"You Write Too Much!"

"Claude, you write too much," said Mohamed as we were walking from the RER exit at Les Halles toward the Fountain of the Innocents (which, incidentally, is a rendezvous point for so many people who intend to become guilty of something or another). He was talking about something he had read in this blog.

I wasn't sure how to take it, and our other two companions had a good chuckle over this statement, which made Mo spend the next ten minutes backpedaling furiously. Of course, we didn't cut him any slack. "I meant it in a good way: you write a lot!" he said, having a hard time convincing us, and probably even himself.

Last week, one of my bosses called me and said, "since you write well, I wonder if you could help me with a small task." The small task has since become a big project, but I knew that when I accepted to help her. Now, even if you're only asked to write the report for a working group, the writing doesn't just reflect the thinking — it influences it. If it is written at the very end of the project, it will only influence the thinking of the audience to whom the report is destined; but if it is written iteratively, and the working group members see some of the interim versions before they're completely done, these versions can help frame the priorities they give to different positions. That may not be exactly what Ben Franklin had meant, but there is a definite if subtle "power of the pen"!

Notwithstanding this clear opportunity to have more influence than was perhaps meant to be granted, it was diplomatic to hesitate before telling the boss that I would accept, and since she was referring specifically to another report I had recently issued, I was able to repeat a common but always serviceable and self-deprecating aphorism: "so, no good deed goes unpunished, right?"

She also asked me if this was a "hidden literary talent" of mine. I was actually not amused by that question. The extent of my writing, at least in a professional context, is easily known of anyone who cares to look at my online internal CV (we post them on a company Web site), which includes two books and a number of articles and conference papers. "Hidden" talent"? I could have replied "how about 'clearly known but not by you'?" but I actually like my boss, so I made a much more agreeable repartee and we went on with our business.

Now the interesting thing to me is that when I write, and especially in French, I adopt a much more formal style than I would normally use in speech or in letters to friends and family. And I have found that this respect for stylistic levels (which are more pronounced in French than in English) is very important when it comes to getting the reader to respect the writer. Call it "style over substance" if you wish, but it is a way to command attention.

Truth be told, I am a royal pain when I review other people's writing. But then I give myself the same amount of grief. And some people who have been through the ordeal have actually come back later and asked for more, not because they are masochists, but because they found that they had learned something useful.

I've been asked, "how did you learn to write?" I can't really tell. I think I have simply synthesized everything I've heard and read over the years, from teachers and role models and good writers, and I was perhaps more prone to find it important than the average student. But I can't tell what form of brain wiring it takes to have this inclination. And I should hasten to say that not everyone was appreciative: a French professor in 10th grade annotated a piece of homework, which consisted of writing a sonnet, with something like "some people hide their lack of artistic capability behind linguistic pirouettes." He was right, but it may not have hurt me as much as he thought.