21. Start with “why?”
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In case you haven’t seen Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, it’s time
to see it now. Because I said. See how well that works? I’m giggling and
hoping to have made my point. Stop and think about "the why" of your writing to not only be more effective in your communication, but to start with what is most valuable. Your reader's attention is real estate that's scarce. How you begin makes all the difference.
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22. Use attribution.
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Giving credit to your sources is an important step to building credibility with your audience. It's also a good practice to offer thanks to those whose work you are quoting.
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23. Nurse! Scalpel!
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Editing your words makes them Goldilocks perfect. Hemingway was asked why he edited the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times times, "What was it that had stumped you? He responded: Getting the words right."
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24. Sentences are like a slinky toy.
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Why is a slinky toy irresistible to play with? It changes. It can be stretched or compressed, slung or arched like a caterpillar. Sentences are similar. Long, meandering sentences can take your reader into a maze of emotions that can lead or lose your reader in the stunning array of choices you lay out for them on the smorgasbord of ideas that you lovingly crafted. And, as you can see, they can lose the reader in the tall grasses. Break long ideas into shorter sentences. Bunch short ideas into longer sentences. Play with them and listen to the music they create as you re-read them. Readers want music in writing. Think with your ear. Add the element of rhythm, by changing, repeating, building and contrasting those ideas and the words we use.
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25. Remixing is human. Believing we are original is indulging in a bit of magical thinking.
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A digital world makes the sampling easier, but remixing has been going on for eons. Check out the Kirby Ferguson video series. These documentaries rocked my world and freed my thinking from the paralyzing fear of failing to be "original" in creative undertakings. Even Newton's quote about standing on the shoulders of giants is from a previous quote. Really.
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26. The world you create in writing is a place your reader enters to walk around and experience. You play the role of "pedacito de Dios" (a bit of God).
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For decades and decades, I have remembered the stories in my third-grade reader about children helping during a crisis or emergency in their town. Scenes are intact in my much-laundered, frayed chambray shirt of a brain. Those worlds I traveled to in print stayed with me. I want to build worlds with words for others to enter, experience and at the end, say that they enjoyed and will hopefully also remember.
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27. Who, what, where, when, why and how. Without them, words are only words.
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A miner has tools, so does a baker or a gardener, an accountant or a seamstress. Writers: meet your tool box! Keep them sharp and use them daily at the beginning, middle and end, check them on a list that you consult faithfully.
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28. Care about your reader.
29. The mainstream is a myth.
30. Make it, shake it, rattle it and roll it.
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Why does caring enter into the equation of good writing? While your intention drives you the writer in how you write, the spark that ignites the process is caring. Caring entails believing that sharing matters. That spreading ideas builds our lives and cultures. Does everyone have this spark? Yes, but some express it in ways other than writing. For example, dancing, cooking, golfing, stopping to give five dollars to a man holding a can at a stoplight, to name just a few.
29. The invitation was sent to each of us when the Internet upended the world of mass media. Let's toast to that world, because it had many valuable gifts, but its race is run. Daily we build its replacement, each of us, tweet by tweet, blog by blog and posting by posting. With our eyes wide open, writers, filmmakers, artists, activists, makers and do-ers. Now there is space for all voices.
We are makers, not shoppers. Find out what makes your brain light up and leap in to learn more, and do more. Even if it's not perfect at the start, enjoy the ride for the joy creativity brings. In an episode of On Being, the evolutionary biologist Kevin McCarthy tells us we are descended from 50,000 generations since the Pleistocene era. Each, I guarantee, spent more time with their eyes and hands doing and creating than simply shopping or consuming.
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