On Being Concise

Good writing often involves using as few words as possible to paint a picture or tell a story.  I don't know if it's just me or if other writers have this problem, but concise ain't that easy.

Here's where a day job comes in handy.  When writing a letter or an email, I've found it's best to let the thing sit for a bit, a minute or a day, depending on the urgency. Coming back, I find I can eliminate about half the words, making the same point.

These blogs are the same.  I'll publish a post, then read it, seeing many words can be left out.  So I'll go back and remove them.  It's a dynamic process.  Very exciting we live in the modern world of lightning speed re-editing.

It reminds me what I learned in architecture school.  To make something look like it was created with ease, one must work many painstaking hours massaging the thing, working out the kinks.  That is how you get a building that looks like it was designed without effort.  It's a paradox.

These days, in architecture, ease of editing through computer aided drafting makes it possible to try out many more ideas in much less time.  It's nice to find good and exciting things about the new age in which we live.  Keeps the skepticism in check.

More later.