Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

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You are here: Home / Potpourri / Writing With Plain Brick

Writing With Plain Brick

Writing With Plain Brick

Let’s never stop repeating the importance of writing with simple clarity.

Everyone wants to be overly complicated and make a name for themselves by going viral.

But you and I are going to keep it simple and learn a craft over a few decades of practice – aren’t we?

I don’t want a flash in the pan!

I want to build something worth building!

Adams and Sivers and Miller and McMurtry all agree on the importance of this clarity.

When I was a young writer, I wasn’t content to build good honest walls. I wanted to build cathedrals. Instead of using plain brick, I tried to use granite blocks. Instead of describing the specific, I wanted to go straight to the universal. But even a cathedral is built one stone at a time, and if you can’t lay a simple course of bricks that is plumb and level, you shouldn’t be in the cathedral business.

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Blogging, #Writing

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