Forum / Go Where It Takes You

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    Larry Strattner
    Aug 10, 11:09am

    I wanna post this somewhere because it's funny (at least to me).

    I posted a thing I wrote about a comment by the composer/singer Neil Young, "You have to go where it takes you." Neil can also be attributed for the wave/trough image in GWITY which I thought neat and so stole. The piece has been read less than ten times.

    I spent so much time in the advertising and marketing businesses that statistics mean something to me - whether I want them to or not. I wondered why things get read.

    I went back to my own page for the list of things I've posted - I can't speak for anyone else - and looked at how many times any post I made had been read.

    One of the posts I think I botched worst was Bob the Builder - I was trying for a kind of regressing sequence of events where each graph is the event before - like that movie whatchamacallit, you know?

    I didn't do a very good job with Bob and it gets read most.

    What's up with that I wonder? Is it titles, subject matter, opening lines, what?

    Eventually I write "Read Me" and post it to test some of my questions. I'm not sure I understand the answer.

    Even though I've written things for various purposes all my life I'm new to this writing thing. But again, recently, I read in an old issue of Writer's Digest and then in an interview/article with Elmore Leonard, "you have to go where it takes you."

    I'm wondering who writes like this? Because I'm so used to writing advertising, newspaper and proposal copy to fit, be short, be punchy, I'm sure I'm a bit sloppy and ungrammatical (you think?)and if I had gone where it took me the City Desk would ball it up and stick it up my ***. I also rewrite everything at least ten times and I cannot look at anything I've written without rewriting it yet again.

    So one sits back and asks one's self, "what the ****? Now not even being sure what the question is.

    I'm sure a majority of the people who post here have asked themselves a question like this.

    So what the **** is the answer?

    Isn't this fun?

    Write down your answer. It will not be time wasted. You can sell it to a writer's magazine to get money and then apply the rules to yourself and get a piece accepted in The New Yorker and make even more money.

    Consider this me giving back to the sport.

    Larry S

    PS. I know it's some other thread somewhere but it would be really nice to have spiel check in these boxes.

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