Articulating

One of the things that frustrates me the most in being unable to properly articulate what I really want to say.

I'm not even sure I'm happy with the way I worded that sentence! ;)

There have been so many times when writing my story that I've stressed over word choice and punctuation use—so many moments of second-guessing and doubting.

Truth is, there are probably hundreds of times I could have selected stronger words, practiced better sentence structure, or used more vivid descriptions.

And it weighs on me—it really bogs me down sometimes—because there are so many things I want my readers to feel and understand and appreciate, and I fear that I've failed in helping them do that.

It's even a factor in basic daily conversation, when I stumble and stammer, sorting through my often exhaustion-depleted vocabulary bank, searching for the best and most understandable way to say what I want to say. I think I'm being respectably conscientious, but it's more often just being overly careful, and unfortunately, is sometimes less than honest, or not quite “real”.

Because my real emotions are ready—they are unfiltered—but before I speak or ink those words, they get edited and critiqued and processed, and instead of telling my wife, “even though I say I don't believe in fate or soul mates, I don't see any way how we could be an accident,” I just say, “I love you,” instead.

So maybe when I catch myself in moments of overly careful, critical, conscientiousness, I should remember something I felt when I was writing the story—something that mattered to me—and judging from the feedback from you readers so far, something that matters to many of you.

It's something else I probably didn't articulate just right, but that was the point:

From page 170:

...writing a good story isn’t about trying to overextend your vocabulary or insuring that it’s grammatically or linguistically perfect. Too many young writers waste time backspacing through mistakes and over-analyzing the appearance of the words they’ve written. A good story though, is just that, a GOOD STORY. It’s often written hastily and driven by emotion. It compels the reader to continue, and makes him feel like part of the experience. A good story, even complete fiction, delivers a truth of some kind . . . even if it’s one that the reader isn’t comfortable with. That’s why this is such a good story, because it’s written for the reader; it’s written so he keeps reading...