Listening with a careful ear to one’s prose isn’t the same thing as falling in love with the sound of one’s voice. Narrative prose consisting largely of long, complex sentences, full of embedded clauses* and all the rest of the syntactical armature,* takes some care. Long sentences have to be carefully and knowledgeably managed, solidly constructed; their connections must be clear, so that they flow, carrying the reader along easily. The marvelously supple connections of complex syntax are like the muscles and sinews of a long-distance runner’s body, ready to set up a good pace and keep going.
