True Confessions

Conciseness. Trimble makes three recommendations, and conciseness is the one I feel I struggle most with when writing. I tend to get carried away with expressive verbs that help to create a vivid image for the reader. I don't like to consider my writing filled with fluff however. I carefully pick and chose my words, but one could argue that my essays could use some trimming. I think conciseness is the most challenging recommendation of the three. Anyway can write in e-prime if they try hard enough (e-prime writing uses no linking verbs, for those who never faced the challenge of writing an essay without is, was, or were). I would argue that not every writer can successfully write a concise paper. The challenge lays in picking what descriptive 'babies' the author feels comfortable killing. In my case, I never really want to kill any. I will re-word a description here and there, but rarely do I feel comfortable removing entire sections that I spent precious time piecing together. In a free write like this, I am not supposed to be concise, I am simply told to write for a specific amount of time. A challenging exercise would be making a point in 100 words or less, or something of the sort. On many college applications they forced applicants to make brief statements, and looking back, mine sucked. I likely focused on using action verbs, opting to write formally as opposed to using an approachable style. Trimble talks about phrase-stretching. For me, phrase stretching is not the only way to struggle with being concise. There is a difference, in my opinion, of being overly descriptive and stretching a phrase. I will agree that often times, less is more. My high school grammar professor took pride in teaching students that using an occasional fragment is acceptable. In fact, brilliant. Short, sweet, to the point sentences (unlike this one), help to emphasis a point. Emphasis on main points is necessary to become a successful writer, but I like to follow Trimble's recommendation of using vigorous verbs to emphasize my writing.