Dodo Au Go-Go

When I was in my last year of high school, I suffered through English Lit. For someone who loves writing, I suffered exquisitely, with all the analytical stuff asphyxiating all the creative joy out of the subject. A friend in a different English class to me was given - of all things - a creative writing assignment, on one of their literature textbook themes of "irony". I remember being both jealous and baffled - jealous that the other class got to do some creative writing, and baffled about how one would write a story on "irony". I've never quite forgotten it. From time to time, I've thought about how I would go about writing a story on "irony". Or, I've encountered instances of irony and thought, 'now, there's a way to write that irony story'. Never quite written the quintessential irony story yet, though.

I knew I had peeves about writing, but until I started this post, I'd never realised how many I had - and how very strongly I felt about them. So many in fact, I had to stop myself degenerating from peevish to rantish. I may or may not have succeeded on this last point, so consider yourselves warned. The inspiration for this post comes via the very-cool  Larysia and the inimitably-joyous  JD Estrada . They have each made excellent points about their particular writing peeves in their blogs - in admirably un-peevish ways - which are well worth reading. Check out Larysia's here  and JD's here . In fact, while you're there, take the time and check out their blogs more generally.

I saw a kangaroo die last week. Driving to work along my usual rural stretch of road, a kangaroo was lying in the middle of my side of the road. It was clearly alive, head and upper torso upright. Not a youngling, not an adult, maybe an older adolescent. Cars going the other way slowed down to rubberneck/drive carefully. I don't know much about kangaroos, but I do know that they don't stay near traffic for the fun of it.