How to write

"Anyone who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."

H. W. Fowler

It was no mistake to have the editing section before the writing section.

The two are difficult to untangle. I attempted to separate them and lead with editing because if you know what to discard, you can at least leave the writing clear and uncluttered.

Know what should live and what should die, and you can start killing things. Confusions, repetition, endlessly long sentences, redundant words, or worse, pompous verbiage. That's the first lesson and some of the first dice to turn from threes to sixes. 

“People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is. Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.”

Matthew Arnold, poet

But, in this next section I deal with other parts of a writer's job.

You're a navigator, guiding the reader making it clear who's doing what to whom. You're a time traveller, making sure the reader understands when it’s all happening. And you're a composer, dictating rhythm and melody. The sound of the words you chose will resonate in your reader's mind, and you'll fix the meaning there with fresh precision.

You'll learn how to make sure, in all the editing, you don’t strip your soul, and you leave your voice intact. After all, in many cases, readers want to hear from you.

Once you've learned to cut the redundant words, you'll be left with your idea in its most economical form. But with all the cutting you might worry the artist in you also gets discarded, and what remains is clean but childlike.

"I saw Ali. She smiled."

What personality.

Because we weren’t taught well at school, we invariably leave in a lot of clutter. The clutter that would expand to fill the arbitrary word count. Identifying what classifies as clutter, and removing it, is step one of learning to write well. And it’s for that reason I, and so many other writing instructors, shout loudest about making things clean and clear.

But in that call for reduction, people sometimes misunderstand my goal to be no more soulful than a telegram, where each extra word carries extra cost.

Ali. Arrived in Paris. Meeting Tor at 19.00. Liz on route from Cairo arriving tomorrow. Went to the bookshop. Seems odd like you say. Will debrief when together and begin plan. Many thanks for the gun. John.

But Atomic Copy has all the meaning, and all the soul, in the fewest words.

You can be simple and vibrant.
You can be economical and soulful.
You can be straightforward and elegant.

For writing to do its job you must be clear, economical, and straightforward. Take pride in giving every word a purpose, and making each one fight for its place.

But the best writers do all this while showing something of themselves, their voice, their soul, their energy, their heart, which might actually mean leaving something in, which they could leave out.

Earlier on this page, you could argue I didn't need to write "what personality". My point stood without it. All the meaning was already there. But I wanted to remark on the dullness of “I saw Ali. She smiled” in my way, a reflection of the dry, British humour I grew up with.

Writing and editing are more than a set of rules. You just need rationale for every word. And it's OK for the rationale to be "I'm leaving it in because it shows part of my soul". The part of us that other humans resonate with, trust, and bond with.

You must not, however, use soul as an alibi for clutter when you judge the writer’s output. Remain diligent as the editor, knowing you’re waging a war on the words, and as Jason Zweig says “the enemy in that war is yourself.”