Worrying Your Writing

You'll say... what do you mean "worrying your writing" - it doesn't even feel right grammatically. Indeed, you don't 'worry something' - you just worry. This verb is normally intransitive. However, to give it more power, we make it transitive in this sense and we express the forcing of our work upon the writing piece, by turning and tossing every little meaningful angle, until we find the combination that can best transpose our idea to the reader.

Example One: A student's poem

This is how it's done. Let's look at a passage from a writing student's poem about a city girl sitting on a wild, isolated cliff:

                    Yet as I lay there
                    A feeling of tranquility
                    Unnoticed at first, but
                    Slowly gaining in strength
                    Was infused into my being by
                    The strange lullaby of waves attacking
                    The merciless rocks.

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Example Two: No-Man's Land

We'll worry our way through another student's poem, paying particular attention to the dangers of adjectives and adverbs. Here's the poem:

                    No-Man's Land

                    A forgotten swing rocks
                    silently sand mechanically.
                    Discarded bales of rotting hay
                    lies as ruins
                    along with the battered sign saying -
                        'Scotland Farm. No Trespass.'

                    There's a rust mangled tractor
                    surrounded by ragged barbed wires.
                    Where's that milk bottle crawling on its side
                    and the gnarled paper come from?
                    Solitary farm,
                    detached, fulfilled and existing: no-man's land.
                    Solitary farm, which wants no visitors.

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