Thanks for the suggestion, but I gotsa write all by myself.

I end up suggesting alternate wordings because I'm lousy at explaining what I think should happen to someone else's work. I'm just trying to explain what I mean, not saying "There are the words you should use."

What Ginger said

Hell yes. Allyson, any and every suggestion I will ever make on anyone's work is prefaced by "maybe something like", to illustrate an idea, rather than a wording.

Connie, that's pretty much the same reaction I had to The Moldau, when I first heard it as a college freshman. It's still one of my favorite pieces of music.

And I'd never heard of Smetana till I hit college. There needs to be more Slavic music taught in schools. And Russians and all those other people.

t wonders if there's any way to make the drabbles I'd already half written in my head about portraits be about art education

t realizes she's probably missing the whole point of drabbles, but, dammit, those were nice little scenes

Susan, post them anyway. I say they fit.

t /decree

Thank you, Mistress Teppy. Will do so sometime this evening, since I'm heading out soon for a mass of errands and appointments.

Almost done with rewrite. Go team me.

And in your worm -> fish -> fishermen setup, the show doesn't figure into it at all, just the network.

I said, "A teevee show is just a shiny lure to get millions of people to watch commercials."

Show = hook.

Perhaps the metaphor itself is a little smarmy.

Show = hook.

Ah, see, in my mind, "lure" and "bait" are conflated. And my specific reference was to the later part of the paragraph where you do skip over the lure part.

Actually, if the audience is the worm...you put the worm on the hook. The word "lure" implies the audience is the fish, biting the hook.

Perhaps the metaphor itself is a little smarmy.

It's not smarmy, it's just not internally consistent to me.