fluff piece

fluff piece

You like to read pieces that have titles bearing capital letters, right? So let’s begin again.

Fluff Piece

Certainly, you must be wondering about the extreme value of this title, as it is in all bold lettering---so, for your benefit, let’s get rid of that.

Fluff Piece

There we go. Now, we have a working title for you, the avid reader, who begins this piece with an assumption that the writer in question is a serious writer, because they have followed the given rules concerning writing a piece that could be published somewhere, by someone, possibly for money.

So what is this piece about? It has to be about something, no? Let’s look at the title, taking the first word as our subject matter.

“Fluff” is our word of the day, being used as the title here. As defined by Dictionary.com, the definition of the noun “fluff” is as follows:

fluff –noun
1. light, downy particles, as of cotton.
2. a soft, light, downy mass: a fluff of summer clouds.
3. something of no consequence: The book is pure fluff, but fun to read.

With this in mind, you as the avid reader can go back to the title and ponder its meaning once again.

Fluff Piece

Based on the definition of the piece as a coupling of nouns, you find that this piece may be about cotton, clouds, or “something of no consequence.” In laymen’s terms, “crap” will suffice.

Already, you know that the piece, if based on its literal meaning as a noun defined, has got to be pretty lame, or exceedingly interesting---there can be no middle ground here. If it is a creative piece, which by the nature of its present presentation, being that of a rambling sort of procedural blob of bureaucratic bliss, could in fact be a fictional story of cotton, creatures made of cotton, illustrations of cotton-like clouds coming to life, all in the name of nothing---no substance and no consequence whatsoever.

But what literary merit would that hold for you? An avid reader such as yourself wanting so much from so little, certainly wishes that the writer herself/himself had taken things more seriously, because otherwise, they might have just crossed the page boundary when using their Microsoft Word program, moving from page one to page two, and that would mean that you alone are still reading this piece which now weighing in at two pages, 407 words and 1,890 characters, still has provided nothing to you but a waste of time, and depending on what you actually could have done instead of taking the time to read this piece, probably you have wasted money as well.

So if we come back to the title, “Fluff Piece,” a reader who simply disregarded the whole piece after briefly considering these two words, may, in conversation with you, an avid reader who has taken the time to read as far as this second page, ask you why it is that you continued reading? You had a good idea, just as they did, that this piece may not have been written by someone who was following the standard etiquette given by the school of acceptable prose that floats out there in the stratosphere, waiting to knit-pick at any kind of variation from the blah blah norm whatsoever? Maybe you expected something more because as you read he prospective title,

fluff piece

you were lead to believe that because it was written in bold type, that it would bring with it some message of vital importance, which you could possibly take with you during the churnings of your own day, and maybe even share with your coworkers, your friends, your family, etc. Yes, you might even be the life of the party because of you time spent reading this one piece in question. You hoped for as much. This is obvious because you are still reading. At line 26, column 40, on page two, at the ripe ol’ length of 667 words now and 3,050 characters (without spaces of course), you should pat yourself on the back. You can probably tell yourself now that you’ve committed yourself to more than, shall we say, a short newspaper article, a transcript of a sound bite on the tele, or perhaps the length of a horoscope reading. Bravo, dear reader, you are a trooper.

Now, if the writer of this aptly titled, “Fluff Piece,” did in fact mean for the word “fluff” to be considered as a verb to its object, “piece,” then it may hold more interest for the avid reader, who at this point, if they are still reading, has no doubt become a bit frustrated and is “chomping at the bit,” for lack of better terminology, really only reading at this point to have something to reference when they write one of those evidently thought-out, witty and intelligent one-sentence attacks which the a writer of a piece similar to this one that you have probably at this point spent nearly five minutes of your life (which you will never get back), reading and pondering. “Pondering,” may not be the correct word to use here, because the frustration that you feel may be of a level so high now that as an avid reader, you feel disappointed by the piece and by feeling as such, your own waning interest has caused you to skim instead of concentrate on each word, sentence or even whole paragraphs. Your eyes now are glazing over the piece, jumping from one block of words to the next, hoping to find some semblance of subject matter which would prove to you as one who considers themselves a literate, intelligent and worthwhile member of a reading public, to be someone who should not have to endure such a blatant disregard for all of the components of a well-written and wholesome endeavor. It is almost as if you expected something that you could physically consume, after sitting at a restaurant and ordering. It is as if you thought that the metaphorical “food” which you seek as an “intellectual,” going forth and trying to stuff yourself with these literary nutrients, would fill you up and carry you throughout your day. They’d beef you up and make you feel strong, with your smarty pecks developed, your tight biblio-addictive buns rip roaring n’ ready to go, anywhere that your eyes may take you.

As a recap, you, the avid reader, have just passed over the page boundary again. You have now been with us, the words, the sentences, the font, the choice of styling (be it bold, italics, underlined, etc.), the paragraphs, and all the little spaces and conventional capitalization and punctuation that come with such a seriously substantial literary endeavor, for 3 pages, 1,129 words and 5,239 characters worth of valuable prose which may be used at your disposal to start conversations at any of your local watering holes, round your water cooler, at a benefit for sufferers of severe anal retention and neurosis which comes from adhering to traditionally conventional definitions of what is to be considered worthwhile creative output, when processed in a manner such as this very piece which you have been with us now, throughout our mutual journey to the very end, that very last punctuative moment---when the period sits right down at the end of that last sentence, wiping its brow from the sweat produced in walking all the way to the end of this piece.

You may very well imagine, as the avid reader, that the illustrious writer of this magnificent work of epic possibility could be growing bored with the exceedingly perfect nature of the prose in question. Such a mass of valuable words which flowed from the mind and heart of said writer could only be accepted by the consumptive public with the wide startled eyes of a deer in headlights or quite possibly, the rapid anticipatory heartbeat of a young horny teenager awaiting their first moment of sexual promise. Yes, for you, loyal, persistent, and we must admit, so much more than just “avid” reader, our words, sentences, paragraphs, and ultimately the piece in total, bows, and if it were able to adorn itself with some kind of metaphorical hat, then by all means, it would tip it in your direction.

At this point the piece that you have been reading has exceeded the length that is often required by editors who are seeking “new talent,” who want to exemplify some new bird that just fell out of the proverbial nest, but not as to give that bird much time at all to tweet tweet its whole harmonious hymn that it holds inside its happy little heart. And as you, the much more than just “avid” reader can most assuredly understand, the worth of this bird’s very short tweet, to be found here on this very page, being invaluable and hard for most to reiterate to their most intimate acquaintances later on in the day, can only be left to the most dedicated research group, graduate student or historian as being something to be mulled over in one’s head for years and may we be so bold as to say, even centuries, in order to get at the very core of its meaning.