"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Writing Things That People Understand

The second person who I love and respect in a week just complimented me on my writing but also said they don't understand some of what I blather on about. That's fair enough -- and actually I'm pretty flattered in the first place that people think all this first-draft stuff is "well written" --- but that comprehension gap is something I really want to work on.

See, I do actually know what I'm trying to say most of the time. I'm not saying I say it well, but there's an intention to communicate. I'm doing a big writing project this summer, and the goal is to make something that's quite broadly accessible, grokable by all.

So, thinking about what that might entail... one thing I'm definitely going to be doing in the future is setting up some wiki-style linkage, so that when I use obscure terminology I can link to wikipedia (as above for "grok"), and maybe to my own pages when I use something specific. Also: diagrams, pictures, charts and graphs!

It's interesting, trying to express. I'm realizing that I have my own sort of Gestalt in which I operate. It includes a lot of weird and/or disparate things that I don't think most people necessarily have rattling around in their head. All things go. All things go. But it being my Gestalt after all, I think it's worth something. It's part of what I want to capture in the old writing.

I feel like it should be possilbe to break it down into simple bits, like axioms. I used to wonder if doing this would smart myself out of a job, but now I don't worry. There will always be people who need help applying abstract knowledge to their real-world problems (this gets complex; it's often even kind of hard) and these people will always be able to hire me to help out. In the mean time, the more other people who get more capable the better for everyone.

Not that I'll be able to bring anyone enlightenment (ha!) or smarts or even useful knowledge or anything, but I can try.

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