I have in interest in writing, though most of my own writing is simple journaling. I have written one short story that I have shared with a few people and in a writing class. That class made me even more interested in learning to write better. I have collected quite a number of books on writing in my “to read” list.
One of those books is Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. I have to admit that I only got to the third chapter. Near the beginning of that chapter, the author puts forward a 134-word sentence as an example of a good sentence. She even writes, “Despite its length, the sentence is economical.” I couldn’t disagree more. This was not a sentence. It was a paragraph! And it wasn’t all that clear to me. There were some other things earlier in the book that I also disagreed with, so when I got to this “economical” sentence I called it quits. There are too many good books out there for me to spend time on one that is clearly not for me.
