Earlier Tweet: “I really like the idea of blogging and have lots to say, but unfortunately Sloth from the Goonies has more advanced literary skills than me.”
I’m stuck in bed with tonsillitis, so what a great chance to do some studying to improve my writing style and technique. Trawling through Amazon reviews I came across On Writing Well by William Zinsser which seems to offer a solution to my problem.
I’m only one chapter in but am already thoroughly enjoying it, take this quote:
Your job as a writer is to present one idea in a sentence and let the reader grasp that idea and then present the next idea and let the reader grasp that, and so on…Learn to break a long sentence into two short sentences. Or into three short sentences. There is no sentence that is too short to be acceptable in the eyes of God.
Now the God reference aside, these are the kind of rules that my logical mind can understand and replicate. It sounds just like single responsibility principle in object oriented programming!
At the end of the first section, the author offers the reader to take the last thing they wrote and simplify it by halving its length without loosing literary voice or any of the organic style (not sure I have a literary voice or any style for that matter). I rewrote my last blog post about the Kindle DX. Here’s what I ended up with after a five minute refactoring:
Almost all of the titles that I read/want are not available here in Phnom Penh. Currently I either have to order from Amazon and wait a week or two for delivery or source the ebook—when available—and get a bound copy printed at a local copy shop. Neither are quick or convenient, which is why I’ve ordered a Kindle DX.
To me the DX is more interesting than the previous iterations as it’s been optimised for use with technical books. It now has a 10-inch screen and PDF support which Amazon tells me should make reading titles which are rich in images, diagrams and syntax easier to read.
Amazon has clearly worked hard on bring technical publishers into the loop. I just checked, and all of the last five hard titles I bought are all available in the Kindle store. Last time I checked there were none.
Once it arrives I’ll let you know if it lives up to my expectations.
It’s still not going to win any prizes, but I feel that it’s an improvement. More importantly though, writing it was quick and easy as I had some very simple rules which I could follow.
