Good On Paper Guy

So you meet this guy online and after reading his profile and checking out his pictures, you decide to give him the time of day. You email a little, talk on the phone and he texts you clever little snippets until you finally relent and agree to go on a date with him. It starts really well, he picks an appropriately nice restaurant, not too fancy but not el cheapo either. The conversation is relatively smooth and you take turns telling each other about yourselves. He tells a few funny, self deprecating stories and you start to warm up to this guy. You try to remember if you picked up your apartment before you left and whether you have on granny panties or your black lacy knickers. Just when you're thinking about what he's going to look like naked underneath you he starts telling you a hundred random things about himself. He recounts for you a few more yarns about his life but they are getting positively protracted, languishingly long. He then starts going on about a bunch of awards he's received. It's then you start thinking that maybe it's best not to put out on the first date. Right about the time he starts talking about cats, you're sure this guy is never going to see you naked. You wish you could tell him what he needs to do to cross the finish line, what he's doing wrong, when exactly he lost you. Instead, you do the hug and pat at the end of the night and spend the next two weeks avoiding his calls.

Irregularly Periodic Ruminations is the Good on Paper Guy. Jim is not a bad guy, he's not a total snoozefest, he's just never going to get past second base with you, and that's if you're feeling generous. Right out of the gate, Jim informs us that he's a writer of speculative fiction. Science fiction and the other 'fantasy based' genres have never been Miss Missives cup of tea. Much of what I have read tends to be unnecessarily verbose, fixated on too much detail, not enough narrative. Such is the case with Irregular Periodic Ruminations.

Jim goes through words like this guy goes through lube. Seriously Jim, you are one wordy fuck. The second major issue is that in an attempt to stay connected with his community, he writes when he has nothing to say. There are far too many posts that feel churned out. This dilutes some really good work because the gems are buried in a shit pile of memes and rounds and other things that are the antithesis of real writing. What Jim does an expert job of is networking. Between communities, Twitter, blogs he follows, blogs that follow him, Jim manages to rake in the comments on even the most mundane posts. It's a party over there and everyone's invited.

Again, the difficult thing for me here is do I review the handful of very well-written, thoughtful posts, the well-timed, funny material or do I review the blog on the overall melange of it's content? When Jim is good, he is very good. This is heartfelt and raw, and a perfect example that less is more.

This is a sliver of hilarity buried in too many words and paragraphs:

There was another thing that bothered the crap out of me about the church music. They did those songs. The ones where they pick a psalm, throw some organ in the background, and slap some arbitrary notes to the words. Seriously? It sounds like someone is reading the newspaper to song. It's stupid. Stop butchering the last movement of Beethoven's 9th like that. It's criminal. God should make you weep nothing but grapefruit juice for perpetrating that on us.

Jim, you need to edit. And then edit some more. Then put the material away, go have a cup of coffee and a biscotti and come back to it and edit some more. Additionally, posts are replete with usage, spelling, and grammatical errors. Miss Missives gets positively snitty when people misuse words like course and coarse.

You don't have to forsake your friends, but if you want your writing to be the focus and not your social networking, you need to get tabs. Use those tabs to house the blogroll, awards, and the rest of the ticky tacky badgetry that is cluttering your three column monstrosity.

Overall, there's a great deal of crap here with a few shiny gems buried deep within. You have plenty of readers but if you want to be better, you need to edit your work and write when you have something to say.

There are a couple of posts that get a shiny gold star.

However, 75% of what I read gets a giant flaming finger.

Since neither is entirely representative, I'm going to award you a sort of hybrid if you will, and we all know you loves your awards.