an embarrassment of exclamation marks

so i thought i'd come here tonight and be inspired by having read my post from a few days back, "music." it was a really good one!

"maybe i can do that again," said claire.

type the blogger url, type my user name, use my phone to confirm because for some reason it doesn't want to ask me my password, and there i am looking at my list of posts.

and just a crazy number of them recently have ended in exclamation marks.

"what???" asked claire, rhetoriconfusedly. "why have i been using so many exclamation marks?"

i'd like to think it's because i was just excited every single one of those times. i'm a pretty excitable gal, you know. (i just spent a minute and a half trying to decide whether there should be an exclamation mark on that sentence. i meant to put one there as i was finishing it up, but then i got self-conscious.)

i blame msg for this pickle i'm in now. he told me once that some writer's advice was, never use more than one exclamation mark in a story. which, to me, wow, that's obviously not enough exclamation marks. the idea, blah, blah, blah, was that if there's only one it will stand out and have more meaning and impact, but if there are several, none of them will seem like a big deal.

i want my exclamation marks to be a big deal!

but did that one right there have less impact because i used one back in paragraph one?

and do all those exclamation marks in my post titles make people think i'm some kind of wacko who's constantly shouting everything at the top of her lungs?

and am i really worried about any of this stuff, or is this just a way to fill up another post so i'm closer to breaking my most-posts-in-a-year record?

whoosh.

"okay, claire, take a good hard gander in the mirror and figure out what the deal is with all this exclamation mark business!"

well. look at that, would you?

i'm a pretty good-looking person, you know? i mean, not to toot my own horn, but actually very hot. those deep green eyes ... i can see why msg loves staring into them.

there's something special about this girl in the mirror in front of me.

i think i need to remind myself of that more often.

"be that girl," claire told herself. "remember that she's the world to somebody. that she's unique. that no one else is her, and since no one else is, she really, really needs to be herself."

which, honestly, is where the exclamation marks came from.

i'm an exclamation mark kinda girl.

seriously!