The Writers Paradox

As writers, we require ourselves to write as much as possible, to get as many words down as possible, as if length was congruous with talent. Instead, we should require of ourselves to write as much as possible, in as few words as possible. For example, the first two sentences of my blog post could have been summed up with “Do more with less”.

Colleges and academia trained us to provide length, not talent, in our papers. How often did we hear,

“Please have for me by the end of the week a *enter number here* page report on *enter subject you don’t really care about here*.”

Or what about business professionals who spend hours of mind breaking working performing due diligence on a company, compiling a thirty page report filled with complex valuation formulas and projections just to watch the manager read the first paragraph, and then skip to the last page to see the summary?

The point is, as writers for quantity, not quality.

Pages and pages can be written for the greatest horror novel of all time, when one of the most horrific tales is one sentence.

                “He was the last man on earth and someone knocked on his door.”

This is comically ended with some sort of Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon missionaries punch line, or my personal favorite was the pizza delivery guy.

On the other side of this paradox are the writers who have a story, possibly the greatest novel of the era crammed deep within the grey crevices of their brain, but are too afraid to write it. One main driver for not writing is the fear of failure, which will happen. You must accept the fact that failure is inevitable for the thirty year veteran and the two day novice. Embrace the failure, make your friend, invite it over for coffee, get into a long term relationship with it, have a fight, break up, get back together, say you’re sorry and that you will never leave, and then do the best possible thing ever… cheat on it with its best friend Success.

When I was taking a creative writing class and attempting to get my first book published, I received dozens of rejection letters (as was expected for any first attempt). My professor said “When you get a hundred rejection letters, you have a party.” The reason is that for each rejection letter you receive, you are that much closer to success. Rejection and failure are milestones that are to be celebrated.

So, as you take up your preferred writing apparatus, try to capture more meaning, with fewer words. One common rule is to write, and then cut a third.

Good luck in all your endeavors.