Having the time to be brief

"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." – Blaise Pascal.

It's probably the most relevant quote I've ever found for what I do. I'm constantly asked to shorten, shorten, shorten. It drives me crazy.

Often it's for my own good. It's all too easy to have pen haemorrhage. I blame the 'hump' you need to struggle over when you are writing difficult text. You struggle in knee-trembling first gear up the steep learning curve, crest the hill of your topic, and... WHEEEEEE...... you could write for ages with the metaphorical wind in your hair. You accelerate; bring in the quirky sentence fragments, the rising cadences, the thought-catching oxymoron. Don't even need to pedal.

And then a client - who is often glancing at twenty pages in a half-hour meeting - thinks it looks too wordy. Don't they get the pretty wordplay? Don't they see how the word 'scout' in paragraph 47 cleverly references the notion of 'being prepared' in paragraph 8? Don't they appreciate the gentle, careful build-build of verbs from rational to emotive nuances?

No.

Time to hit the delete key. A lot. It's a bloodbath of darlings as they submit to Word's dinky scissor icon.

It will be worth it in the end. The client was right; no-one would have read it. But for ever after, you won't be able to read that text without the ghosts of your creativity wraithing before your eyes.

Blogs are ace.
No clients.