Too Clever by Half

Nothing worse than a writer who is aware of the big words and how they function but who lacks the overall command to make their vocabulary really work for them. And yet, you have to give people like that a bit of credit, no? For trying, anyway?

I don't know. Most of my drafts make me cringe at least once or twice per page; I always have a few groaners in there, a few places where I clearly got lost amid the glittering polysyllables.

But I have to keep trying, because for me (and this is difficult to articulate given my limited talent) the only real reward comes in telling a thing right, in making the words sing just a little, not much, but just enough that the constructions give an impression of solidity, give the reader a small pulse of aesthetic pleasure. For example, there's not a single misstep, a single poor sentence, in any of the JJ or VN canon (although VN's early short stories have their flaws) or, if you need something more immediate, read one of the stories from the New York Times online.

So having said all that I will now reproduce one of my groaners from years past that still makes me cringe today: I was trying to describe a man waiting for a train (on which he was to encounter himself, or his double -- I was reading a lot of Borges) who, as he made his way along the train station's concourse, weaved through the racks of postcards which were like "apocryphal trees."

Oh! Still makes me cringe! Like fingernails down the blackboard, these are the words of my life.