Comments on: It Was Like, You Know

By: bloglily

bloglily — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:51:11 +0000

Cam — Thank you for letting me know and for writing such an interesting post. AND with diagrams! xo

By: Cam

Cam — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:03:20 +0000

Oops -- something was wrong with my link. try this.

By: Cam

Cam — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:00:37 +0000

Hi, Lily. I took your advice and wrote a longer post about metaphor. You can read it here

By: kwjwrites

kwjwrites — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:13:48 +0000

Figurative language is what good writers use to pack more meaning into their writing. It’s a form of “economy of language” that great writers have understood since the beginning of the written word! Setting some arbitrary limit like “2 per book” is like setting a limit on the number of times you can use the letter “f” in a book. What nonsense!
Kim

By: Cam

Cam — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:13:47 +0000

Lily, I don't know about an article, but certainly a blog post. One's been in draft since shortly after I posted that comment. Along with one about book clubs, and one about shale brownies and the dinner that even the dog wouldn't eat, and a few dozen meme tags from Emily, and an idea for one about Spitzer that will never be written now that I've read Bookfraud's post since there isn't anything else left to say. Now, if I can only move from draft to publish. Maybe that will happen soon if I don't continue to fall asleep watching the news only to wake up at 3am and think, I could write since it's too early to do something like vacuum...., but then that doesn't happen either.

By: sandi

sandi — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:44:31 +0000

Lily, the chicken rotisserie simile is great–all that bumpy skin and the dry golden color as the thing rotates–perfect, perfect, perfect for a lap dancer! This is a WONDERFUL way to begin a story! And your saying you wrote a long blog post even though you meant to write shorter reminded me of that great quote from Mark Twain: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

By: Smithereens

Smithereens — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:41:58 +0000

This Homer guy wouldn’t stand a chance on the agent market nowadays… An agent would also surely object to heroes called Achaeans: much too difficult for the reader to remember!

By: boxofbooks

boxofbooks — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:38:23 +0000

I like metaphors and similies. In fact, I discovered them very young, probably third or fourth grade, and they are in my very oldest essays and papers saved from grade school. So I have a sentimental fondness as well as an aesthetic appreciation for them.

My favorites are by Stephen King. But I like your chicken one too.

By: marymom

marymom — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:25:24 +0000

I think that I shall never see / a tree as lovely as a simile . . . I won’t go on from here, don’t worry. Happy Birthday, friend! I’m sure you will soon be on the shelves of bookstores nationwide– that Centerfolds story is really something. I’m sure that’ll have them sitting up and taking notice– errr, publishers, I mean. That’s the kind of story men love for their wives to read, especially right before birthdays and anniversaries. Can’t wait to read it and SW. Love-M

By: bloglily

bloglily — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:06:30 +0000

Fencer, That’s really good! I guess that a steel dog WOULD bark bricks, but the “he” of the sentence is what really gets you wondering.

Cam, I like the stretching of our vocabularies. Maybe you should be writing an article about this!

OP, I know! I’ve noticed that too.

Q & Ben, “the lap of a beloved mother” — that is beautiful.

Polaris, I’ve never heard of Wren & Martin, and see that now I must go & search them out, grammarian/birds.

By: fencer

fencer — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:03:04 +0000

Hi bloglily,

My favorite… simile of all time is Tom Robbins’ “He had a voice like a steel dog barking bricks.”

Regards

By: Cam

Cam — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 04:01:54 +0000

I agree with your regarding the similarities between humor & simile. This is something that I have pondered for several months. If humor is the recognition of the intersection of two incongruent thoughts, certainly simile and metaphor is likewise. I like to think of simile as like a venn diagram. (Sorry — couldn’t help myself…just had to use a simile there!). Each circle (set) is disparate, but where they overlap, in the unexpected, not previously explored, region is where the writer uses figurative language to clarify something for the reader. It is where our limited vocabularies are stretched to convey the imagery of our minds.

By: openpalm

openpalm — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:36:54 +0000

simile looks like smile, and simile That!

By: qazse

qazse — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:22:19 +0000

Such a beautiful passage.

Too bad it constitutes a novel.

By: Ben Daniel

Ben Daniel — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:18:35 +0000

Since one can never share too many examples of why the agent is wrong, here’s the third paragraph in East of Eden:

I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of the west and a love of the east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feelings about the two ranges of mountains.