It's raining here in San Diego.
Rain is so rare here that when it happens people sort of don't know what to do with themselves. The rain becomes the topic of conversation everywhere you go.
At the grocery store, in line at the bank, at the post office; everyone is talking about the rain.
"Did you see what's going on out there?"
"Yeah, there's this strange liquid oozing from the clouds."
The trickle of water is slow and hardly anything worth noticing, but the local news channels are working tirelessly to track what they refer to as "The Storm." And traffic? Traffic is worst than usual. There are accidents everywhere.
I'm from the east coast, so when I first moved here I found the local reaction to rain amusing. But it's funny how quickly we acclimate to our surroundings. Today I caught myself thinking, "Man, how am supposed to leave the house in this weather? I don't even own an umbrella."
Of course, there's a good reason for San Diego's obsession with rain. California has seen the worst drought this year coupled with multiple devastating wildfires. When it finally rains, people notice.
But this got me thinking...
Even small, seemingly innocuous things can feel overwhelmingly significant when they happen in just the right way at just the right time... right?
OK--Hear me out, I swear I have a point. Well, a point that makes sense to me, anyway.
I'm in the mindset lately where everything in my surroundings seems to relate to writing in some way. So I'm thinking of how commonplace words, when strung together in just the right way, can have an incredible impact. I know that's not really an earth shattering thought. But still...
Consider this excerpt from RM Drake's upcoming novel 'Gravity':
I don't know about you, but this sort of gets me right in the gut.
What gets my attention the most is how clean the word choices are. Ingeniously simple.
No big, colorful vocabulary words here. He says so much using so few words. It's subtle, yet so effective.
Subtlety is something I admire. It's easy to make an impact when you use 'loud' words. I admire this poet and how incredibly rich his imagery is. Most of all, I love how he makes every word count.
Anyway...that's it. I just wanted to say that.
And, uh, did I mention it's raining in San Diego?
It's sort of a big deal.