The Tale of The Mouse
Part the First
Yesterday TheMouse posted her very first write up on the subject of How to write poetry for E2. It was written with satirical intent to draw attention to two peculiarities of E2,
- firstly that whereas self-penned poetry seems to get short shrift on E2, the exact same old guff carefully crafted content, when recast as prose, appears to be warmly welcomed and,
- secondly the common practice within E2 of creating titles for these pieces of such monumental pretentiousness it almost defies belief.
TheMouse was not overly surprised to find that such a challenge to orthodoxy and was greeted today by the voice of Klaproth
Klaproth says I ate your writeup How to write poetry for E2. Life sure is complicated.
Perhaps the citizens of Everything are not yet ready for satire. In any case I have included the offending writeup below for the sale of posterity. (Or at least for as long as the powers that be discover what I've done and delete this as well.)
Of course you are terribly creative and talented, your English teacher told you so. Naturally it is your bounden duty to share your talent and creativity with the world at large and what better place your verse than on dear old E2.
Don't.
No I really mean it. Don't. You'll get downvoted to hell and back, and even worse tou may find those chilling words "Marked for destruction" will appear across the top of your write-up. Sorry and all that. It's just the way it is. People on E2 do not seem to like poetry and that's all there is to it.
All is not lost however, you simply need to follow these two easy lessons to learn how to post your poetry on E2 and survive to tell the tale. So listen up boys and girls because I believe in this, and it's been tested by research.
LESSON ONE
Do not write..
the emerald glint of your eyes
reflects the moonlight and
dazzles my heart
time freezes over
stops
clicks
tumbles over itself
I find myself caught
in their brilliant embrace...
etcetera etcetera
That's poetry and it will get downvoted to hell and back.
And it does not matter how much you play around with the formatting; it will still be poetry and you will still get downvoted to hell and back.
Listen up; this is what you do, you write;
The emerald glint of your eyes
reflects the moonlight and
dazzles my heart;
time freezes over,
stops,
clicks and
tumbles over itself
as I find myself caught
in their brilliant embrace.
Now that is not poetry, that's prose, and prose is OK, prose gets upvoted. Prose gets C!s.
You will naturally need to pay a little attention to basic grammmar, but not that much,and sprinkle in the odd comma, semi-colon or full stop. (Sorry, I meant period.) Maybe even add the odd "and", "when", "so" or something like that so that the whole piece flows into something vaguely approximating a sentence.
But you're not quite ready to roll yet, you need.....
LESSON TWO
Pick titles carefully !!!!
Do not give your lovingly crafted piece of a screamingly obvious title such as "Emerald Eyes", people will just assume it's either a write up about a Neil Sedeka song or even worse, some boring factual write up about gem production in the Phillipines.
That simply will not do.
You need to choose an impressive title, a title that correctly identifies your write up as a piece of lovingly crafted creative writing.
Something like;
my heart is dancing as your eyes reflect the moonlight shining over the azure bay
Now that will do just nicely!
Note that your chosen title does not have to make sense. In fact the less sense it makes, the better; as the less sense it makes the less likely it is that anyone else will have thought of that particular combination of words and the more likely that your chosen title will be brand new fresh virgin nodespace!
Now you're ready to roll! No longer will you feel embarassed by a negative reputation!
This has been a Public Service Announcement on behalf of the E2 Creative Writing Support Clique.
Coming next; How to write fiction for E2: Why use of the break tag is prohibited.
TheMouse also thinks that some people take this way too seriously.
SQUEAK!