> EDIT: Here's something specific: I'd like to get better at using metaphor. I'm finding that even though I've been writing a lot, I seem to have reached a "plateau" of quality. It's.. well, it's just dull. I don't use many metaphors, and I know my writing comes off as very dry. So I'd like to get better at whatever skill or mindset that lets me spice up my writing, rather than my writing plodding dutifully along its lackluster course without any flair in presentation. Has anyone else found themselves in a similar situation? How'd you overcome it?
I am not going to comment on why metaphors are a bad idea. Especially if you want to get into prose. One trick that would work is writing pastiches [1]. Pick up a few writers you admire. Reconstruct material in their style. The same paragraph in several different styles will help. Repeat, re-do. The hardest thing about writing is not writing well. It is about being ok with your writing being utter shit. You have to climb that hill. Maybe write 'n' pages every day or so.
Everyone goes through this. I read Bukowski's Ham on Rye a few weeks back. Loved it. Today, I opened Post Office, his first book (I think). It was utter shit. Read like Hemingway. Yet, over twenty years. The man's prose had changed into something beautiful. Something uniquely Bukowski. You will find your voice.
I don't see how one can string together more than three words without tripping over a metaphor - or at least a close relative. It is literally (not metaphorically) the scaffolding of the mind, the threads with which we weave concepts into understanding. Perhaps you have a very specific notion of metaphor? Maybe the word invokes a vision of sentences stolid and dry, bleached with metaphor to a colorless drab? Something awkward like: 'metaphors make a sentence into a can of coke left out in the sun too long'?
But metaphors are most royal among analogies and they are all we have to describe and understand the world by. Essentially we have a collective metaphor for the universe that undergoes a shift every so often (don't confuse the instrument readout for what you are measuring). Not even physics can escape them: solar system metaphor for atoms, wave-particle metaphor, curved space metaphor, many world metaphor for a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics. On and on (IMO part of the difficulty of physics is emphasis of metaphor over simile).
Metaphors are powerful because when they get the angle wrong, they have the capacity for a lot of damage. On that we are in agreement. Software is constantly trying to shove (admittedly poor) metaphors down our brains. Programming languages themselves are stuffed with metaphors. Mathematics is made unnecessarily harder from expectations set by adjectives which were once metaphor. Random variables for example are an easy concept that are hard to learn because the brain finds rewriting difficult (bad design 101). Or another: 'What do you mean Complex Analysis is much less pathological than Real Analysis' :S
Metaphors are little programs to bootstrap understanding. Words we write are not just a series of symbols, they are more than mere pixelated shadows of intention. Instead, they are meant to be read such that the receiving brain parses them into hopefully, a similar set of experiences. Experiences which capture the essence of the original intent in full dimensionality, even if not in detail. When we read of an act, the parts of the brain that are involved in the actual act are triggered, an actual honest to goodness simulation. So in a manner of speaking, writers were the first programmers. They had a model of the audience and tried to place words together in just the right way so as to stimulate a certain set of experiences.
When we explain things in metaphor we are trying to share how we experience our understanding, how our deeper more intuitive 'fast brain' works with the concept rather than spitting out an unhelpful series of definitions for the 'slow brain'.
So yeah. My defense of metaphors. Apologies if I went overboard.
I am not going to comment on why metaphors are a bad idea. Especially if you want to get into prose. One trick that would work is writing pastiches [1]. Pick up a few writers you admire. Reconstruct material in their style. The same paragraph in several different styles will help. Repeat, re-do. The hardest thing about writing is not writing well. It is about being ok with your writing being utter shit. You have to climb that hill. Maybe write 'n' pages every day or so.
Everyone goes through this. I read Bukowski's Ham on Rye a few weeks back. Loved it. Today, I opened Post Office, his first book (I think). It was utter shit. Read like Hemingway. Yet, over twenty years. The man's prose had changed into something beautiful. Something uniquely Bukowski. You will find your voice.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche
P.S: Feel free to get in touch. I am fascinated by both the pedagogy of writing and writing itself.