Apres apropos posts: Fibbing

Nah, that post title means nothing special, but it's accurate and I think it has a great ring to it. This ties into something I quickly realized when I was first working on Fibs: the sound of a word not just the meaning of it was a key part of making a good word choice. Again, having started Fibbing as a writing exercise, I was more attuned to thinking about what I was doing, not just doing, so I was all about seeing what it could teach me. And the thing is... while I was dubious about whether writing such precise poems would have an impact beyond just writing them, I have realized that it actually has.

When you're dealing with the 17 syllables of a Haiku or the 20 syllables of a Fib, every choice counts. I think due to the 1/1/2/3/5/8 structure of the Fib, you end up with four lines (the first four, natch) were a single blah word can color the entire line (whic his the main reason I had my original no articles guideline for the first lines). I do think Fibs have helped "train" me to be even more cognizant of each word, in description and dialogue both.

I was thinking of this not because I'm Fib obsessed (well, perhaps I am, he says, as he notes that there are Fib links collected on the right of the blog), but in part because when I did my most recent visit to Harold Underdown's Purple Crayon site, I read Margot Finke's latest Musing's column... and it's all about finding good words. And also, I'm about to start a quick scripting job, and was, as always, thinking "OK, time to write some dialogue that really POPS." I figure as long as I don't accidentally make the characters speak in Fibs, I should be in good shape....