I wish I had written that: Week three

This week, I'm going to be doing something a little different. Still three excerpts from three separate articles, but this week they're all from the same author -- Detroitblogger John. I hope that by the end of this post you'll have gained a sense of the way he writes and why it impresses me.

Excerpt One

“He's immune to power outages, indifferent to rising utility costs, oblivious to gas prices.”

-- Detroitblogger John, Metro Times

Immune, indifferent and oblivious all mean different things. But Detroitblogger John knows how to use words in such a way that different meanings can be used together to build a collective meaning.

What he has done here is impressive just for that reason: John is talking about Glendale Stewart, a man who lives in Detroit, but "off the grid," and the three separate meanings are used together to emphasize his distance from the city, though he lives in it.

John writes for the Metro Times and "scours [Detroit] for hidden gems." His main purpose, and the reason he started writing these hidden gems, "is to share local, personal happenings with a handful of former Detroit-born friends."

Yet besides finding and writing such stories, he knows how to bend words to his will, making them mean what he wants them to.

And if you don't believe me that Detroitblogger John's writing is good, the fact that it's published in multiple places and the comments people make on it should back me up.

Excerpt Two

"She's a performer in search of a stage, a teacher looking for a class, living in a museum without visitors."

-- Detroitblogger John, Metro Times

Detroitblogger John's writing is littered with sentences like these. Little gems, tucked here and there, in the features he writes.

He has a way of grasping qualities that can't be grasped, like in the excerpt above. He's describing a woman, Bettie Birch, who has devoted her life to continuing the oral traditions passed down to her, the stories of slavery from generations before her. But now, being retired and not having the means to purchase a building in which to continue her life's work, she keeps everything she used to teach in her house.

And Detroitblogger John writes the colorful sentence excerpted above to try and describe her situation, since most descriptions wouldn't do it justice.

It's powerful because it grasps something ethereal, showing the state of wanting to do something, but not being able to.

That's the type of writing that you often find in Detroitblogger John's features, a man who is just as mysterious as the ethereal excerpt above, since he has no name other than Detroitblogger John. No one really knows who he is.

Excerpt Three

"He and other sign painters transform their frustration by incorporating art into their commercial work. A Caudle cartoon for a shipping company shows two retro-looking deliverymen smiling earnestly as they work. A Bridge Card portrayed on a Livernois liquor store by the painter known as Norman features the Ambassador Bridge and is issued to Britney Spears. A simple ad commissioned by a small tire shop wound up featuring a voluptuous blonde in a gown standing in front of a sparkling yellow Rolls Royce. Patrick made that one. 'I love to paint beautiful women,' he says with a sly smile. 'That's my specialty. I really want to go that way someday.'

Caudle just wants respect. He says some people look down on the profession, as they did years ago when sign painters were called 'wall dogs' and had a reputation for being unruly transients. 'They think you're a bunch of drug addicts and drunks, that you have to drink in order to keep a sturdy hand, which is not true,' he says. 'That's sort of the reputation.' He still takes considerable pride, he says, in doing a quality job, in being a true artist, in proving the critics wrong."

-- Detroitblogger John, Metro Times

OK, so this excerpt is a little longer. But trust me, please, I'm not just trying to take up more of your time; I have a reason for this. This excerpt, from Detroitblogger John's feature "The writing on the wall," doesn't contain the usual hidden gems that he weaves into his writing.

This time, this excerpt's merit is not in its writing, but in its content. I thought that ending this post by focusing on the impressive things that John finds, rather than just writes, will help to give you a more well-rounded picture of who he is as a writer and what he's capable of.

Detroitblogger John has a knack for finding unusual stories in Detroit. This time he writes about a group that, as the excerpt above says, is sometimes looked down upon.

And on those lines, there is something to admire about the writing here: John's use of quotes carry his description of the sign painters.

But that's not what I'm focusing on here. I'm focusing on the fact that someone even thought to write about sign painters. To me, it shows John has a keen eye for unusual things -- things that might seem ordinary on the surface, but really aren't.

And just in case you think I'm making this stuff up, Time.com blogger Darrell Dawsey backs me up, saying that he wishes he had written John's piece.

In my opinion, Detroitblogger John is not only an amazing wordsmith, able to bend words to his bidding, but he also has an amazing eye for stories, looking in places that others might not think to look.

And I hope by now you might agree with my opinion.