[1-2-Read] Why Your Thoughts Don’t Sound as Good on Paper

Welcome to 1-2-Read, a fortnightly letter for paid subscribers! Every issue will give you ideas and practical exercises so that you can walk away as a stronger reader/writer! Your contributions keep the lights on around here, and thank you so much for your support!

(1) The Idea: It Always Looks Better In Your Head

Let’s start with something simple.

Imagine a tedious hike up a mountain. Your legs hurt, you haven’t showered in days, and your lungs are struggling to keep up. But finally, you reach the summit late at night as you pitch your tent with a smile on your face.

Before you can fully fall into deep sleep, the first ray of sunlight brightens your tent and wakes you up. You struggle out of your tent, facing the ranges you’ve just scaled, but now it’s beautiful beyond description. You hear the birds, tune into the hum from the valleys, and the mild morning air chills your nose a bit. Then, you feel inspired to cement this moment in memory, so you pull out your phone to take a picture.

What’s that picture like? Grainy, dark and depressing. All those beautiful things you’ve worked for were reduced to a flat and uninspiring blob in your gallery.

Sounds familiar? Unfortunately, the same thing happens all the time in writing. Ideas in our heads usually look cohesive and inspiring, but the minute we put them down on the page, they’ll turn into the same flat blobs that we want to scrunch up and burn away in a dustbin. And this is not just a problem for people who write for a living.

It can happen when you’re journaling.

It can happen when you’re writing a birthday card.

It can also happen when you’re trying to sound like a sane person over email.

Most people will give up after hitting their heads against this idea-to-writing barrier a few times, but this is like giving up photography after a few crappy photos from your iPhone. If you want a picture that captures the essence of what you’re seeing, you’ll need a better camera, a better lens and better compositions to bring that image to life. Fortunately, the same tools are available for writing.

So, for this week’s 1-2-Read letter, let’s do a rapid-fire round of some really practical, actionable tools for you to get better at translating those thoughts into coherent writing.

Principle 1: Don’t expect it just to flow out of you

Think about this: what are you doing when you’re writing? Answer: You’re yelling at your thoughts that are all over the place to fall into a single file. As much as we’d like to think we’re measured, linear and rational, our thoughts don’t work that way. Seeing your ex can yank you back to a kiss in July 2019, and catching a sight of fairy lights will bring you right back to when beanies and skinny jeans were cool. So, if we want to write something that another person can understand, then we’d have to force non-linear thoughts into a logical sequence.

A lot of writers overlook this fact about writing. Instead, they fall head-first into the authenticity trap that sounds something like: if I just write like myself, someone will get it! While this approach might sound romantic and breezy, the writing that results from it usually has no coherent flow. The reader’s confused about what the writing is trying to say, while the writer crashes and burns with erratic bouts of inspiration.

The truth nobody wants to hear is that writing is supposed to be hard because it goes against our nature. It forces our web-like imagination into a linear language, and of course, it’ll feel awkward. So, here’s an important rule of thumb to make a slightly easier for you.

Principle 2: Write with a U-shape in mind