BTT: Good Or Bad

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/good-or-bad/

Suggested by Barbara:

I’ve seen many bloggers say that what draws them to certain books or authors is good writing, and what causes them to stop reading a certain book or author is bad writing. What constitutes good writing and bad writing to you?

First of all, let me say that among books I've laid aside have also been renowned classics and award-winning contemporary novels. Sometimes I might recognize stylistic skill, but the content of the book may still not be to my liking. The opposite is also true: If I find the story or characters or facts or ideas interesting enough, I might overlook certain deficiencies in language and narrative style.

That said, I would say that good writing includes the ability to capture the reader's interest from the start and keep it up until the end. Really good writing also leaves behind a sense that I might want to read the book again some day, even though I know how it ends. Or write down quotes from it, or recommend it to others, or discuss it.

Bad writing, consequently, would be the kind that never manages to get me engaged in the story or the characters at all. Bad writing also often includes things like needless repetition, too much predictability, sidetracks that take you too far away from the main story, introduction of things that are never properly explained, or last-minute "out of the blue" solutions at the end.   

The Road Not Taken

 

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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Mountain Interval.  1920.

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The author Paulo Coelho had this poem by Robert Frost on his blog the other day (but with a different picture). On Facebook, Coelho added the comment: “ALWAYS chose the road less taken”.

Reading the poem, though, I felt less sure whether that was also Frost’s decided opinion? I searched a bit more, and then found this note:

Robert Frost on his own poetry:
"One stanza of 'The Road Not Taken' was written while I was sitting on a sofa in the middle of England: Was found three or four years later, and I couldn't bear not to finish it. I wasn't thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way."
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 23 Aug. 1953

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I too know people who are hard on themselves that way. Occasionally perhaps I also tend to be a bit hard on myself that way. But most of the time I try to tell myself that not all choices are as clear as being a choice between “right” vs “wrong”. Sometimes… we just have to choose a road and see where it takes us.

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Look closely at the pictures at the top. Which one do you like better? Actually, one is the mirror image of the other, before I framed them (in Paint Shop). You’d have to know the spot where the photo was taken, I think, to tell which is the “right” one.   

 

 

The Song In Your Heart

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."
~ Unknown ~

Does the picture above seem familiar to you? I used the “raw image” in another post just recently. We’ve been having rainy days lately and I have not been out taking a lot of new photos; instead I’m playing with my archives and photo editing software. (Picasa + Corel Paint Shop Pro X in this case)

The friendship quote reminded me of the line “take a sad song and make it better”… Google and YouTube were in friendly mood and sang it back to me:  

Upside Down

Quotation of the Week (44/2010)

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”

~ Robert Frost ~

Lighting A Candle

Besides putting our clocks back to winter time this weekend, we’re also entering a time of year that I always find heavy – and confusing.

I think I pretty much explained the why’s of my heavy feeling last year in a post entitled The Dreary Misery of Halloween.

The confusion, to do with dates, did not really come into it last year because then the dates kind of fell into place by themselves. This year they don’t.

We have two All Saints days in our calendar, and on top of that an All Souls day. The original All Saints was 1 November. Nowadays Swedish All Saints Day falls on the Saturday immediately preceding All Souls Day, which is the first Sunday in November. However, 1st November is still also marked All Saints Day in the calendar, whatever day of the week that may happen to be.

I’m telling you this because it means that while in most countries Halloween has just been celebrated, in Sweden Halloween/All Saints is not until next weekend.

Since the American kind of scary parties and trick-and-treating etc do not really belong in our old traditions – even if picked up by some people in later years though the influence of TV etc – that just adds to the confusion. Internationally tuned people might have celebrated Halloween during the weekend past, while others wait until next weekend.

I have no idea so far what I’ll be doing next weekend. But today at twilight I did what I wrote last year that I might do if I was on my own: I went to an old family grave in the cemetery closest to where I live, and lit a “symbolic” candle there. Turned out that someone else had already also done so, and that felt kind of nice.

The Times They Are A’Changin’

I’m going back through my pictures from the past year and it’s getting harder and harder to remember what I have already shared or not. Or on which blog. Or in a collage or as single picture.

Same thing with post titles. I suspect I may well have used this one before. Especially since it’s not mine to begin with.

But if I can’t remember, I guess there’s a good chance that perhaps you can’t either…?

This photo is one that I took on the first frosty morning 2½ weeks ago. Since then we’ve been going back and forth between frosty and mild weather. Less colour left in nature with every turn…

Tonight we turn our clocks back to winter time. I’ll be glad of it in the morning but less glad in the afternoon.

Here are some words I probably also quoted before:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9