Sunday, October 26, 2008

Absence of the letter i

In reading short stories by Carol Shields I came across Absence. She tells about a writer, who when she sat down to her computer discovered the key for the letter I was broken so she proceeded to write without using the letter.

To any of my writing students, it is an excellent exercise to try and write without using a particular letter. I would suggest N or X, and certainly not E.

And as I read the story, I realised there wasn't an I in it.

Here's a pargraph: "The woman grew, as the day wore on, more and more frustrated. Always the word she sought, the only word teased from the top row of the broken keyboard, a word that spun around the centre of a slender one-legged vowel, erect but humble, shoe dot of amayement had never before mattered."

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