Don’t put a comma where a period belongs. End of story. End
of discussion. End of dream. All of the three previous sentences are fragments,
pieces of a full story, complete discussion, or an abandoned dream.
When I write I use sentence fragments without apology. For
clarity. For definition. For emphasis. Sometimes I’ll say the same thing three
times, three different ways to get my point across—bam, bam, bam.
Sometimes I say three different things, all beginning with
the same word. I know this is repetitive. I know this catches the eye. I know
this stalls the story. But sometimes the use of fragmented repetition slows the
pace enough for the reader to perceive the full impact of what the writer is
trying to convey.
Why three times you ask? Hum, twice isn’t enough and four is
overkill.
In some ways life needs a little…emphasis, repetition,
clarity. Sometimes the flow of circumstance needs to be fragmented to slow the
progression of events so one can enjoy all of life’s little moments. What if I
had rushed through my life this way—I grew up, I got a degree, I got married, I
got a job, I had two children, I finally got published, I retired from my day
job, and I died. Yeah, this flows, but it’s sort of…boring. Not that the stages
of life are boring, just the rushed through summing up of them into one boringly
long sentence.
Now… I grew up. My younger years had both moments of joy and
moments of heartache. I got a degree. Sometimes I wish I’d majored in something
else, but accounting is a skill that earns me a few dollars so I can enjoy what
I really want to do. I got married. He’s a wonderful man and adds so much to my
life. I got a job. Thank God, that job has come and gone, and I’ve moved on to
other employment! I had two children. My babies are the joy of my life. What
more can I say about that? I’m a proud mother. I finally got published. Oh, now
we’re talking about my passion. I retired from my day job. Well, I haven’t
gotten there yet. And I’m not even going to address the last one, because I’m
obviously still typing this blog post.
Life doesn’t need to be like a run on sentence either. Run
on sentences drive me up a wall and I get so frustrated I want to throw the
book (or the Nook) across the room and hit the cat, except I don’t have a cat,
all I have is one fat, lazy dog that my husband thinks is the most intelligent
canine that ever lived but that barks incessantly in the middle of storms and
dribbles dog food slobber all over the laundry room floor and then I have to
get a mop and clean the mess up because my husband doesn’t “see” the slime
until I point it out to him and my children don’t want me fussing about the dog
because they love that mutt…
Sorry, I digress. The previous sentence reads a little like
Jonathan Safron Foer in Extremely Loud
& Incredibly Close. No, I didn’t finish that book. I would have thrown
it at the wall, except it was on my Nook. I like my Nook.
Just like a good read, life needs proper pacing. I think at
the ripe old age of…old enough to have lived a little I have finally found my
perfect rhythm. Nothing too choppy. Nothing too smushed together. Just right.
And I don’t put commas where periods belong. Or vice versa.
