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The Economy of Words.
How you can tell more with less.
“All our words from loose using have lost their edge.” Ernest Hemingway
I can’t tell you how many words I’ve written in my career. What does 45 years add up to? I haven’t the slightest idea. And I don’t care.
People keep asking, “How many words do you write each day?” It’s like asking how many times you’ve been kissed. We only remember the kiss that stays in our minds. The same applies to words.
Dizzy Gillespie once told a young trumpet player, “It isn’t what you play, it’s what you leave out.”
If people don’t remember our words, we’ve written too much. I know Hemingway said, “You learn to write by writing.” He wasn’t talking about volume. He was talking about distillation. From the many, we value the few.
“Minarets stuck up in the rain out of Adrianople across the mud flats. The carts were jammed for thirty miles along the Karagatch road. Water buffalo and cattle were hauling carts through the mud. No end and no beginning.”
Dizzy Gillespie once told a young trumpet player, “It isn’t what you play, it’s what you leave out.” It’s the pause that sticks in people’s minds, the distance between notes. Silence can say many things.