Know When to Shut Up

And that brings me to my currents state of  literature. I've grown tired of adult fiction. It's becoming oversaturated, monstrously detailed, and there's very little fun going on in that part of the literary world these days. In fact, the last three or four novels I have read are all geared supposedly towards a younger audience - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (excellent), The Witches by Roald Dahl (a childhood delight revisited), Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (who has an exquisite writing voice) - and these writers, these stories know when to let the reader go and use their imagination, rather than bogging down the whole experience with useless details about the jagged edge on a single cloud or what brand and year the murder weapon was when it proves to be insignificant throughout the rest of the adventure.

As a prose writer - no, as a writer, one of the hardest things to learn is to know when to shut up and let the story tell itself, and allow the reader to have some fun.