Lipograms

Day 311 / 365

Sometimes even things that your passionate about can get boring and repetitive. A good way to bring some fun and excitement back into your hobby or work is to add some self-imposed constraints or challenges for yourself. For instance, in programming, we have 12 hours or 24 hours long hackathons, where everyone must build a working product in a limited time.

Something similar that people do in writing is known as a Lipogram. The rule or challenge of writing a Lipogram is quite simple, you have to write without using a particular letter. For example, write a poem without using the letter ‘p’.

The most used letter in the English language is ‘e’. So surely the toughest lipogram to do would be one where you can’t use the word ‘e’. I had initially thought I would open up this blog with a paragraph without the letter ‘e’, but I gave up. Try it yourself, it is tough.

Imagine writing a whole novel without using the letter ‘e’. Sounds impossible right? But author Ernest Vincent Wright did just that. In 1939, he wrote the 50,000-word novel “Gadsby” without using the letter ‘e’!

And he managed to make it sensible as well. Here’s the books opening paragraph-

If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.” A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Staying in the physical dimension