Because I love to simplify

As a child, I had discovered my love for the English language. I loved the fact that I could just set no limit to my imagination and then express it with such a diverse choice of words. Having a keen interest in vocabulary, I struggled with only the spellings (thank goodness for MS Word which now comes to rescue). A stringer for Young Expressions (publication for the young from Indian Express), I enjoyed the life of a budding journalist while in school. It was a life of interviews, events, pressures of regular articles and of course the stipend which made me experience financial freedom quite early. I have such vivid memories of being seated on the reserved seats for the ‘Press’ and being able to find my special place during crowded shows.

As a career choice, I entered the Corporate World in a profile which of course was to do with (yes, you got it right) writing. I relish my space in business writing, understanding, editing and expressing content. Lost in the world of thesaurus, I used to write a lot of ornamented stories in the form of case studies and white papers. Well, all that happened till I got a forthright shock.

It was too fine a day to be called by the super boss but there I was having dragged myself to his cabin and now sitting in front of him. He had just finished reviewing a white paper which I last collated. He spoke to me in a firm and assertive tone.

“Shilpa, do you know what your problem is?” he continued without expecting an answer  “You tend to tell the same thing over and over in one sentence after the other and you think readers don’t get it. The serious reader might be happy with your elite construction of sentences, to begin with, but beyond that is genuinely interested in the meat.”

He paused so I could digest his bluntness. 

“To be able to address unknown readers, just keep it simple and focus on substance rather than everything around it. Talk to your readers rather than trying to impress them. Please, please keep it simple”, he finished and handed me back the white paper with a warm smile. And I could just about manage a baffled look. But his words set me thinking and I did think a lot.

That day something really important changed…something extremely critical to the only thing which I had known so well, writing (and god bless my super boss for that). I realized that it was easy to complicate but difficult to simplify. But simple reflects clarity of thought which in turn makes you connect with your readers. You have to write for them and not yourself. I understood how important were brevity, clarity and simplicity were to writing.

And now when I think of that one reason why I am in the profession that I am, I am absolutely clear and without an ounce of doubt can say that it is ‘Because I love to simplify’.