Keeping it short and still engaging is quite a task. Fellow writers will agree with this great Blaise Pascal quote.
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter – Blaise Pascal
It’s the essence of our struggles, brought perfectly to the point.
Writing engaging material, stripped of every unnecessary word, takes planning and time. It definitely takes much longer than colleagues, bosses or clients usually think.
You don’t become a specialist overnight and most work takes more time than others think.
Too many people still believe that somehow everyone is qualified. That a pen, a keyboard and an hour will do.
This is why I love this quote so much. It clearly shows that you can’t be concise and conversational when in a hurry.
Writing is an incremental process, starting with an awful draft that will (hopefully) be tweaked and edited into something beautiful.
Sometimes, we rewrite a sentence countless times, only to skip it altogether.
If you watched Mad Men, you probably know the creatives of this Ad agency always had to come up with at least 25 taglines for each product.
And if one was deemed worthy, you’d never think that dozens of other ideas got thrown out.
So the catchy line that stuck looks like no effort whatsoever. But people did not just think of it. It requires a lot of effort, except for the rare cases where inspiration hits instantly.
Writing anything good is much harder when you don’t have the luxury of time.
Unless you’re a pro with so much experience that you can’t even write fluff anymore.
But for ordinary mortals, this is not easy.
Keeping it short & sweet takes time. And Blaise Pascal said it beautifully! Nothing more to add…
Regards,
Improve yourself. Improve your life!
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