Choosing Brevity
It’s easy to lean into the comfort of words. I accumulate words like I accumulate t-shirts, and feel the very same way about them over time. To be perfectly honest, I try to keep this daily blog to a maximum of three or four paragraphs largely because I find the crafting of them so delightful that I wouldn’t get anything else productive done in my days. The struggle is real.
Alternatively, choose brevity.
The thing about using less is it forces us to edit things out of our life. Opting for simplicity can be complicated. At least in the beginning. Eventually we hit our stride. I’m told. I have a ways to go.
Stephen King told us to kill our babies: Edit ruthlessly. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but that’s why he called them babies.
I once read a sailor’s biography (I think it was Lin Pardey’s) where she was just getting started writing articles for sailing magazines. Upon submission of her first pieces, one editor eventually responded, but asked her to resubmit: “now say the same thing but with half the words.” I often repeat his mantra and rewrite my own, often spending hours replacing every paragraph. Perhaps the true talent and skill is when you can write with half the words in the first draft!