One of the main things we do on the Creative Writing module is submit a page or so of work a week and give feedback on each other’s writing. While there’s often a lot that’s very good, the pages of these photocopied works are often littered with sentences that are clunky, pretentious or just plain weird.

From the portentous and pretentious opening line, such as “My tormentor became my muse” to serious pronouncements like “Time isn’t shy to push you further, older”, aspiring writers try and write amazing prose only to find that they aren’t quite as clever as they’d like to be,=.

Anything about artists or creativity is in particular danger of descending into ponciness, such as “The realistic piazza was surveyed with satisfaction at its inadequacy”, and “Sophia reflected her sketch at its abstract nature today, as she was currently experiencing an artistic block”.

I was also bemused by a description of a ballerina that included such gems as “Apprehension compels me” and “The cadences carry her on sound waves over the stage”.

Who on earth says anything remotely resembling “I feel elevated when they try to extract an emotional outburst from me”? And what is “I’m scared that the now will be luminous forever and the next stained by it” supposed to mean?

Ah well. I’m as guilty of the clumsy turn of phrase and silly sounding sentence just as much as the next writer, but I hope that I do not inordinately navigate the fair signifiers of language upon a course of hebetudinously ill-conceived vocabulary in my questing after innovatory literary excellency!