"It's easy to be clever," the Broadway musical songwriter Jule Styne said when describing the particular genius of composer Irving Berlin. "But the really clever thing is to be simple."
Simplicity was the theme of the writing workshop conducted during the October 15 edition of the COS State Content Writer Lunch and Learn series facilitated by national staff writers Jakob Fay and your humble correspondent.
The session began with attendees sharing a sentence from a book or article that was particularly inspiring. The writing of the likes of founders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and novelist Mark Helprin stood out to our group. Jake kindly shared a sentence or two from this recent COS blog about the vice presidential debate that caught his eye.
We then examined sentence structure. Jake led us through several example sentences that he had prepared in advance of the meeting (and one run-on sentence still on the lam that your correspondent authored). We edited and improved these sentences together by eliminating redundancy and bringing clarity, and also discussed the best ways to rewrite them.
We hope that our call reinforced the importance of nuance and simplicity in writing. As is our new tradition, everyone shared important tips and strategies to use in order to keep improving our writing about the grassroots effort to call an Article V convention.
We thank everyone who took time to join the call and actively participate in what proved to be an enjoyable and educational discussion.
Our next scheduled SCW Lunch and Learn is November 19 at 3:00 p.m. ET. That call will likely be the last of the calendar year, so if you are a COS State Content Writer or considering becoming one, please join us.
