To Ink Wildly or Pen Purposefully
I get it. Just as a bonsai requires pruning for its branches to trace dendritic refinement in the air, writing demands a succinct form of artistry on the page.
Slash your adverbs! And don’t be dear about it.
Often, I woefully surrender my adverbs to the chopping block before my precious adjectives. But sometimes, I can’t help wondering while still resentfully yielding my adverbial delights to such adversarial precision—
Where do all the -lys go when we viciously clip them free from our sentences? I imagine lone -ly syllables piled together in a sort of suffix limbo, softly sighing:
Let’s pretend that we never cruelly swished them away! That we deeply cherished each one. Now hold the -lys in your mouth. Carefully spell them out loud like you truly mean your word—
I’ll go first:
Exhibit A:
My mother wore a purple band
in her hair that glossi-ly winked
like an amethyst strand.
Exhibit B:
The willow bent beautiful-ly,
safe-ly tossing storm bells
back to the sky.
Or, let’s try tacking stray -lys onto other words like strange wings:
She wonderly wiled her days away.
They said goodbye, dewly gazing at one another across the starry void . . . .
I everly wish to forget you, but may neverly shatter that mirror—
I am acutely silly here, and not the least bit sorry for this ridiculous post, either! I only hope that the next time you are sorely tempted to clip an adverb from your magnus opus in pursuit of syllabic perfection, you pause—
Keenly wonder in your ink of hearts where all the lost -lys lie.
~*~
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