True Confessions

In Trimble's chapter 6, "Diction," he stresses the importance of word choice by describing three qualities of  successful writing: conciseness, vigorous verbs, and freshness. In this chapter, I often found pieces of advice helpful and relatable to my own writing. By adhering to the concepts of "Less is more," (49) and "X does Y," (50) and using imagery, my writing could improve dramatically.

Trimble claims, "Most of us write as if we're getting paid a dime a word," (48) but, "A skilled writer writes as if she were paid a dime for each word she deletes," (49.) I know that I'm guilty of writing, just as the majority of people, to fill space and have a convincing amount of work. The amount of words doesn't have a direct connection to the effectiveness. I know that my work could always use more revision and so I will focus more effort on this. By doing so, every word I choose will have more efficiency and keep the reader interested. The second quality that Trimble communicates is "Vigorous Verbs" (50) which compares active and passive verbs. Trimble claims that in standard English sentences, active, "X does Y," (50) which means that the grammatical subject is also performing the action as opposed to passive when the grammatical subject does not perform an action. This is very familiar to my writing as I always write with active verbs, moving forward and not passive verbs which move backward and distract the reader. This keeps my writing simple and direct. Lastly, Trimble introduces the idea of "Freshness" (53) which is what my writing could use the most improvement on. This keeps the reader in a state of surprise by using imagery and adjectives. It makes the writing interesting and the reader can see exactly what the writer is trying to convey. I need to describe my thoughts better by using imagination, similes, and metaphors. When I can learn to incorporate those smoothly into my writing, it will captivate the reader and neither I nor the reader will find the ideas dry or incomplete. If I can effectively incorporate conciseness, verbs, and freshness into my everyday writing, I will be an accomplished writer.