As of this year, 2018, the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.
Unintentional repetition of a word or phrase in your writing is rather like going out the door with another sweater clinging to the back of your sweater — uh, dorky. Or smiling wide– with a piece of spinach stuck between your front teeth. It’s the sort of thing we all do on occasion, and that is why we need to revise, revise, revise.
Intentional repetition on the other hand, can bring in the bongo-drums of musicality! Here are some examples of this powerful poetic technique:
#
“Man lives in the flicker, Man lives in the flicker.”
— Mark Slade, “The New Metamorphosis” Mosaic 8 (1975), quoted in Marshal McLuhan, “Man and Media,” transcript of a talk delivered in 1979, in Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews (MIT Press, 2005).
“Wanting to be read, wanting the recognition, whether its Jacqueline Susan-style, all glitz and limos, or sweeping the gland slam of literary events, is not a crime.”
— Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees
“You have also never said one word about my poor little Highland book my only book. I had hoped that you and Fritz would have liked it.”
— Queen Victoria (letter to her daughter, 23/12/1865)
“Tancredi, he considered, had a great future; he would be the standard-bearer of a counter-attack which the nobility, under new trappings, could launch against the social State. To do this he lacked only one thing: money; this Tancredi did not have; none at all. And to get on in politics, now that a name counted less, would require a lot of money: money to buy votes, money to do the electors favors, money for a dazzling style of living…”
— Guiseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard
“I saw Master Kelley put of the base metal into the crucible, and after it was set a little upon the fire, and a very small quantity of the medicine put in, and stirred with a stick of wood, it came forth in great proportion perfect gold, to the touch, to the hammer, to the test.”
—Edward Dyer, quoted in Patrick Harpur, The Philosopher’s Secret Fire
#
In a previous post I talked about reading as a writer. One thing to notice as you read is where the author repeats a word or phrase– if you judge it effective.
P.S. Oodles of free resources for creative writers on my workshop page, including “Giant Golden Buddha” & 364 more free 5 minute writing exercises.
This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own)
Q & A: Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub on Translating Blume Lempel’s Oedipus in Brooklyn from the Yiddish
Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.
