For the past few weeks my husband has been Lord of the Living Room, looking for work as are many Americans. He tells me he wants me to read an email he’s writing and thousands of keystrokes ensue. Granted, he’s used to writing code so writing prose is a bit of a challenge.
A half-hour passes and he shows me three sentences. I delete one for him and he sends it off.
He writes a novel and edits it down to nearly the nub of the issue. He is very precise with his content and aside from an occasional spelling error or TMI, he’s right on the mark.
I write. I write as I think and will have this post done in under ten minutes. Why? Because that’s how I work. And I’m not dealing with recruiters or a job.
I love seeing how other people go about writing letters, a blog, a condolence note or even a “welcome to the neighborhood” note. Yes, I still use paper and have several species of note cards available when sending something to a sick neighbor, or someone whose loved one broke up with them by email. How tacky.
For all this I must thank my parents and my aunt, the English teacher. Five hundred words were a hurdle back in high school. I’m at 216 words now and haven’t even broken a sweat. And you read me! Thank you! Dee
Cooking with Dee 
People who read know
What they want to learn from me
Cook, they always say
Alas, I can identify with overwriting, over editing, and working the words to death
You write very well, from the heart, Margie. Try a haiku sometime. We’re hoping for a good week, another one came alive tonight so were looking at a few good ones. Don’t second-guess yourself in person or in your writing or anywhere. We love you and if certain folks moved faster we may be close by, at least for a while. Dee
M, can I borrow a cup of sugar? Dee
Blaise Pascal wrote:
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Translation:
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
Mark Twain said something very similar, but Twain never built a cool looking mechanized adding machine called the “Pascaline”. Instead Twain chose to write content used to torture every child in America. To be fair, Twain didn’t invent the torture, it’s all those darn english teachers!
http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pascaline.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
P.S.: A couple of retired sweet english teachers in western New York are excluded from my grossly generalized accusation against english teachers.
Heaven forbid, dear, that you had to read a book other than something called “Numerical Recipes.” Mark Twain should have served well for a farm boy’s 4th grade book report. Your loving wife, D