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)
