Writing

Basic good writing is most times an act of empathy. (And then, extremely good writing is most times an act of selfishness.)

So, when someone sends a doc full of words they don’t understand and never would have used, I can’t help but think they are being selfish. They are choosing their time over yours.

The reverse also happens: you receive a short doc, perhaps not something as perfectly written formally as it could have been, but it’s very understandable; you can see someone spent time trying to get their point across to you! They thought about what you already knew, the words they used to name specific things, what the simplest way of getting their message across was. In the very best of cases, you might think this is elegantly beautiful.

When I aim to do this, it starts usually with a painful process. The pain comes from the friction in my brain: what I initially saw as crystal clear has some cracks. I need to understand them and fix them, the holes in my thought process. Then comes the part I like: what will the person reading this think? Are they incentivized to read this or will they be in a hurry? What can I cut so that this text is shorter but maintains the same info? What do people reading already know and I don’t need to waste time explaining? Can I add a cool, unexpected reference?

Some other people have written about this, eloquently.