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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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« JUST LIKE A BUNCH OF WRITERS | Main | PAST THE ELGIN MARBLES, HANG A LEFT »

December 02, 2004

SMALL PRESS BOOK FAIR

If you happen to be in NYC this weekend, we suggest you check out the Seventeenth Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair.  We would.

Special events will include readings by both local New York and independent press authors, a literary café, a co-op bookstore, programs that will explore themes from contemporary literary genres, and seminars on how to get work published.

Posted by TEV at 12:15 AM |

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Wow! It sounds so cool. It's opportunities like this that sometime cause me to consider leaving the hollow for a big city. Have fun.

Posted by:robert eggleton | May 13, 2007 at 07:30 PM

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