Unplugged Keyboard, Part 2

Perhaps in mowing the lawn of words, I’ve missed the wildflowers.
A few years ago, I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser and it overhauled how I think about writing. My main takeaway was to ruthlessly delete. To purge useless words, poor sentences, and unwieldy paragraphs; to trim the verge, evening, noon, and night. When I type on an unplugged keyboard, I can let go of all that.

Welcome to the overthink. Almost all my posts are short. Maybe I’m saying too little by deleting so much. Am I doing something wrong? Am I doing something right? Sight lost on cold worlds, trite cost of bored words. The preceding sentence is one I’d normally delete, but it’s slightly funny, so I’m keeping it. My favorite thing about writing is including humor. Sometimes I’ll be writing yet another functional sentence and then a spark of humor hits my brain. I type a funny sentence. And then maybe another. By the end, I’m laughing and I know I’ve written something good. Sometimes the funny sentence isn’t even that funny, just unexpected. It’s comedy from the sideline. It’s not the main point and that’s what makes it funny. The problem is when I delete the funny sentences. I strive to keep them, but occasionally they’re too distracting. For example, take notes in a piece of music. The fewer notes, the more importance each has. If the music has just three notes, each carries huge weight. So in a post of one hundred words, there’s no room to set a precedent a funny sentence can break. Or is there?

The unplugged keyboard answers the question, “How do I write when no one’s watching?” Spaghetti. It’s funny because it’s a meme. The main point is to have fun. If I could incorporate even just 10% of what I type on the unplugged keyboard, I feel like I’d truly enjoy writing.