Communicating with words is a pain in the butt.
At best, words contain the purest, most simplified expression or encapsulation of an idea. At worst, words are a hotbed of confusions replete with incomplete and contradictory meanings.
Fuckin'. WORDS. Man.
Which is why I've been finding writing a little frustrating recently.
The thing I've come to learn is that even though I have a pretty solid vocabulary and that I spend a large part of my time writing words and trying to communicate ideas, I... kinda suck with words.
Let me elaborate since that previous statement was not even remotely close enough to getting across a complete idea, the one tickling my amygdala like a brain lizard licking a neuron leaf for nutrients.
...what was I talking about? Anyway:
I feel torn. Because nothing irks me more than writers who very clearly use a thesaurus to make themselves sound smarter (actually, it just makes you sound like a pedantic dick, bellend, penis, jerk, snob, knobhead, prick, cock - how's that for fucking synonyms, BITCH?!?!?! No thesaurus; come at me!), but on the other hand, communicating what one intends in a natural sounding way without sounding stupid is... very hard. At least for me.
I'm in the camp of "it's more important to communicate an idea clearly than it is to word it cleverly." Obviously, if it is worded well, that's great, but my (and many other writer's) attempts to make sentences sound more interesting are often... snobby sounding. It's why bad fantasy writing is like scrubbing your eyes with a cheese-grater.
Which is frustrating because even though I pride myself on my ability to sound simple and natural and not try too hard when writing stuff, there have been times reading over my work where I just go - "yeah, I got my point across, but dear lord, nothing in that sentence has more than two syllables" or "God, I guess this is fine, but can I not think of anything more descriptive than 'he sighed?'" Stuff like that.
And don't get me started on my using profanity as a crutch - especially during dialogue and especially especially during what is supposed to be "comedic" dialoge. (oooh, I have a funny idea - how's about we make it funnier by adding a bunch of "fucks" everywhere!?)
I dunno, this is just a lot of writer insecurity that's been bubbling up recently. I've been plugging away at the novel and I can't shake the feeling that what I'm writing is boring and unnecessary.
But then again, I am my own harshest critic. Very often, the stuff I write that I thought was so trite at the time turns out to be pretty good.
I dunno, man, I dunno...
(shit, was there a better way of phrasing that?!)