Word count: 319 words
Reading time: Just over 1 minute
A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. Here is a sentence I read recently that I’d happily imitate.
New writers, particularly bloggers, so often state nothing more than the obvious. Holidays or special occasions tend to bring out the worst sentimentality — mother’s/father’s day, weddings, funerals. I don’t think every piece of writing needs to identify a breathtaking vision nor does it need to offer a laugh-festival, but it should give readers something NEW and at least mildly interesting. We all have so many words to read every day — why should we spend our time slogging through only what’s mundane and evident?
In my daily newspaper, the Globe & Mail, there’s a page that devotes a column to new writers. Often, the story is weak and banal but, sometimes, it hits a home run. Recently, it featured a captivating piece of self-biography about a man who was diagnosed with a heart murmur as a child and who had surgery for it at age 39.
I encourage you to read the whole article. I thought it was beautifully and sensitively written — especially in the evocative way it links back to the author’s childhood and his own father’s story.
If you don’t have the time, here is my sentence of the week, or, more accurately, my paragraph of the week:
And as I listened to the new sound coming from my chest, I came to realize that what our hearts offer us is not so much a message as it is an invitation. An invitation to move away from the noise in our heads, to quiet the mind, and to connect to the grace that is life and all that is sacred.
Isn’t that lovely writing?
