Simplicity

Today I dashed out a really quick thing for a co-worker. Just a picture with some text over, thrown together in 15 minutes in Photoshop. "I need this right away for my group - can't you just squeeze this in quick?" My work tends to be feast-or-famine, and this is one of the feast times of paper everywhere and a long to-do list. But OK, sure.
She immediately wanted to add shit. "Shouldn't we say this? And will people get it if we don't say this?"
Once, when Lincoln signed a document, as he usually did, "A. Lincoln," some asshat at his side said, "Shouldn't you add, "President of the United States?"
Lincoln replied, "I don't think I need to say, 'this is a horse.'"
Churchill, early in the war, sent a memo to his top commanders asking them to deliver to him that same afternoon, on one side of standard sheet of paper, their plans for prosecuting the war in Europe.
The Gettysburg Address is Ten Sentences.
Early this week I wrote an ad of which I'm rather proud. When it said what wanted it to say, I sent it off to the publisher. Then I showed it to others just to make sure I hadn't missed an obvious typo. One person began "I think you should add a paragraph about..."

Bullshit.

Comments

[Scott]

I wish I knew who to credit with: "Good writing is slavery."
The Three Bad Ideas piece is WAY too long. Blah blah blah.

[Derek]

Making something long is easy, making it short takes time and/or genius.

Kind of like Pascal when he wrote: "I have made this letter longer than usual only because I didn’t have time to make it shorter."

Karen Selick rants more about that kind of thing here:

http://www.karenselick.com/CL0306.html