I posted about this last night on Facebook, and I think it’s worth sharing here. It’s about writing. I’m not sure when it came to me, but I was looking at various pieces of writing, amateur, professional, and thinks-its-professional, and this thought came to me.
Amateur writers generally think that their thoughts are too simple, that they need to be dressed up for publication. Professional writers know that their thoughts are too complicated, and need to be simplified for publication.
Much of the problem, I think, for the amateur is insecurity. He contemplates the thoughts in his head, the thing he wants to say, and thinks, “I have to dress this baby up in his Sunday best, or people will laugh at him.”
But that Sunday best is likely to be stilted language, plus the biggest words the amateur knows (or thinks he knows).
The professional sets his ideas down, muddy and unkempt as they may be, and then takes a knife to them. He cuts away the unnecessary stuff, until all that is left are words that convey precisely the thoughts (or feelinsg) he intends to communicate.
Clarity. Focus. Economy. Those are the marks of the professional. Knowing what to take away is what separates the pros from the ams.
In the bad writing I see most often, I think the larger problem is one of unclear message. It isn’t that he wants to say it in impressive language; it’s that he doesn’t really know what he wants to say. I worry about that myself.
I agree with this post and find Mr. Occam’s razor missing in almost all aspects of human interaction. My mileu is the business world and it took me decades to learn that less is more; even with goods and services. Bringing Sham-Wows to market is more profitable than trying to make hydrogen fuel cell powered family sedans.
There are some “flowery” writer who do a great job. I probably enjoy Dumas as much as Hemingway and Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens are great at making simple points with the aid of tangential fluff, but they also have extraordinary talent.
As a father I notice the trait you expressed in my kids’ writing, especially their “creative writing.”