They always say it takes more time to write a short essay than a long one. I agree: brevity is hard. It also takes a lot effort to produce writing that appears effortless.
Fabrice Grinda pointed me to this wonderful YouTube clip of someone composing an email to a girl he met at a bar and trying hard to strike the right tone. "Dear Mimi" becomes "Hi Mimi" becomes "Hey Mimi". He re-writes sentences to appear as casual as possible while still conveying meaning. It’s great stuff:
Classic. For email tone, I’m a big fan of the smiley…
But that can be a bit unprofessional. 😉
Have you read any of the “six word stories”? I first got on Twitter because of a six-word-story contest. Writing a story in six words is HARD!
Hemingway’s was: “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”
My favorite is by Margaret Atwood: “Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”
Ah, the wonderful difficulties of perfecting one’s intentions in writing. (Ironically enough, I recomposed just that sentence multiple times!) Now there’s something I’m no stranger to.
I looked at some of his other videos, too, and I found that he has some really poignant and amusing ones. Great find, Fabrice and Ben!
“It’s Takes Effort to Write Effortlessly”
It also takes much editing, reviewing, proofing before publishing 🙂
@Have you read any of the “six word stories”?
Mine was:
I came, I saw, I wrote.