I enjoy writing, even if the majority of the writing I do is in the form of emails, or work related. Or a well thought out comment that will be dropped into the ethereal noise of the internet.

Simple writing is hard.

Several years ago, I discovered a book called The Art of PLAIN TALK. It's a wonderfully pragmatic style-guide for writers, from the 1940s. It provides a system of writing -- a set of tools really -- towards better communication. It's written in a 'here's how you can be a better teacher, student, politician, etc.' sort of way.

Let me tell you my own story of how I came to love PLAIN TALK.

When I was about fourteen or fifteen, I started getting serious about computers. My parents bought me a big fat Linux book from Barnes and Noble. I vividly remember destroying the filesystem of our 486sx from RadioShack -- several times -- while messing with boot partitions.

Barnes and Noble was a typical family Saturday. There's not a whole lot to do in Upstate New York in the dead of winter, and this was at a time when 'the internet' meant connecting to America Online over a long-distance phone call.

On one of those Saturdays, I found a book called the Cuckoo's Egg, by Clifford Stoll.

Cuckoo's Egg is an autobiographical tale in which Stoll describes how -- while working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- he stumbled onto an accounting anomaly which led to the capture of a KGB hacker from West Germany.

My fourteen-year-old self was drawn in by Stoll's story. He wrote about his life. Studying astronomy. Unix. His girlfriend.

Stoll's book was so good that a lot of people didn't think he actually wrote it -- and they said as much on The Well (or one of the other proto-social-networks of the early 1990's).

He responded to their criticism with an eloquent post about his process as a writer. From what I can remember, his style tips were along the lines of:

Use short sentences. 

Break grammatical rules (like starting sentences with 'And' or 'But'). 

Write with a varying set of tools.

etc.

To which someone replied, "Great post, who wrote it for you?".

When I was sixteen I read Hunter S. Thompson's book, Hell's Angeles, and had found a new literary hero.

In college I picked up a copy of The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway. (Later I'd learn that Hemingway was a hero of Thompson's.)

Ever since, you could say I've gravitated towards non-fiction and authors who speak in a journalistic, pragmatic tone.

THE ART OF PLAIN TALK

When I was about twenty-five years old I was browsing the writing section of Counterpoint Books and Records in Los Angeles when I came across this first-edition from the 1940's called: The Art Of PLAIN TALK, by Rudolf Flesch.

Reading great works will definitely improve one's writing style, but it's a slow process. Heuristics. I've taken writing classes, read great books and literature, and studied poetry. This is hands-down one of the best book I've ever read about writing.

Carl Sagan once said something like, you can only read a few shelves-full of books in a lifetime -- the trick is knowing which books to read.

Stoll's advice on writing turns out to be very similar to Flesch's. The book starts by looking at the simplicity of modern Chinese, and its connection to effective newspaper headlines. It goes on to look at the language of casual conversation, the 'grammar of gossip', the dangers of adjectives. He looks at technical writing, and asks if science can be explained. (Read the book to hear what he thinks :)

After reading PLAIN TALK, I have even more respect for great writers than I did before. The way they can string together words at length, ensnaring us with long, winding sentences, causing us to read further and further, opening up our minds and implanting their ideas. It's not all about short sentences and rules -- there is an art to plain talk.

Most of what I've written on my site -- so far at least -- has been about process. I work in a technical field, and read and write about technical things. But what I don't want to end up with is a site that appeals only to the technically minded. This site is meant to be more of a sandbox than a soapbox -- a place where I can experiment with writing, tell some personal stories and make sense of my various projects and endeavors.

The central point that Flesch makes is that no matter how esoteric, advanced, or obscure your particular field is, there's a lot to be gained by using the tools of plain and simple language.