And what is delight? For me, delight is born from a tool’s intuitiveness. Things just working without much thought or fiddling. Delight is a simple menu system you almost never have to use. Delight is a well-balanced weight on the shoulder, in the hand. Delight is the just-right tension on the aperture ring between stops. Delight is a single battery lasting all day. Delight is being able to knock out a 10,000 iso image and know it'll be usable. Delight is extracting gorgeous details from the cloak of shadows. Delight is firing off a number of shots without having to wait for the buffer to catch up. Delight is constraints, joyfully embraced.
I adore a long, unwieldy sentence from time to time but this bad boy is simply a monster. Why is that though? Well, the writer overwhelms us with smart-sounding nonsense in an attempt to prove how intelligent they are. Yet if you keep your wits about you and look closely you’ll notice how imprecise and waffling the writing truly is. There’s just so much opportunity for revision!
Although most writing is like this, the problem is often hard to spot. That’s because sentences like those above make us feel dumb. We tend to think “yikes I don’t understand any of this so this chap must be smarter than me!” And that’s just what this obfuscatory language is designed to do.
I think this is perhaps the hardest part of writing—of “generously imagining her”—continuously, unendingly. And this is the only difference between good and bad writing in the end. That doesn’t mean it’s easy (being kind is often the hardest thing to do) and of course I mention this not to lecture anyone but only as a keepsake and as a reminder for myself.