22 April 22
Brevity. Finally. We get to read a short column. Sorry. It's on brevity, that doesn't mean it will be brief.
The problem with self help books is us. Otherwise we wouldn't be needing self help books in the first place would we? The other problem is brevity. Or rather, the lack of it.
I'm reading a book — because I want to write good and learn to do other good stuff too — called "Several short sentences about writing" by Verlyn Klinkenborg 1. Some of the sentences are extremely good. There are more than several. There's quite a lot of them actually. A book's worth of them in fact. And most of them repeat the good ones. Or are padding.
Here is my issue with self help books or guides. Someone has worked out a very succinct way to say something valuable. This is the same as philosophy. My book cost £11.23 (or $16.95) the same as other paperbacks similar in size. Size to price ratio. Not price to advice. Cost to benefit. We should look at philosophy and self help books as cost benefit analysis 2.
If, when the book arrived, it had been a quarter of the thickness it is, I probably would have felt rather peeved. Eleven quid for that? I would have been wrong. That's the point of philosophy, to show us how we are thinking about something incorrectly. Self help to show us how to do better (and other good stuff too).
Having now thought about this, I would rather it had actually been a quarter of the thickness. In fact I wish it had been the same size as Bonny Brooks’s “Good Choices”. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What I'm paying for is the years of experience Mr Klinkenborg teaching writers who want to write good (and do other good stuff too) to use short sentences.
His advice boils down to several sentences. I just checked: that's understood to mean three or more 3. I'm going to be way more poetic. I'm going to say seven. In all honesty, probably somewhere between three and seven, I don't know, I haven't actually finished it yet. It's kind of repetitive. Some of the advice isn't for me as I don't have to unlearn anything. Unlearning is for those who paid attention at school. He does make a good case for short sentences, and counters arguments against them. I've read a quarter of it. Look how short my sentences are already. It's already been well worth my eleven quid investment.
My friend Isabella swears by a book from the queen of decluttering. Turns out it's not a niche kink thing. It means tidying up. And throwing shit away. “Tidy desk, tidy mind”. Tidy desk, fuck all to do more like. This is what philosophy does. Although Anne's mind feels pretty untidy after I've been going on about post-structuralism. Life advice says “have you thought about things this way?”, it offers another approach.
We need to treat philosophers, gurus and people who do five highly impactful things before breakfast like barristers. Eye-wateringly expensive, a rare resource who knows the magic spell to banish our enemies. Cough up our dosh and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Let's start expecting and accepting to pay twelve pound for a pamphlet. Not a book. Wittgenstein told us to pull the ladder up after ourselves, in that infuriating Dao way of saying it took me all my life to know so little. Pay for the experience, not the volume.
Anne tells a very good story about Matisse. Which sounds rather like one of my stories, in that she can’t remember whether it was Matisse or the exact figures involved. But that's the point. It's the wisdom inside we want.
An art buyer says to Matisse, "Hey, French artist dude, why should I pay a million francs for that drawing? It's only ten lines".
And Matisse replies "Because if it were five lines it would cost two million francs".
Boom.
My friend Val signs off her email with
Q: Why is this email so short?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
A system to treat all emails like SMS text messages, the site tells us 4. I would have felt it were a more powerful system if the same site didn't then link to four.sentenc.es. And three.sentenc.es. And two.sentenc.es. I mean you don't want you gurus saying live forever by fasting, or maybe eating three meals a day, or perhaps pigging out on vats of foie gras and lentils. We want certainty, like Epicurus, who was all about the love of just the lentil. No flavouring for that bitch, just savour the flavour of each and every lentil. Then you will find true peace. Lentil power forever.
Back when I last tried to be a writer back in 2008 I was into Flash fiction. But there's only so much you can say.
I was very keen on a site called Six Sentences, and was selected for their anthology 6S 5, and Anne I are both in Volume 2 6, disappointingly not called 3S or 12S. “Emigration” is available to read on the site 7.
I also made it to Matchbook Story's shortlist 8. No pun intended. Yes, a story inside a matchbook. In fact, this is what we want from our self help gurus. Their wisdom spread across ten matchbooks, or printed on a set of pencils. Not a book full of filler left on a shelf.
(Or perhaps on an apron. I would have said t-shirt. But t-shirts are all about how we want other people to see ourselves, not having a quiet word with ourselves. A t-shirt label perhaps. Back around 1990 I designed the label for t-shirt company MAP and included the maxim “Love thy neighbour as thy togs”. 9 )
The School of Life in fact does have a Philosophical Pencil Set 10, but it's short on advice. Better are the Philosophy of Andy Warhol pencils, in both regular leaded 11 and coloured packs 12.
There's a Frank Lloyd Wright set 13 featuring quotes including “The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes”.
And in a beautiful act of conclusion a comic strip exists by Zen Pencil featuring a one page self help book by Stephen Fry.
www.zenpencils.com/comic/89-stephen-fry-ultimate-self-help-book
What is a pencil without a notebook. I think the notebook is the most beautiful and perfect object in the world. Not the Moleskin. I'm talking pocket sized. A sturdy but bendable cover. One you can sit on if it's in your back pocket. For it must be pocket sized. The precision of its engineering. The guillotined edge. Each sheet, crisp and tearable, imperceptibly a different width from being case bound, but once stitched together, able to survive a quest. Apes alone, weak. Apes together, strong 14. The empty page fecund with promise. In fact, I'm so spellbound with the promise of the blank page that I have piles of exquisite unused pocket sized notebooks, made of different paper stocks, and I am unable to besmirch any of them with a single mark. Or unable to donate to Anne who goes through notebooks at a pace. Which really annoys her. But not as much as post-structuralism.
Right now I'm loving Paper-oh's Cahier Ondulo B7 in black15, in which I've started to note words that don't exist but should, harvested from failed Wordle 16 guesses. You can see why Anne gets annoyed with me. Never mind about my refusal to either use, or depart with any of the Bouquet Sketchbook Set by Fabriano17.
What we do both agree with however, is how excellent Bonny Brooks's “Good Choices” is.
The last book from Will Ashon "Not far from the junction" – who I intend to feature here in the future – was published by Open Pen. They do a subscription of five novelettes. I subscribed. This week I also needed something to recommend. To paraphrase Frank Lloyd Wright, “The longer I live the less I need to finish a book”. Or indeed get past the first five pages. Which is tricky if you need to finish something to make sure it's as good as you're going to say it is.
And Good Choices is. And very brief. Unlike me.
And I finished it.
The real joy of course is not that it's small, or a brilliant tale of self help authors, addiction, love, and the bad choices made to cope well with life, but that I wasn't expecting it.
It's from the novelette subscription. I like Will Ashon, so I trust in Open Pen’s curation. Subscriptions to randomness are a perfect way to broaden your filters. Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that they are “novelettes”, how cute is that? I actually thought they’d made it up. It’s a thing. Who knew. In fact “a short novel that is often about romantic relationships and is usually not very serious” 18. Judgemental much? As Four Tet said, as serious as your life 19.
Be your own judge. At six quid for a book that will fit in your handbag or jacket pocket comfortably, and be read in a commute or two, it’s worth a punt.
Unlike the Stack magazine subscription, you know in advance what you're going to get, but frankly (or lloyd wrightly) I'd pay for the next subscription without even knowing the titles, I've enjoyed the ones I received so much. Perfect, pocket sized, and even if it's not entirely your thing, short enough to never outstay it's welcome.
Speaking of short enough. Have you ever wondered why text messages are 160 characters? That would be the Hillebrand magic number 20.
“Good choices” by Bonny Brooks
www.openpen.shop/store/p19/goodchoices.html
The Open Pen Novelettes (Series 2) - Five Book Bundle
www.openpen.shop/store/p14/novelettebundle2.html
Further watching
References
The original MAP t-shirts label
The Planet of the Apes clip above. There’s a bug which wont let you have videos in the footnotes
Actually I just found out he cribbed the title from the book on John Coltrane et al by Val Wilmer https://serpentstail.com/work/as-serious-as-your-life/ but here’s Four Tet’s joyous tune I referenced
„Tidy desk, fuck all to do more like.“. I could not agree more and I will use this next time I’m told to tidy mine!