There’s a difference between writing for yourself and writing for your reader, one that’s as clear as night and day.
It’s the difference between what the very smart Kathy Sierra describes as a company that kicks ass, versus a company that helps its users kick ass.
In one, you write to satisfy yourself. In the other, you write to satisfy your reader.
In one, you read your words with your eyes. In the other, you read your words with your reader’s eyes.
In one, you write staggeringly works of heartbreaking genius, and you don’t ever edit dammit because it’s all so mind-numbingly breathtakingly good. In the other, you slay your babies ruthlessly if they don’t serve your reader.
If you’re writing in service of your ego (this blog), anything goes and your ego’s free to write checks your body can’t cash. But that kind of writing is entirely different from writing in service of your reader (my magazine writing day job), where only what’s 100% useful for her gets printed.
As a technology writer with an overinflated opinion of himself, I have to be especially careful not to indulge in verbiage just to stroke my own ego while pushing my dear reader’s head below the heady waters of information overload just one more time because she really needs to know that digital camera sensors only record in black and white, color is added with a overlying color filter, the most common of which is a Bayer filter.
Stroke, stroke, stroke. Push, push, push.
Screw that. If any word doesn’t serve the reader, if it’s not essential, it goes out. Gone, deleted, fucking slayed.
Because you have to decide: are you out here for your ego, or are you out here for your reader. You can’t play both sides with your balls hanging on the fence.
Pick a side.
Write.