Published August 28, 2024

You may have noticed I started writing again.

Again.

Blame “Lucky Hank” if you want someone to blame. The 2023 AMC series was quirky and delightful to watch, and tucked inside its world of a financially strapped college English department, referred to by its title character as “mediocrity’s capital,” was a sequence in the second episode about writing that I’ve found to be a fun challenge.

Nobody reinvented the wheel here, and it was not new to me, but it was a good reminder:

We want to enforce escalation, even on the line level.

“If the eagle has a white chest, we can assume the reader already knows that, right? Cut.

“And if the force is mysterious, do we need to say the eagle didn’t understand? That’s implied. Cut.

“And a lot of this is just habitual. If you want to be excellent, you have to reject the habitual. That is where mediocrity lives, in the habitual.

“That is how you will distinguish yourself from other writers and start to sound more like you.”

Enforcing escalation, even on the line level, can be a challenge in journalism or in any nonfiction writing, but it helped me, a person who hasn’t been edited regularly since the W. years, hold myself to a standard of sorts.

I haven’t come close to living up to it even half the time, but I’m enjoying writing again.

So, fair warning. And, I’m sorry.

Typewriter photo in post by BrianWancho via Shutterstock.

Typewriter featured image on blog August page via SiloCreativo‘s Jennifer theme.