Writing and Reading

This is a very tasty subject for us writers. Of all literary devices, this one represents those fun, little pixie sticks that we can’t get enough of. We suck and suck and suck ‘em dry and then want more, then we get hyper, then we drop to our knees and go, “DEAR, GOD, I NEED PROTEIN!”. Then we sleep. A long time.

I’m talking about metaphors.

Yes, metaphors that can shampoo crotches. Not mine personally.

Let me explain the aversion that is a metaphor. They’re tricky. Sometimes sleazy. Think of a metaphor as a pixie stick (like I said before), and the words are the granulated bits of sugar that comprise the sticks and can stick to your skin and get all tarty (is that even a word…. ‘tarty’? I’m gonna look it up).

We, as writers, can sometimes have a problem with metaphors. My editor once pointed it out to me, too. The problem is sort of like an overindulgence. (I just looked up the word ‘tarty’, and it is a real word, but means something I totally didn’t expect!) It’s an overindulgence in writing it and using it.

Basic rule of thumb: keep them simple. Don’t try so hard in being ‘fresh’. At the same time, you don’t want to be ‘trite’. It’s called the “Goldilocks”. It’s sort of like a ‘dance’. The metaphor needs to be ‘just right’.

Just remember that when you’re trying to visualize a “piece of swiss cheese” up in the “backlit canopy with holes punched in it”, the “diamonds sparkling” in the sky and shining down on the “silky waves of liquidy goodness”–

(translation: the moon in the night sky with the stars shining down on the ocean)

You may shampoo my crotch now, Mr. Nicholson.

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