Atomic Author

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Within both the atom and the Atomic Author, opposite forces exist.

Within the atom sit both:

1. The positive proton
2. The negative electron
   
   

Within the Atomic Author sit both:

1. The writer adding
2. The editor cutting
   
   

The opposing forces don’t neutralise each other in either the atom or the Atomic Author.

Instead, they allow great power and great copy respectively. They’re independent, opposing forces that sit within the same shell.

"Man is not truly one but truly two"

Dr Jekyll

Good copy is the result of these two opposed personalities, the writer and the editor.

Give your heart to the writer and your mind to the editor.

Write drunkenly, as if words cost you nothing. Spill them onto the page in the order your heart fancies. Vomit them and let them land where they like. Don’t stop to clean up. That’s not what the writer does.

Then switch. Lock your heart. Unlock your mind.

Edit with contempt for the writer, judging each word coldly, half condemning them before hearing their plea. Default to the delete key, cutting away the thicket to reveal a path to clarity. Do it knowing each additional word costs you in efficiency. Demand that each word fight for its place.

Switching between writer and editor is hard.

There is no easy formula to throw down our throats.

The hardest move is from freshly written copy. It all reads so well at first. But that's because you're still the writer. You need to forget all those writerly thoughts that guided the work.

You can transform into the editor with three formulae:

1. Time
2. Mental fortitude
3. Someone else’s help
   
   

Time is both the most realistic and the most powerful. The longer you leave it, the larger the problem you’ll uncover. Thirty minutes later you’ll see typos and awkward sentences. Four hours later you’ll see entire paragraphs you can delete. A day later you’ll see structural errors.

You’ll return untainted and ready to rip it apart.

Be brutal, be ruthless. Don't hold onto something just because it's beautiful. Ask yourself whether the words, and the order you put them in, do the thing you want them to do.

You can't offend the writer because they're not in the room right now.

After the editor puts the work on trial, become the writer again. Switch between writer and editor, over and over.

Take all the letters in the word WRITER.

And all the letters in the word EDITOR.

And strike through instances of the same letter, at the same frequency.

W R I T E R

E D I T O R

Once struck through, these letters remain.

W R

D O

Those letters can be rearranged.

W O R D

This matrix-like, Illuminati-confirming weirdness can remind us that it’s the work of both the WRITER and the EDITOR that leave the written WORD in its purest, simplest, most efficient, most powerful form.

The thing is, we call it the “written word”, and “writing”, and ourselves “writers”. So sadly, for most people, that’s where it ends. With care free, messy, drunk, abundant copy, where all ideas are good ideas.

But if you look closely at

the writer

you’ll notice

they’re twice as much

an editor

which means

it takes considerable editing

to leave the writing

in its purest

most efficient

most powerful form

Atomic

Writing Atomic Copy as the Atomic Author are the two foundational principles that guide everything I write, and on which my seven writing principles are built.