Brevity is the soul of having thought about it some more

[cjsmith]

Yesterday's long-winded Plucky Girl In The Face Of Adversity post could really have been summed up in a heck of a lot fewer words.

Background:

1) My feet are @#$!d up
2) #1 will never go away
3) I seriously hate both #1 and #2

The Main Point:

4) #3 will never go away
5) #4 is kind of sane, really.

There. Simple!

Comments

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Yes. But as much as the brevity of #'s 1 through 5 explain the basis of the problem, the verbosity of the previous post probably made you feel a whole lot better. Sort of like a verbal BM.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

There's a lot to be said for that, yeah!

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

Yah, but this post doesn't give me an excuse to leer at you... ;)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That's OK. I'm not taking away the other one. ;-)

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Icon ♥

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

By the way--I read your post yesterday, was really impressed, wanted to say something, didn't manage to. But outside of my head, that behavior could be easily confused with "didn't read" and/or "didn't care". Don't want you to think that.

Hey, when'm I gonna see you, anyway? I could throw another party. Or I could make juvernaz do it...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I was so close to making it to that last one, too! Oh well.

Gonna be at Joe's?

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

Totally! I'll see you there.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

LOL. Yes. Exactly. So, when are you taking up writing instruction manuals for a living?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that's something I think I'd enjoy doing. (The bit about high-tech ones having to be written while the code is under development, thus making them half wishful thinking and half pure psychic power, would be a bit of a snag.)

This brain intentionally left blank.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* Yes, that can be a challenge. But seriously, I think you'd be GOOD at it. You reduced a whole page of text to its essence without losing any of the important bits. Clear, concise, elegant. Impressive.

And I think if you did this in the biosciences (or any sciences) it would be a GIFT to academia. They so desperately need people who can get to the goshdarned point!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Amazing how much clarity comes from knowing ahead of time what exactly it is I really want to say. Brainstorm-hemorrhaging onto the paper gets it all out; revision two is the Pocket Reference Guide.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

"And I'm learning Chinese, says C J Smith"? :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, now there'd be quite an achievement: writing technical documentation -- GOOD technical documentation -- in a language so different from one's mother tongue!

(So far, in Mandarin Chinese, I can say "I speak, you speak, he speaks, we speak, you-all speak, they speak." And I can turn it into a question or negate it. But only if I'm reading from my notes with the tone marks!)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

My tendency toward and affinity for concise writing is tested continually having entered academia for a natural science.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Uh oh. If I start with bio and chem, and then pile a form of medicine on top of that, I'll be incredibly wordy AND no one will be able to read my writing!

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

*grin*

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Which just goes to show that wit takes work, and thought, and sometimes editing.

I believe the process is as valuable as the product, so I really actually preferred the longer version, because it gave a more complete view of both your state of mind right now and how you arrived at this new (cool) insight.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. If there's one thing I've learned so far in my attempts to Be A Writer, it's that editing and revising are good stuff.

The longer version definitely gave a better view of the landscape, yeah. This one's all "Mountain A, Mountain B, click here for the Kodak moment, kthxbye."

[layer.livejournal.com]

simple but it does lose something in translation.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

True. Brevity (a numbered list in particular) doesn't often convey emotion well.

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

Just in case you ever get to the point of a walker, this might make you chuckle.

http://community.livejournal.com/thrifthorror/95625.html

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hah! I've definitely been at that point, and I regret borrowing and returning a walker rather than getting myself one -- but that one is just spectacularly awesome. Halloween here we come!