The slug moved slowly across the sidewalk. It was a mild day, about 70°. The sun was moving west at 3 PM. Sylvia was reading a book entitled, Molecular Condensation, and she flipped a page; she was now on page 74, and an hour earlier she had been on page 50. She had an iced tea, but it was not really hot enough to drink iced tea, and she was sitting in the shade. She had a pencil, too, to take notes. Using the pencil, she made a line next to the passage that she had just read, to indicate its importance. It was Saturday.
By the time the slug had moved an inch, Sylvia was on page 76. She propped herself up on her elbow to shift herself further back into the chair. At 3:15, Sylvia got up to go into the house. The slug moved another half-inch before she emerged from the house. She picked up her book and continued reading. The book engaged her; she was already on page 80.
Sylvia stopped reading for a moment to think about what she would do tomorrow. After she came home from church, she decided, she would continue reading about molecular condensation.
She looked around. On the path to her left, she saw the slug. It was 3:30, and the slug was nearing the edge of the path and the cool shade of a bush over the bark.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
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You have failed. I was not bored by this entry. Just because nothing happens does not mean it's boring. To be boring, it needs more repetition, I think. If it repeated itself more it would be more boring. The style is interesting as well. Is it possible to write something well and at the same time have it be boring? If it's written well enough it will not be boring. Just using simple words, and repeating the same ideas, and having run-on sentences that don't really go anywhere but just go on and on, that makes for boring writing. But it also makes for lousy writing. So you failed to write something boring because you wrote it too competently. Or perhaps it is the greater challenge to write well and boring at the same time. I am undecided as to whether coherent structure makes something more or less boring. Marking time by the movement of a slug is stylistically interesting and therefore not boring.
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