| Writing as Engineering | | Date Created: Jan 08, 2006, 09:08 AM |
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I see the puzzle of composing text almost as an engineering problem -- like irrigation. The readers' attention is the water, and my job is to craft a series of channels and conduits out of words and concepts for your attention to flow through naturally. Too much theology is written in a way that it takes so much work to keep reading. I want to write books that are hard to put down, books in which it's easier and more fun to stay with the flow of the writing than to divert yourself toward other things.
The really paradoxical thing is that one achieves that effortlessness only with much effort and rewriting. To get gravity to kick in, that conduit needs be dug deeper and deeper. And when it works correctly, you don't see the canal-work, you see the water flowing.
If it feels like it's a piece of writing, if it feels like rewriting, then it's no conduit, it's just a ditch. |
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