Here's a fun book brought to my attention on the back page of the current TLS:

Every Day a Word Surprises Me (Phaidon). It offers, among other things, a list of advice from various writers.

1. Never use an adverb. (Elmore Leonard)

2. Avoid the use of adjectives. (Hemingway)

3. Incompetence will show in the use of too many words. (Ezra Pound)

4. Interesting verbs are not very interesting. (Jonathan Franzen)

5.Eliminate every superfluous word. (Hemingway again)

6. Avoid detailed description of characters. (Elmore Leonard again)

One more:

7. Don't go into great detail describing places. (Elmore Leonard. I think I have his book on writing, or an essay?)

So: no adverbs, adjectives or interesting verbs, not too many words, especially superfluous ones., and not too much description of places. As a playwright, I heartily concur with all of the above, especially easy on the description. When I was at Radcliffe on a fellowship (that was 1989/90, at the Bunting Institute) I was privileged to go free to every reading or lecture and/or to participate in any seminars or workshops that appealed to me. (I took one on diaries with the late Hope Davis, mother of Lydia Davis, that resulted a year or so later in my book, Reading between the Lines:The Diaries of Women. (Key Porter Books). I was thrilled then to attend a talk by Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006), the multi-prize-winning playwright of The Heidi Chronicles (1989; It won the Pulitzer and the New York Drama Critics and the Tony prizes for best play.) She said she loved to write plays because she didn't have to write description of rooms or decor, or costumes or stuff like that. Me neither. In fact, right now I have awaiting for me to polish a complete manuscript of a cosy mystery that requires fuller description of the house where fatalities (murders?) occur. It's on my list to do this summer, after a long delay. No one is waiting for it. When I finish it, I'll have to try to sell it. Ay, there's the rub.

Anyway, I intend to find the book of word surprises. I'll try the Book Depository.

Does anyone remember that May 24 was Queen Victoria's birth date? I don't know when it was declared a national holiday but I do remember that in my youth it was always celebrated on THE day, no matter what day the 24th fell on. I can remember when I was in high school it fell on a Thursday and I went on a "bike hike" with some friends to a remote area on the Assiniboine River, now totally built up with upscale houses and retirement homes (I was in one last week). The hike consisted of pedalling like crazy over gravel roads to a likely spot on the river bank, not a park, eating a sandwich and going back - a long way to go for a picnic. We seemed to think it was fun.

It's a weekend now, the first three days off for us since Easter. The United States doesn't get Good Friday off but they do get Memorial Day, the weekend after Victoria Day. That was yesterday, not the weekend but the day.

Did you light a sparkler?