Feeling What You're Seeing

But then later, I was told I use too many adjectives. Really? Did I overcorrect somehow?

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As soon as I got home, I looked through several of my essays and stories. It didn’t seem like there were a whole lot, but that was based on my perspective, and maybe I like a lot of adjectives now? Time to put my obsessive research skills to work! Down a rabbit hole I went. I went so deep that even my daughter told me I needed to let it go. I believe her exact words were, “Mommy. Get over it.”

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I didn’t. Instead, I researched the average adjective count in similar length essays. Then I ran several of my pieces through AI and asked it to count my adjectives. I learned that not only do I not use a lot, my writing actually contains half of the lowest number in the average range. 

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That was helpful but I wasn’t done yet. I fell further down the hole. I needed to understand what was at the root of this feedback because clearly my writing felt atmospheric and adjective-y, or I wouldn’t have received the comment.

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How many of you are now thinking what my daughter was thinking? I won't be offended. It's a reasonable conclusion. Jokes on you though, my rumination gave me an answer.

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It's my aphantasia. In compensating for the lack of imagery, I (over?)developed my analytical and emotional processing. And experiencing my inner world rather than seeing it gave me a different vocabulary for descriptions. One that relies on metaphor, emotion, and concepts to describe the visual world. One that permeates my writing and brings you, my dear reader, into my world where imagination doesn't rely on the mind’s eye. And that holds just as much value as a paragraph dedicated to exactly what shade of green the grass is under the warm glow of the rising sun.