This is not a post about writing the perfect sentence. This is actually a blog about people who have already done that. And my thanks for being able to read them. Amidst all the Twitter, Facebook, “What are you doing now?” and “Who cares about you because right now I am brushing the cat?” style of writing, some people still pause between the thought and the moving fingers over the keyboard. And it makes good reading.
Perfect sentences don’t have to be on your favorite subjects, but it helps. You read more widely on your topics of interest.
Some of my recent favorite sentences on perfume. (I’m a niche perfume freak and sample collector.)
Chandler Burr, writing his column Scent Notes in the New York Times Style Magazine. The article is about Sweet Lime and Cedar, a Jo Malone fragrance.
Scent, captured. (c) Q. McDonald, 2008. Ink, aquarelle on paper
“. . . Beverley Bayne has created a mesmerizing scent that is a virtual template of what makes Jo Malone so successful. It is light and English, a fresh membrane wrapped around a dark core—in this case lime habillage surrounding a cedar center, each element distinct but working in unison. Bayne’s brilliance was to let the cedar go slightly burnt and smoky, charring the essential oil in the lime peel, as if embers could be made mouth watering.”
And a bit later in the same post, when writing on Byredo Pefumes Green: “Take Green, a perfume that is at once abstract and concrete. How is that possible? Well, in order to smell like a color (which is impossible), it has to be abstract. But in perfume, colors are very specific. . . . It smells no more monochromatic than the subtly complex green background in Lucian Freud’s painting. Yet it is intensely precise, the hypnotic, almost hallucinogenic smell of spring—and with it, renewal.” [The link to Freud's painting is a pdf, the color example is on the last page.]
Chandler Burr wrote the 2007 non-fiction book, The Perfect Scent. (Read my review.) His writing is mesmerizing because it is precise, evokes images and is still effortless, flowing along the page so easily, you can almost see the trail of wet ink, or, in today’s reality, wet toner.
QuinnCreative-generated links (none random) If you are interested in niche perfumes, you might be interested in the following blogs:
Now Smell This
Perfume Smellin’ Things
Perfume Posse
And this website: Basenotes.
–>Quinn McDonald is a niche perfume sniffer and collector. She is still in search of the Holy Grail of perfumes, a myth that every perfume appreicator belives in–the perfect perfume for all seasons and reasons. In the meantime, she is a life- and creativity coach who teaches journal writing with ideaglphys. (c) Quinn McDonald, 2008.
