Somewhat Self-Indulgent

One of last month’s reviews on YouWriteOn.com accused my story of being a “somewhat self-indulgent piece…”

I let a month go by to see if this review still rankled. It does. My feelings have festered. It seems that it’s time that I lanced this sucker and cleaned out the wound.

As I understand “somewhat self-indulgent” that means I ‘somewhat excessively’ indulged my own ‘appetites and desires.’ Or perhaps—according to the Oxford English Dictionary— my creative work is “lacking economy (careful use of words) and control (the power to restrain).”

Let’s skip what ‘somewhat excessively’ might mean for the moment. What would disturb anyone about such a characterization is that it’s just that—a characterization, bordering on psychoanalysis. If I need therapy, I’d prefer that it be from someone with credentials. I’m funny that way.

Now, if one were to do a better job of reviewing, one would review the piece and not resort to divining the writer’s motives for creating it.

Call the piece, “preachy,” “somewhat excessively laden with argot, bombast, buzzwords, cant, clichés, doublespeak, drivel, gibberish, and jargon,” or call it “heavy-handed,” and I’m fine with that. Review the story.

My reasons for writing the piece are that I believe this story needs to be told in a different way.

After all, as Kingsley Amis said, “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

Let the healing begin.