> When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated.
This reminds me of a scene from The Inner Circle [1] where Tom Hulce's character has just told Stalin that the Russian projectors were just cheap copies of the Germans'. The bureaucrat who is responsible is standing right there and realizes that he is now literally begging for his life.
If beforehand he would have been officiously polite to this mere underling he now becomes powerfully concentrated. His every word is chiseled with a singular intent, to convince the projectionist to moderate his view ever so slightly, just enough to spare him his life if not his dignity.
More to the point, I think this writing advice is appropriate (very appropriate) for proposals and cold calls, where you do not have an ongoing relationship with your reader. In that case you are literally begging for your relevance. But in normal communications, clarity and simplicity is the rule. Orwell's advice comes to mind: insincerity is the enemy of clear language.
The closest modern day equivalent to living in Stalinist Russia in the 30s is North Korea. At the slightest suspicion that one was somehow demonstrating disloyalty to the Soviet state one could be hauled away to be tortured and executed or sent to the Siberian Gulag to be slowly worked to death.
Bulgakov's writings, if discovered, would have lead to him being executed. To people who lived in the system, their was an unacknowledged understanding that something bad was happening as people would mysteriously disappear on a regular basis. The movie "The Inner Circle" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103838/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl ) and "Burnt By The Sun" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111579/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 ) are good depictions of what life was like during those times. It makes the high anxiety and paranoia of most characters in M & M much more understandable.
Hacker Cinema
2 comments on Hacker News
> When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated.
This reminds me of a scene from The Inner Circle [1] where Tom Hulce's character has just told Stalin that the Russian projectors were just cheap copies of the Germans'. The bureaucrat who is responsible is standing right there and realizes that he is now literally begging for his life.
If beforehand he would have been officiously polite to this mere underling he now becomes powerfully concentrated. His every word is chiseled with a singular intent, to convince the projectionist to moderate his view ever so slightly, just enough to spare him his life if not his dignity.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103838/
More to the point, I think this writing advice is appropriate (very appropriate) for proposals and cold calls, where you do not have an ongoing relationship with your reader. In that case you are literally begging for your relevance. But in normal communications, clarity and simplicity is the rule. Orwell's advice comes to mind: insincerity is the enemy of clear language.
The closest modern day equivalent to living in Stalinist Russia in the 30s is North Korea. At the slightest suspicion that one was somehow demonstrating disloyalty to the Soviet state one could be hauled away to be tortured and executed or sent to the Siberian Gulag to be slowly worked to death.
Bulgakov's writings, if discovered, would have lead to him being executed. To people who lived in the system, their was an unacknowledged understanding that something bad was happening as people would mysteriously disappear on a regular basis. The movie "The Inner Circle" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103838/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl ) and "Burnt By The Sun" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111579/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 ) are good depictions of what life was like during those times. It makes the high anxiety and paranoia of most characters in M & M much more understandable.