I have a terrible confession to make

The problem, by the way, is often the writer's need to "appear" smart. So they'll use big words and complex constructions in the hopes of seeming like intellectuals. Instead everybody just hates them.

 

And Latin, for thus and such!

 

My kid has a problem. He blurts out in class all the time. He won't stop doing it.

We've asked him why he does it, and the answer is always the same:

"Otherwise people won't know I'm smart."

This is the adult version.

I accepted two things a long time ago:

1. There is one Michael Chabon.

2. I am not Michael Chabon.

 

Good writing is a three-legged stool:
Simplicity, clarity, brevity

 

Yeah, but one of those legs is always just a little bit shorter than the other two, and you're left searching for that Nutrasweet pack to put under it.

 

A colleague of mine, in my first year here, was having a helluva time getting a paper accepted at this top-flight journal. He’d do the revisions the reviewers had requested, but they kept wanting more. It was pretty clear, from the comments the journal’s editor was making, that my colleague was in very real danger of having this paper rejected, and he really, really, really couldn’t afford that. He had an interim tenure review coming up, and if this paper didn’t make it there was a good chance he’d be shown the door.

He asked me to look over everything, and I agreed. Came the documents from the last go-around, and it appeared to me that one was missing. “Where’s your ‘Response to Reviewers’ document?”
“What’s that?”
“You know, where you take each reviewer’s comment and write out exactly how you addressed it.”
“Oh, I haven’t been doing that. Should I?”
“How many times have they come back asking for changes?”

Looooooong pause.

“I’ll do that right away.”

 

I thought "Speed Bumps 101, Speed Bumps 201 and Speed Bumps 301" were required courses at every law school.

 

Agree with everything said so far.

Just to offer the predictable counter-argument, not everyone has to write like EB White.

There have been plenty of great stylists in nonfiction, from Rebecca West to Hunter Thompson. Tom Wolfe is the opposite of EB White.

Take any footnoted nonfiction piece by DFW - nothing but speed bumps.

In fiction and in poetry, whole categories of achievement rest on ecstatic misdirection and bigly vocabulary.

What all successful writing has in common is that it succeeds.

 

With all due respect, Az, what the fuck does this mean?

 

That you can do anything, as long as you can make it work.

 

Word.

 

You're all better writers than me, but I read way beyond my writing ability and well above what my hillbilly intelligence might suggest, so I'll chime in. It's simplistic to say great writing has to be simple and brief. The degree of difficulty is just so much greater that I'm not about to try it any other way. I do want the people who can pull it off to keep pulling it off, even if it's no longer fashionable or lucrative.