In writing, less is often more

Kenneth W. Davis' excellent writing blog, Manage Your Writing, recently referred to a quote by 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal: "I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

Pascal's quill pen certainly scratched out a truism. Regarding Pascal's observation, Davis cogently notes that "economy in writing takes time. But it's time well spent."

I agree with both writers. In writing, more is rarely better. Whenever you can, take the time to polish and pare your early drafts. The best writing starts with a thicket of thoughts, ideas and insights that is then pruned into the stuff of pure inspiration. Boil your writing down into language that communicates with the reader with all the energy and immediacy of a lightning bolt. Learn to review your work and chop out the clutter, the cliches and the awkward constructions. Trash intensifiers like "very" and "really." Repetitious thoughts, words and phrases are another set of traps that lengthen a piece of writing and string cobwebs in the reader's mind. As Thoreau said, "simplify."

Don't worry that all this cutting and simplifying will make you sound like a first grader. It won't. Instead, your writing will be lean and muscular. Every word will count, and that's what you want.