All posts by Dona

Voice — active and passive

Writing, ,

I am reading Stephen King’s On Writing and loving it. I read half of it about a year and a half ago then stopped. I am now at the same place I stopped eighteen months ago. The place he describes active and passive voice and tells us to not use passive voice.

I don’t really understand the difference between active and passive voice. I know I use passive voice because my word processor alerts me when my sentences are passive but I’m never sure how to fix the sentence.

King speculates that timid writers use passive voice. I think he is correct. I think I am a timid writer. I am a timid everything. I think that writing in the passive voice is akin to not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.

I plan on trying to write in the active voice (was the previous phrase active or passive? I can’t tell) as much as I can. You will tell me if I slip?

Right?

Ya gotta laugh

Humor

We’ve recently recovered from an infestation of pantry moths. You know the ones — they have iridescent wings and leave marks on your walls if you squash them. They eat and breed in your flour and other grains in your pantry and are a pain to get rid of. We got rid of ours by throwing away anything that possibly may have been infested and then making sure all of our new flour and grains were securely sealed in plastic or glass containers.

Today I was trying to get to the cable cord in the attic knee wall and moved a bag of birdseed. Out flew a pantry moth, so I quickly tossed the bag of birdseed out the window, planning to throw it in the trash bin when I was outside. I worried a little about the moth, but figured that since he flew into the knee wall he’d die before finding the flour 4 stories below him. Also I saw only one fly out of the bag. As long as it wasn’t a female carrying eggs, I figured we were safe.

Later I went outside below the attic window and looked for the bag of birdseed. I couldn’t find it so asked Dean if he threw it away. He said no. I asked where it was.

He said he put it in the pantry. I checked and it was there, right next to the flour and above the rice and below the pasta. Oh, and it was open.

Crap.

Update

Musings

I’m still here. Just not in the mood for anything. I don’t want to blog. I don’t want to read and respond to Facebook posts. I don’t want to do long-neglected chores. I don’t want to go to the book festival today. I don’t want to begin that exercise program I’d been planning to begin in the fall.

I’ve cut way back on my online time (only short, infrequent visits to Facebook and barely any tweeting at all). I’ve dropped out of my book groups. I’ve sent my kids off to college. I have a lot of time leftover (after working 8 hours a day), but I don’t want to actually do anything during that extra time.

So I escape in a book…

I’m sure it will all work out once I get used to it.