The power of sentences
Commonplace books as collections of sparks
“A sentence must be felt, and a feeling is not the final word, but something that grows, ripens, and fades like anything else that is alive.
-Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence
Lately, I’ve been feeling the benefit of progress in smaller steps. So often, when I was younger and working for larger companies where I didn’t set my own goals, only grandiose actions felt worthy of the to-do list.
“Company speak,”asks us to live up to vague-yet-emphatic goals, like “We deliver brand solutions that empower change-makers to leave an even bigger impact on the world.”
I have no idea what this means. If you do, please explain in the comments.
Writing has become this mealy mouthful over time, and as a writer, I feel my work is reclaiming language that says what I want to share clearly, without erecting opaque multisyllabic barriers.1 Writing can stir up the murk with turbulence, or it can let the sediment still so that the reader can see through to the meaning at the bottom of the lake on their own.