All in good time

“He wandered away in wonderment, pondering awondering…”

“Oh, that’s tacky. Writing like that will get you no where—shows how desperate you are to establish yourself as a writer. Don’t do that. Just be cool.

Huh?

Unable to decipher the critic’s reasoning, Julia observed the writer’s crestfallen face from a distance. She was perplexed. The sentence sounded fine to her, even ambitious with the coining of a new term. Writers always took the poetic license—it was their nature.

“Write the way people speak. Be natural.” Came the critic’s afterthought.

Ah! The times they’re a changing, realised the time traveller.