Let's reach for a card from the Creative Whack Pack. Today's is Simplify.
Editor: "I like your book except for the ending."
Author: "What's wrong with the ending?"
Editor: "It should be closer to the beginning."
What can you edit out of a current project or idea to make it better? What can you streamline? What can you simplify?
I had thought about writing a long piece on novelist Kurt Vonnegut who died yesterday at age 84. I loved reading him in the 1970s and 1980s. But to apply the wisdom of "Simplify," I'll just say this:
Vonnegut stretched my mind and made me laugh about the craziness of the universe. He was the Mark Twain of my generation. My favorite novels were: Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Bluebeard.
Here's a typical Vonnegut quote (sent to me this morning by my son, who is also a Vonnegut fan):
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. . . . He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
RIP, Kurt.
If I'd have picked a favorite Vonnegut book list, it would have been identical, except to add The Sirens of Titan.
Posted by: Eric Herman | 12 April 2007 at 10:50 AM
“Ladies and Gentlemen. I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thankyou.”
This is one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes. It's from the professor in "Cat's Cradle" who invented the allotrope of ice, Ice-Nine. It embodies Vonnegut and belongs on a creativity blog.
Posted by: Mr. Zeus | 12 April 2007 at 12:04 PM
My recent (and new) experience working with an Editor was fantastic. Though there was not a lot of cutting—there was some simplifying and clarifying.
Great quote too.
Posted by: David Armano | 12 April 2007 at 06:21 PM
Roger,
Having just gone through our state and federal income tax filing, I have this feeling born of frustration and exasperation:
If we had a government that spent the next four years doing nothing but applying the principle Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!, we would be a better, and quite soon, wealthier nation.
John
Posted by: Shakespeare's Fool | 12 April 2007 at 08:11 PM
Shouldn't SIMPLIFY be added to Osborn's strategies for SCAMPER? In fact, why not
apply "Scamper" to SCAMPER? If you do, all
kinds of neat things occur.
Posted by: JIM | 14 April 2007 at 10:41 AM
As a fellow fan you might enjoy the URL below regarding Mr. Vonnegut in the metaverse of Second Life (video as of his avatar in a virtual lecture). The comments are even more mindblowing.
http://www.wayneporter.com/2007/04/17/kurt-vonnegut-lives-on-in-the-grid-of-second-life/
Posted by: Wayne Porter | 24 April 2007 at 09:14 PM