Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV Advises on Adjectives

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Howdy y’all.

It is one. Your perspicacious pedagogue. Your towering tutor. Your world-travelling writer. Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, author of the speculative fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. Man of means. Man of moods.  Man of delicious madness (of which more later).

One is, needless to say, back chez maman – that muscular and impressively moustachioed female of uncertain age and equally uncertain temperament – who was nonetheless flatteringly pleased to see one, and absolutely thrilled to learn that the guns of one’s skinny, wrinkled, orange sperm donor have been so carefully and completely spiked courtesy of a small man with a Bronx accent and hairy earlobes. The woman even went so far as to throw her arms around one and blow draconically alcohol-laden breath in one’s face. However, I digress and I know my adoring students will be agog to know the wellspring of their beloved maestro’s ecstatic madness. Learn patience my children

One’s distaff parent. Having fed one a lucillan repast of gammon, oven chips and corns (which always evacuate in precisely the same state as that in which one ingested them), mater took her increasingly humongous hips and breasts to the  Bear and Bare Breast to celebrate the safe return of her ewe lamb. One declined the kind invitation to accompany her, having very little taste for darts, cribbage and warm beer, preferring to sit snuggled beside a roaring fire with an improving volume and a small glass of Tia Maria penning your latest lesson in the epistolary art.

Adjectives

Adjectives. How beloved of the sane and how abused by the unimaginative. Let us consider for a moment something as prosaic as grass. One could say grass is green, but how unimaginative. How much better to wax lyrical about its verdant and virtuous viridiannness. Or it’s sleek, sensuous, smooth coolness. Or how its tiny saw teeth can lacerate the delicate soles of a loved one’s feet. Or how laying in its lush greenness can leave a delicate tracery of greenish lines on the pale goldenness of a lover’s skin. Or how its fragrance can fill one’s nostrils as one is laid face-down under the delicious firmness of a lover’s hand. Or… But I need say no more, need I. Adjectives are called add-jectives for a reason. That reason being that you add them in order to add texture, colour and sensuality to your otherwise stagnant prose…

And this was as far as one had progressed when it happened. IT – that thing which has changed forever the heart which beats in the breast of your beloved teacher. IT – that light that has shone into the darkest corners of one’s psyche. IT – …

I think I shall leave you there waiting with puttering heart and wetted lips and damp little palms to learn what may have occurred to stir the heart and loins of your beloved tutor. And wondering why he should chose to greet you in the parlance of our transatlantic cousins.

Thou shalt wait and see…

Gold skin
Eyes like amber beads
Voice that
Uplifts
Understands one’s needs
Sighs and
Skin
Eye to eye
Thigh to thigh
Is this madness?
Or reality at last?

One can tarry no more. Dream of amore…

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.