluster of iron grapes. These are long and short keys. Fancy notched skeleton keys. Brass and steel keys. Some are barrel keys, hollow like the barrel of a gun, some as big as a pistol, the kind a pissed-off wife might tuck in her garter and use to shoot an idiot husband.

Misty is jabbing keys into locks to see if they’ll turn. She’s trying the locks on cabinets and closet doors. She’s trying key after key. Stab and twist. Jab and turn. Each time a lock pops open, she dumps the pillowcase inside, the gilded mantel clocks and silver napkin rings and lead crystal compotes, and she locks the door.

Today is moving out day, another longest day of the year. – From Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

Palahniuk crafts short, nimble sentences to manifest the scenario in the reader’s brain. You visualize Misty’s actions. You taste her emotions.

The verbs Palahniuk chooses: sling, shoot, jab, stab, twist, turn, pop, dump behave as good little verbs should and create drama for the reader. They’re diva verbs, demanding Cristal champagne and a puppy for the night in their private dressing rooms.

Constance Hale, former editor at Wired and author of Sin and Syntax, says verbs are the part of speech that determine if a writer is a wimp or wizard.

The pros make strong nouns and dynamic verbs the heart of their style; verbs make their prose quiver. — Constance Hale

Better verbs for 'die'

Before you go willy-nilly replacing ‘to be’ verbs with dynamic verbs, break out the Roget’s or, more likely, head on over an online thesaurus and select an exciting verb that reaches out and smacks (or caresses, or pinches, or elbows) your reader’s face.

Verbs should tell the story, create the happening, elicit the emotions. Check out all the kick-ass verbs for ‘die’ my 1989 copy of The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus gave me. I could write about death all day without using the same verb twice …

Blogs are like, so, totally 2004, yo.

Don’t have a blog? Don’t bother starting one.

Go Twitter, Facebook or Flickr.

This from Wired Magazine correspondent Paul Boutin in a recent post.

“Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

The time-cost factor isn’t his only argument for discouraging blogging. Professional blogging sites, he says, have hurt the singular model of blogs.

“Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.”

I tend to agree with Mathew Wingram’s view on Boutin’s post:

“Facebook and Twitter are probably enough for many people. Not writing at all is enough for many people. But why does it have to be all or nothing?”

People use blogs, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook for all kinds of reasons. Each of us in MCDM have a blog to post social media-related thoughts and findings. I update my Facebook status like crazy because it keeps me connected to my homies in Kansas and beyond. I Flickr to show my mom what I’m experiencing in Seattle.

For a lot of bloggers, posting is an easy way to publish — the ONLY way we can publish — to be heard, to be seen. Do we all expect — or desire — to be at the top of Google search rankings? Sha, I’ll take it, if it happens. But it’s not my only aspiration. What happened to writing to inspire creativity, for yourself and others reading, even if it is just your classmates?

Also posted at FlipTheMedia.com