Back To School.
I’m a terrible writer. Just terrible! Or so I worry about constantly, obsessively at dinner and on vacation, relentlessly while eating DeathbedFood and compulsively when doing laundry. Like that sentence – was that a fragment? A run-on? Too vague? Worst of all, full of ADVERBS? Ever since I started this blog, I’ve wondered. I’m triggered when I see an extraordinarily (Adverb Alert!) well written piece like restaurant critic Pete Wells’ review in The New York Times about David Chang’s newest restaurant, Momofuku Nishi.
Two years into the blog, I decided to add spice to my writing and took a class at UCLA called “Writing Funny”. I was the least funny student in the class, seriously not kidding, but I learned a lot. I learned that good writing is good writing. It sounds simple but it’s actually very difficult to pull off which likely explains why people don’t read blogs like this one. Is anyone reading this? Anyone? I’d say let me know by tweeting me @DeathbedFood but don’t. I really do not want to know.
Story and sentence structure may be the two most important elements of good writing. Pete Wells learned these lessons wells (oops – I mean ‘well’).
Story is everything and story begins with the title. Pete’s title says it all:
The Check Is Only Part of the Price: Momofuku Nishi can be a delight for the palate but tough on the ears and the seat.
I was in. Finally, someone besides me was livid about jack hammer-loud restaurants and odd-shapen, unbelievably uncomfortable seating.
Pete tells his story with perfectly precise and enviably elegant sentences.
You can make reservations, but not for a table. Instead, you reserve a chair, which, strictly speaking, is a seat built like a hard, flat crate.
At Nishi, highly sensitive microphones seem to be placed directly above all the loudest people, picking up and amplifying their every screech.
Nishi is as loud as the opening face-off of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals.
Finally, Pete pleads with David Chang:
If dinner in Changland now includes intelligent drinking, why can’t it also encompass seating and acoustics that won’t leave your lower back in knots and your eardrums in shreds?
So am I a good writer? Can I compete with Pete? Can I even hold my own next to other bloggers? According to Alexa, DeathbedFood.com is ranked 16 Million. For perspective:
- estar LA is 6 million;
- Consuming LA is 3 million;
- Darin Dines is 1.4 million;
- TasteSpotting is 54,000; and
- Eater is 3,000.
Back to UCLA I go.
