Comments on: The Doncaster Connection

By: Travis

Travis — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 18:56:20 +0000

I see your point John. I’m smiling and nodding my head.

By: John Baker

John Baker — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:59:29 +0000

I don’t think I agree with you on this one, Travis. The formulation of the sentence as it stands feels a little over-laboured to me. If I had thought I could get away with ‘I felt like a warm fruit sponge,’ I would have settled for that. But in English English (I don’t know about American English or any Other English) that sentence has two meanings. The first meaning is ‘I felt like,’ referring to how I experienced the effects of the heat on my body; the second meaning is ‘I felt like,’ referring to my desire for something. In this case ‘I felt like a warm fruit sponge,’ could be taken to mean: ‘What I desired more than anything else at that moment was to taste a warm fruit sponge.’
In my effort to avoid the second interpretation I produced a sentence which I feel is ungainly and ungramatical.
I do, however, take your point about making the links to the other relevant posts, and I’ll do that in future.
What you say about the ‘comments’ section on the sidebar of the blog is also a point well-taken, and I have altered it. Thank you for pointing it out. I don’t think I would have noticed it otherwise.

And, The Narrator. As you say, there was a general excitement in the air. I was a little worried, though, for those other brave souls who had set out and decided to return home rather than sit for a couple of hours in wet clothes.

By: The Narrator

The Narrator — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:48:48 +0000

The walk from the station to the library through a storm of such quality surely excited the literary consciousness, for you and for all those brave souls willing to put down their pints and walk away from televised sports for a moment…

By: Travis

Travis — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 13:59:31 +0000

A line that sticks out at me in this post is, "I felt not unlike a warm fruit sponge." Specifically the "not unlike" portion of the sentence strikes me. Putting two negatives together to create a positive equaling "I felt like a warm fruit sponge" The "not unlike" version does more for me artistically then the common “I felt like…” simile. It may appear to be a small detail, but it is these “details” again that make all the difference as you have mentioned before in your, “Learning to Write II ” post. I have a suggestion if I may, in regards to these “Learning to Write” posts. I think it would be great if in each “Learning to Write” post that you could at the end of each post also include the relative links to the other “Learning to Write” posts. On another note, your blog side bar has the section “Your Latest Comments.” However, they are not MY latest comments, they are the latest comments in general, not only mine. That mislead me a little as a visitor to your blog. I would just like to suggest that you change it to say, “Latest Comments” instead or something like that. Anyways, back to the post at hand, the double negative “"not unlike" struck me right today as an artistic display through words.