The Forever War, Part 1 (for real this time)

The Forever War by Pulitzer Prize winner Dexter Filkins offers a different persepctive on the conflict going on the in Middle East. For the parts I've read, Filkins has a mix of both 'action' stories and candid interview pieces.

The parts depicting 'action,' so to speak, while not nonchalant about the acts being depicted, it states them very frankly, almost as if he is used to seeing such acts, like the people who live in the region, and are not overly bothered by it, at least openly. The interviews depict the interviewees in a matter that isn't exactly sympathetic, depending on the person, but showing a more human side to people than the media generally shows.

So far so good, and I can't wait to read more. So I think I'll go do that now.

The Forever War, Part 1

Or, this would be about The Forever War, but the book hasn't arrived in the post yet.

So instead here is a demotivational poster:

doing homework with a busted keyboard. also, paragraphs.

most don't really know how important a certain function of anything really is until it's gone. in this case, i never really realized how much i used the two shift keys on my keyboard until they both just stopped working, so please excuse the lack of capital letters, exclamation points, question marks, and just about anything else that requires a shift to use.

but on to this week's topic - paragraphing. ah, the good old days of the five-paragraph essay or the unreadable WALL OF TEXT. mr zinsser raises a good point in the 'bits and pieces' chapter of on writing well. while many, many, many paragraph breaks may look inviting.

it can also break the flow.

and the reading can become more tedious.

than a giant WALL OF TEXT.

this was often the curse of the five-paragraph essay. sure, you got the correct format the teacher wanted, but often at a terrible price. if only middle and high school teachers taught like college professors when it comes to writing style, fewer people would stress out about writing those big term papers. forming paragraphs is as important, if not moreso, than forming individual sentences. while a sentence must be a complete thought, it must also be a part of the larger thought of the paragraph. you could compare the sentences and paragraphs of a piece of writing to the components of a mechanical device - self contained in their own right, but ultimately a smaller piece of a larger whole that will fall apart if every piece doesn't function perfectly.

food for thought.