It's never a wordsmithing problem
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View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) When someone calls their troubled project a wordsmithing problem, it is never a wordsmithing problem.
To believe otherwise presumes there’s some sort of magic box that writers reach into and produce “the right words” that somehow rescues a script, website, book or other kinds of written work.
Even the blacksmith metaphor on which the word wordsmithing is based is inaccurate. It’s far less a matter of words that need hammering and forging: it’s the ideas behind them that do.
When left unchecked, it leads to a profound misunderstanding of creativity, and some writers themselves are even guilty of perpetuating that way of thinking.
It’s easy to take someone’s money and enable rather than challenge assumptions. That’s a fear-based way of working: letting someone else define the problem that you’re supposed to solve rather than doing the complete job of defining the full extent of that problem and risking failure. You owe it to yourself to do better.
Go deeper
When someone characterizes a troubled project as a wordsmithing matter, it’s a symptom of a design or process problem.
More often than not, your client will not know that these inform outcome. Nor should they. It’s your job as a creative pro to understand this and know how to fully solve it. It’s also your job to sell it.
Writing is just an outcome. It’s shaped first by a methodical way of looking at a problem. And that’s what’s worth paying for. That’s where assumptions get challenged. It’s where hard, probing questions get asked about intent and effect. It’s where terrible ideas sometimes need to be labelled as such. It’s where the ego must die. And it’s where your best work awaits you.
Granted, to some extent, uneven work can be smoothed in the hands of a skilled editor. But that’s only effective when it’s a finishing step to complete, reasoned idea. No amount of editing can fix an idea that lacks a coherent process driving it from concept to execution.
When Ed Catmull of Pixar points that every one of that company’s films starts off as a lousy story (“it always sucks”), he doesn’t credit writing or editing for saving each project. He credits a team that adheres to a way of working: each of whom understands that the solution goes much deeper than in just finding the right words.
Words don’t fix things: understanding does.
True talent is measured by a capacity to define and understand the dimensions of a problem, by knowing which tools they can (and cannot) use to fix it, by having the courage to speak truth especially when it’s hard, and by having the skill to execute. That’s how better things get built.
A healing path in your questions
To that end, I admire the way that architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander looks at the task. There are lessons in his teachings that apply just as much to words as they do to building materials (I’m extrapolating a little, but not by much). He sees creating as a kind of healing process.
Digital artist Johnathan Harris sums up Alexander’s approach succinctly (http://number27.org/powers-of-ten) :
“In any given context, you ask yourself three questions: First, what is the weakest part that could be healed? Second, what is the strongest part that could be strengthened? Third, what is the simplest way to accomplish these things?”
In the hardware of ideas, asking questions like that will take you to different, better places. Go there by being uncompromising about having a process that drives your work.
Note: I take a break annually from sending this newsletter during the holiday season. See you again in January.
Very best, Patrick
P.S. You do me an immense personal favour when you share this newsletter with friends. Do that now.
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