Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Say something worthwhile.

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact." —George Eliot

Indispensable to writing right is to have something to say. There are two types of poor writing: poor style, good content; good style, poor content. Another way to say it is: great writing that doesn’t say anything; a great story that is not told well. Of the two, it is better to have poor writing style and have something worth saying than to say nothing well. Editors are not essentially looking for good writing, but good content, well written. But they can fix poor writing if there is a valuable message. Be sure your writing says something. If it doesn't, flowery language can't fix it and it should be dumped.