Coming from a background as someone with five degrees, with years of academic papers behind me, this has not been easy to do.
In undergraduate school, I had to write historical documents, using primary sources involving Elizabethan English. My history professors loved my accurate reporting and interpretation of complex historical events.
Then in graduate school, I had to write reports on the complex issues of psychology. It's hard to describe the progression of dementia in simple words! My professors approved and awarded me accordingly.
Finally, as a fiction writer, I feel that I'm ripping people off if my sentences are short and choppy, rather than long, eloquent, and rich in description. My readers thought my works imaginative and engaging.
And to make things even tougher, most of my bedside reading is at a college-level. I am simply bored if the writer talks down to me. When he rolls out one idea per page, or worse per chapter, I feel an urge to throw the book out of the open bedroom window. I want to read people who are smarter than I am. It's how I evolve.
Yet, in the online world, it's a completely different story.
I used to write the most elegant and engaging emails to my list and my web copy consisted of a blow-by-blow description on the features and benefits of a product.
How did I do?
No click through! No sales.
I was baffled. I completely believed in my products and my intent in describing them was utterly sincere. If I got detailed, it's not because I wanted to be pedantic'I really wanted to offer a full description and honestly outline the value.
I soon learned that people online are a different breed altogether.
They are preoccupied. And, generally, they have the attention span of gnats.
Offline they probably engage in thoughtful discussions and ponder on deeper issues, but online they transform into instant satisfaction junkies.
It's something to do with the media. Slow dial-ups are an anathema. Slow loading web pages are an insult. It's a world of flashing electrons, where quick is in, and slow is a sign of death. And if your computer or the programs on it are more than two years old, you're in the Neanderthal age.
Hence, to survive, I've learned to simplify, simplify, simplify. They've ?gotta? have it now or they're ?gonna? leave and it ?ain't? their fault
if I can't ?git er done.?
Financially, I'm not doing as well as others who use clich's without cringing, awful grammar without flinching, and propose lofty ideas with the verbal skills of a high school dropout, but I'm learning.
At least, I'm creating more white spaces between paragraphs, slipping in incomplete sentences, throwing in shorter sentences, and deleting any sesquipedalian words. (Oops, I just missed one!)
It really is a wild frontier out here. Simplicity seems to be key to engaging with it.
