My Trials and Tribulations… Clearing for Clarity!

'No One' will believe this. When I heard, I couldn't believe it. Who me? Getting scolded something awful about clarity? No way! Despite clearly being told I'm about as clear as ten speed bumps Plutoians might, sometime next year, draw three rings around somewhere on Pluto!

Flattened as I was, I want 'Everyone' high and lo, none more than my beloved audience, to know I held my ground. 'We' can 'All' be mightily thankful for the one thin life raft that kept my BA-hind afloat.

'At least it wasn't one of my books being gnawed on,' I thanked Heaven and Mercy, over and over.

But before moving forward on this matter, let's jog back some years to when schools taught reading comprehension; a subject I had a great disdain for. And by the way, for 'ole clarity's sake, I believe in order to move forward with any sense of actual clarity, you must jog backwards to understand how all this minutia began in the first place.

I didn't appreciate (at all) being tested on what I thought of books. I liked to (and still do) apply my own meaning to things. Now according to the national reading average I can tell you it wasn't only me who didn't like these comprehension calculators. Based on National Scholastic Assessments I used to ball my eyes up at to read, most students, and assuredly parents as well, couldn't read, or rather, couldn't comprehend a lick. Ya'll, I'm talking about a sizable portion of a population. And you may want to brace for this next line, because I don't think times (today) have changed.

What's Mignon McLaughlin's quote from The Complete Neurotic's Notebook say? …"A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote." I mean really? How can anyone, English teacher, Wordsmith Authoritarian, Mind-reader, or how about a plain reading fortune-teller, decode the work of a writer who died 300 years prior to the book's ninth reprint? These were the books 'We' were scored on understanding.

Even so, as I digress, this heavy disdain for reading comprehension eventually culminated into a deep love affair with words, and clarity… or lack of clarity to get right to my point. I love figuring things out, something like my love for cryptogram puzzles… the arch in the anchor of my naturally adopted writing style.

In other words, my writing style is not a deliberate manifestation to dupe readers, or perhaps, an exhibition turning over my lack of skill. The one thing every storyteller worth his or her salt (I imagine) strives to accomplish, is to write clear as…oh…I don't know…air? I was going to write dishwater, if only it weren't for the suds. But maybe air is a little too clear. Writing that clear couldn't do nothing but confuse the hell out of everyone who's only heard of air.

But you get my point, right?

Extremely clear writing is exactly how a naturally adopted writing style propagates ambiguity. Now, I will admit too, there's another little tadpole looped into this, birthing the brunt of my writing trials and tribulations. I suffer from a touch of dyslexia. Initially, upon discovery of this tadpole, it was a nightmare to manage. Going to the end of stories, as well as checking each paragraph and sentence to bring the contents at the rear, to the front, got toxifying. But with some 30-many writing miles now wrapped around my novel-belt, I've got that tadpole by the gills; just what should allow 'Us' 'All' to enjoy some sweet, thin, franking unobstructed transparent air looking at 7 Ways To Keep Our Writing Clear!

Ready? 'Cause Here 'We' Go…

1. Write 'Jack & Jill' style―straightforward. She ran to the store. She smiled. She giggled. She bored the freaking hell out of me is what she did!

2. Explaining each and every knotty sentence is an option too. Your book might be long as all %!666!, and a root canal drilling irritating, but at least no one, and I do mean NO ONE, will fault your writing for being ambiguous.

3. Or how about letting the extra flippant vernaculars rip? I don't know what it is, but whether in speech or in writing, when the fanfare gets to flying, the projectile's point becomes patently clear.

4. The better, or how about, the softer approach would be to simply unlock our hearts… without the flippancy.

5. And of course we all know about hiring an editor…which also, and true, means taking a wild guess about who 'really' wrote the book.

6. Leaving writing alone and finding another passion is another option. Your paper, or screen, will surely be clean as a whistle opting 'out' for this one.

7.  My favorite, and most superlative gem is this one. Garnering 38222 writing miles—practice, practice, practicing; doing our best to give our audience stories they've come to cherish!

TMTTBCWHBAO! 

– It's a cryptogram… 

a letter per word; one sentence. 

Can you figure it out?