by Tabitha Hergest

Created on: March 06, 2010   Last Updated: March 09, 2010

A writer's success is measured in the number of people who continue to wish to read what that writer has written, and the way the writer ensures that these people want to tune into her thoughts is by expressing those thoughts succinctly, with the minimum of fuss and as devoid of cliches as possible.

Cliches - now there's a tender point that makes many a reader fume and curse.  How many times have you read a formulaic, order-by-the-yard, instant custard beginning where a writer, who has just learnt to follow a pen around with a guiding hand that morning, by the look of things, starts off saying what you have already read a thousand times before?  How many times have you read, even on here, the same old, same old, that says absolutely nothing except that the writer's world is dull and, here, he'd like you to share in some of that dullness too?  Now it may well be that, after a while, the writer has interesting things to say and interesting ways in which to say them, but what's the use of that if you've nodded off after the first few life sentences?  Obviously, if you are writing a dull, dowdy journal where anything other than the dead dreariness of prosaic prose is frowned upon to the extent it will absolutely not be read, then by all means, bore the legs off an athlete - but those situations are thankfully rare.

A writer is an entertainer, to an extent. dependent on her oeuvre.  Textbook prose plays ill in the pages of a novel, yet the prosody of the poet might jar, if used excessively, on the reader of the article.  But the writer is an educator in almost all cases.  Of course, shape poems rely less on the message than the pictorial qualities of the piece but, save for that and, perhaps, the odd item of fiction, the nonsense poem and what-have-you, there is always something the writer can give, even if such knowledge is more subjective than objective. 

Obviously, it helps to have something to say, and to be able to say them with some degree of clarity - after all, your job as a writer is to communicate, and communication, as a bridge between two people, isn't successful unless the side of the bridge that the other person builds to connect with your side is in the same place on the opposite bank of the river.  It doesn't do to make the reader work too hard, either.  While long words and fancy jargon have their place, the dissemination of ideas is not one of them.  Wit, however, does play a role.  Look

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