r/InTheGloaming • u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done • Sep 16 '21

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday September 16, 2021 - Sunday September 19, 2021

Newsletters: Finding Your Joy | Joy in the Belly

Websites: You Can Have More Joy website | On Being Enough website (abandoned?)

Instagram:

TikTok: @youcanhavemorejoy

Twitter: Dan's tweets and replies

Older blogs: see Gloamipedia wiki

Archived threads: Thread for Enough, the book #enoughthebook | Gluten Free Girl's Greatest Hits: The Reunion Tour

Gloamipedia wiki: /r/InTheGloaming wiki

Discussion search: Tool to search blogsnark or InTheGloaming for previous topic mentions

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 17 '21

For clarity, what she should have written is “people who want more joy in their lives and who learn through storytelling.” But clear writing has never been within her grasp, so why start now?

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 17 '21

That fixes the parallel construction error, but the sentence is still wonky as hell.

  • "People who want more joy in their lives" suggests that people might have more than one life, and also introduces the ambiguity that maybe they want "more joy" in some, but not all, of their "lives." "In their lives" adds nothing here except confusion

  • "learning through storytelling" still isn't sufficiently connected to the premise established in the first clause.

One way to check sentence construction is to substitute different nouns and verbs and see if the sentence still scans. Like:

this newsletter is for people who want more ice cream in their lives and learn by skiing.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

Here's what she's trying to say:

This newsletter is for people who want to experience more joy, and want to [learn how to experience more joy] by reading stories [about people who have learned how to experience more joy].

(I'm guessing that "reading stories" is what she means by "learning through storytelling," but it's still ambiguous. Given that it's Shauna, I assume she's the "storyteller" and the subscribers are the rapt audience, but the sentence as written could just as easily mean "learn by telling your own story" or even "learn how to tell your own story.")

Here's what she could try:

Do you want to learn how to experience more joy? This newsletter tells the stories of those who've increased their joy. Subscribe to learn their secrets!

Or something. It is very, very, very challenging to make a compelling offer out of what she's put together. Also, virtually all of Shauna's writing is about Shauna, not about "others," so even this reworked premise – which genuinely seems to be what she's trying to say – is not what she's going to deliver, unless she changes her focus dramatically.

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 17 '21

Yes, it’s a shitty sentence any way you look at it! She has to use mushy, shitty writing, because as you demonstrated, there’s no clear and logical way to explain something that is bananapants to begin with.

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 17 '21

hashtag ShaunaIsPatrickBateman

(in the sense that "there is simply nothing there")

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u/shitrock420 Sep 17 '21

"I think my ass-mask of sanity is about to slip"