SloWord

This blog belongs to an Indian-born and raised Canadian of some 50 odd summers and 16 winters (see Canada).

He’s never taken a creative writing course and all the English he knows he learned in Indian “convent schools”. This is the cause of many disadvantages:

1. Grammar – built upon the fear of public humiliation in the form of a tongue lashing or worse and regimented exercises on clause analyses and precis. Modern readers apparently eschew grammar in favor of immediacy and effect, making the blog owner a dinosaur.

2.  “English” – His profound distaste for the North American habit of converting nouns into verbs as in “impacting” instead of “affecting”. His use of phrases and words that convey nothing to Americans (he was stunned when his use of the word “vagaries” at work provoked a heated discussion on whether such a word existed). American readers are thus, presumably, disenfranchised (whatever that means).

3. Spelling – An Indian who lives in Canada and worked for many years in the USA, hmmm, what could possibly go wrong as far as spellings go? “Tire” or “tyre”, “z” instead of ‘s” in words such as “evangelise”, the addition of the superfluous (and natural “u”) when it comes to words such as “flavor”? Modern texters and Twits, who apparently, do not understand the difference between their alphabets and their numbers are going to struggle to read him. 2bad 4 dem!

4. His love for long sentences (see clause analyses above). This leaves most readers mystified as to meaning and bored from reading so many characters (see Twits).

Combine this with an acid tongue kept in check (barely) by the love and constant guidance of a good woman and you have a potential writer with no readership. At least, no one under the age of 60 will have the ability to wade through all this.

He started out writing a book and realized he did not know enough about building characters. So as a lesson, he built three characters, who act as contributors to this blog.

The Slo-Man sees irony in spades everywhere and he writes essays on the strange, the ghastly, the weird, the stupid and the simply annoying bits of real life news. He is the most unreadable, making all the cardinal mistakes of modern authorship. You can read more about The Slo-Man here.

The Last Word (read about The LastWord here) is a dreamer, much given to nostalgic reminiscences. He sometimes attempts humor as in the Case of the Oily Chaperone.

The Peeved Punjabi is most likely to use modern authoring techniques, invective and humor to make a point. There is more about the Peeved Punjabi here.

And then, of course, is the newest member of the tribe, so far, LeggieLefty. LeggieLefty came on in 2013 to deal with matters and madness of cricket. Find out more about the LeggieLefty here.

All are learning basic skills of word craft (“wordsmithing” for all you North American readers) and blogging. While readership continues to grow slowly, the authors are ever aware of the need to be skillful, true to themselves and yet produce blog posts that (hopefully) entertain and enlighten.

• About The Authors – an overall look
• The SloMan –  The Oldest Member, the One Who Started It All.
• TheLastWord – Filled with Cream of Nostalgia, garnished with Portry.
• PeevedPunjabi – When a rant is needed, out pops the PeevedPunjabi
• LeggieLefty – dedicated to cricket, now runs his own blog, still has a page here.