There’s No Substitute for Enthusiasm… or Guinness

The older I get, the more people think I know. Or perhaps they hope I can share with them some “keys to successful writing” that will instantly transmogrify their ineluctably leaden sludge into delightful Juvenalian prose… turn their pretentious lucubrations into memorably luculent manuscripts. 

This is the key in one word: ENTHUSIASM. You simply must be enthusiastic about the topic. And you must be genuinely eager to share what you have learned with your readers… to make it of interest and even of fascination to them. What kind of enthusiasm? Have you ever taken a walk with a three- or four-year-old child in a park? Nothing escapes their notice or their imagination. The spots on a ladybug… the texture of a leaf… the color of the grass. It’s child-like wonderment. You need a good dose of that to write well.

Recently, we completed an extensive (nay, exhaustive) website on the various forms of utility-scale power generation. The client was pleased and we were handsomely remunerated. But was it any good in the eyes of the viewer? 

Apparently so as they paid us the highest compliments we can expect as professional communicators: 

• “Explains complex ideas in an easy to understand manner.”
• “Writing was so interesting, (it) kept our interest even though we thought we had no interest in power generation.”
• “We were pulled in and wanted to learn more.”
• “I never thought I’d give a second thought to the details of power generation, but I found the whole discussion fascinating.”

You can feign many things in many pursuits but not enthusiasm, whether in amour or prose. (My particular and perpetual passion is the perfect pint of Guinness of which I am in permanent pursuit. How’s that for consonance?) 

I was thinking of expanding this missive to include other keys to successful writing, but attention spans being what they are in this age of electromagnetic waves expanding outwards into the universe at the speed of light I thought better of it. If, however, you would like to know what a Eubulides’ paradox (Euby was a contemporary and rival of Aristotle) and the compositions of Antonio Salieri (who was a contemporary and rival of Mozart and also was inaccurately portrayed in the movie “Amadeus”) have to do with successful writing, let me know. I’ll be happy to elaborate. Something about heaps of sand and superfluous notes.