A little splurge called "Eggs"

I appologise in full for this gross bump. I have just had a selection of comments on this one and have been told that it is far better than the 'ladder crap'. (And to think my mother would use such language to her son). I thought, by elevating it a little in the list it may get a small increase in attention. (I should be writing now, but.... you know how it goes when you feel you 'should').

How very very embarasing. Thank you for fixing it. I probably don't deserve comments for being such a dork.

Clifford Thurlow Eggs in a title is always intriguing because it is from the egg that everything is spawned. The writing here is indeed improving and I believe, like tennis or chess or country dancing, writers do get better by doing it, daily, assiduously, fanatically. I would also say that now Phil Harvey has decided where he wants to go with his writing, things can only get better and, on that note, it is important to decide before you write a story exactly what it is you are trying to achieve. Some stories are short and sharp, like jokes with a witty punchline. Others are more ponderous and thoughtful, a sort of long hot bath, or a box of Belgian chocolates, a love affair rather than a fling. I think of such stories like a night out watching a French movie, Cache, for example, where you don't understand everything right until the very end and, then, sometimes not at all. The pleasure is in the watching and, with great films, like great short stories, the greater pleasure is dipping back in for a second look or read. Great short stories are best read twice, for nuance, subtext, shades, black humour, allegory. Read a story on the page, rather than the screen, and one gets the flavour, the taste, the rhythm and poetry of the language. If there's a word you don't understand, what a pleasure to go to the OED and look it up and then decide why the writer chose that word - maze, imbroglio, labyrinth, web, enigma, the messotints of meaning is part of the pleasure. In a novel, the writer really needs to get on with the story. In a short, the writer is allowed the leisure to be experimental, the reading of the piece an inherent part of the pleasure.

Thanks..... I could never work out where the second shoulders were. But I think that is made much clearer now. The second shoulders are in the second reading. Though, I have to say, the OED has been replaced for me by Google. A child of our times I am afraid.