"A great sentence is a good sentence made shorter."
I've been writing more. Lately it's been at attentioneering.co. I write on attention and how to work deeply on things that matter.
This matters to me. For a long time I struggled with sitting down at my computer and working on something important — like writing — for an extended period of time without getting distracted.
But this isn't about that. This is about writing itself. I've been working to simplify my writing. To distill the ideas I'm trying to convey down to their simplest form.
I've taken inspiration from Paul Graham (namely his article, Write Simply, which I've printed out and keep in my knapsack), as well as the Smart Brevity framework and books such as Writing for Busy Readers.
Like Stephen King says, I'm not a great writer — but I'm a pretty good editor. I like to write quickly; I need to get my thoughts down on the page so I have something to work with. I'll often write 1000 words in 30 minutes, then spend the next several days rewriting and editing. This process works for me.
Editing allows for simplification. It gives you time and space to consider each and every paragraph, sentence, and word; ensuring they're not only the right ones in the right place but that they're even needed to begin with.
But in my quest to simplify simplify simplify, I find my end result starting to look like what comes out of ChatGPT.
The Smart Brevity framework emphasizes not only short paragraphs and sentences, but also prodigious use of bullets, bolding, and axioms. The idea is that all modern-day internet users skim, and so if that's your audience and you're competing against hundreds of other sources of information, the way to get your message across is to make the content as digestible as possible.
And this is done by making it direct, to the point, with no fluff. And skimmable.
For Attentioneering, I'm writing for those who are struggling with concentration. So this is generally a good approach.
But I'm finding it doesn't allow for much personality — at least not in the way I've been writing it.
I like to write how I talk. As though I'm having a conversation with a person. Like Chris O'Shea, I prefer to write in "spoken" rather than "written" English.
But when editing for brevity, little of the conversational nuance makes the cut.
And the end result more and more resembles something that comes out of ChatGPT.
I feel the information and structure I've been providing is of quality, but how it's packaged needs work.
In On Writing Well, William Zinnser stresses the importance of simplicity. He says to get simple first, and worry about style later. Work on getting efficient before trying to 'find your voice'.
I'll need to keep this in mind. Because simplicity without style is a dead end in the age of ChatGPT.
Both are needed to stand out and get read.
David Perell had a good conversation with The Cultural Tutor about writing style and the difference between maximalism and minimalism.
What it made me think about was the audience. There's two approaches here: Write about something you love in a style you love and your passion is bound to resonate with a certain audience. They will find you and mesh perfectly with your style.
The other approach is to identify the audience you want to write for (in my case it's knowledge workers who struggle with concentrating), and ensure your style lines up more or less to their needs and context.
(This, by the way, is the choice that entrepreneurs make as well: build something that solves your own problem and believe others will benefit, or find a common problem out there and build something specifically to solve it.)
If one of the struggles of my audience is that they have a hard time staying focused when reading a book and can rarely get through a few pages, then using long words in long sentences in long paragraphs isn't going to be helpful to them or me.
With that said, I want the practice of writing to be enjoyable and expressive for me. It's thanks to getting a better hold of my attention in recent years that I was able to start writing again and I've fallen back in love with it (well, I actually still dislike writing but I do love editing).
So that's the driving force to setting up this blog. I'm hoping to write more freely about what comes to mind, in a way that I enjoy — while still focusing on simplicity and directness.
Paul Graham, in the essay I linked to above, lists several reasons why writing simply is better than not. A couple points I like:
- Some of your readers won't have English as their first language and so using simpler words and sentences will help you reach a larger audience.
- Good writing transfers ideas for the benefit of the reader; it doesn't try to impress the reader.
- Centuries from now, the English language will have evolved. Simple writing using common words will be easier to comprehend and have greater longevity.
But the argument I like the most is this: Paul Graham says he writes simply because it offends him not to. He writes like I do: a very fast first draft and then days of rewriting. If he comes across ways to make his point more economical, he can't help not doing it.
I'm similar. Or at least, I aspire to be.
And I aspire to write like Paul Graham. He's able to write simply with style.
(Two things of note: I did not spend days editing this post. I just wanted to get some thoughts off my mind and hit Publish. I'm certain I could've made it vastly simpler while still retaining some style. Second, I'm using this blog as an opportunity not only to write more but to play with AI-generated artwork. So that's what the accompanying image is from.)