You are most certainly an adept writer – Your difficulty, when it comes to literature or technical writing, is simply that you have been exposed to good writing for far too long.

I was reading this book, Your Attention Please – The book is filled with simple nuggets, teaching you how to grasp, hold, and retain readers, whether it be at work, by blog, by ad copy, or by story.

Effluent and complex writing is just… passe’? We’ve reached a point as a society where there just isn’t TIME for these sorts of things. Take Johan and Jerkin Q. Public, who work a combined 95 hours a week, one of them is in night school to better themselves, they have two kids, and are trying to grow a vegetable garden… A big three day weekend is approaching – Do they:

A. Pile in the car and head to the beach?

B. Catch up on old chores, getting their house up to snuff after years of neglect?

C. Grab a copy of The Brothers Karamazov and chow through some tight Russian Lit?

You and I may answer option C. Or A. Or even B., though we’d likely get half of B. started and then start doing C. Or take C. to A. and just say to hell with B.

But the point is, the AVERAGE Johan and/or Jerkin wouldn’t. They may make time for Patterson, or Grady, or even Oprah’s BotM, but that reading is sparse, maybe 15 minutes before bedtime, or 10 minutes on the can.

In order to be effective in writing, we will have to decide if we want to entertain the few people remaining that have the kind of free time to dedicate to the far-reaching and superbly written complex dissertations we wish to craft…

Or if we want to just get to the damned point.

It goes against everything in my nature to do the latter, but with great success comes great sacrifice. I shudder to think of the world we are forming, which consists of “Top Ten” blogs and “How To” books.

Blame radio, blame television, blame the internet… One way or another, the day of the luxury of lengthy prose and publication are drawing to a close. People want it fast, hot, and neat, and the more you drag it out, the more likely the reader will wander off, listlessly skimming the brilliant but time consuming pearl you have cast before them.

I wouldn’t necessarily want Polio, but sometimes, I wish I lived in Mr. Twain’s kingdom.

Hey, feel free to send me stuff – I like reading!