In honour of Jana's new blog, I want to present a little exercise we worked on late last week. See, Jana and I write copy together for work, and it's always a struggle for me to talk her out of her thousand-and-one adjectives and adverbs. So, last week, I gave up and let her go wild.

The first sentence is my original quote, and the second is what she did with it. I must say that her work is impressive.

"Tensions abound in this political thriller."

"Excruciating tension seethes and coils in a miasma of blood-curdling neo-realism in this searing saga of political intrigue and family passions."

"There are detours along the road to love."

"The cruel shards of pebbles along life’s winding path pierces the tumescent heart of our unforgettable hero as he stumbles unwittingly towards his predestined appointment with love."

"His eyes looked upon her with tenderness."

"The piercing black coals of his eyes softened as they gazed upon her own limpid pools into which he longed to drown forever."

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

"The pink fingers of dawn crept over the pearlescent sky as the fleet-footed fox leapt in a single, glorious bound over the somnolent form of the toothless—yet still endearingly ferocious—hound."

Jana gave me this: "Come to laugh. Come to cry. Come to terms." All I could come up with was this: "Life sucks sometimes." Jana turned it around and gave me this: "Life—the brief glimmer of light, caught between the dark, glowering cliffs of non-existence—can—as quoted by a most fortunate, long-eared quadruped—suck donkeys."

Man, she's good.