Dave Martin

The post I wrote here yesterday was crap.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to improve my writing. I figure if you do something every day, every day, every day, without fail you get better at it. But yesterday’s post was some all-star bullshit. I meant it all, but pretty sure it was my writing here yet.

Good writing is not about writing more, it’s writing less. It’s about deleting every word that doesn’t add to what you’re saying. And if you want to activate your reader’s gag reflex, use unnecessarily and superfluously unnecessary adverbs, shove in as many pretentious, ostentatious and grandiloquent adjectives you can and write more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more.

The Malcolm Gladwell theory that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill is what I was kind of going for here. But look at Shaq. Ok, so maybe over a 20-year NBA career he didn’t spend 10,000 hours shooting free throws, but he would’ve spent a few. And this is where he got to.

Discipline and repetition, learning how the pros do it, seeking advice and positive and negative feedback, trying new techniques, trial and error, doing it even when you don’t feel like it, all that, that’s how you get good at something.

Another thing that good writers do is knowing when to stop. They bail when they’ve left the reader thinking about what they wanted them to. But occasionally we all put up airballs.