Brevity

The past week I’ve been catching up on James Patterson’s Alex Cross series. Somehow, in the past few years, I’ve missed a few books. That’s easy to do when you have a family and a job. I’ve missed Alex Cross and the brilliant James Patterson (when he actually writes). His brevity, the economy of his words, captivates my imagination in a way that no other writer has done. His lack of description allow my imagination to completely fill in the blanks. The Alex Cross I imagine is complete different for the Alex Cross anyone else imagines. The house, Nana Mama, Jenelle, Damon, the entire cast of characters and the setting is alive with my own personal details … with Mr. Patterson’s dialogue completing the story.

Reading James Patterson cleanses my mental palate, and helps me to re-focuses my attention on writing. I find myself wishing I could write like that. Unfortunately, we live for the details in Romance. Every little nuance is characterized, tagged, cued etc. We struggle to find new and inventive way to say the same thing.  He grinned, smiled, smirked, grimaced, etc. I’ve learned to find joy in this process, though I curse every time I’m stuck, searching for that one word that will make an agent, a publisher, a reader fall madly in love with my WIP and with me.