C.S. Lewis

Silver medal: Writing how you speak

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“A girl I knew was brought up by ‘higher thinking’ parents to regard God as a perfect ‘substance’; in later life she realised that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca).”
C. S. Lewis, Miracles

I chuckled when I first read this story. But then I rubbed my chin a bit. And I held up a finger in the air, like a light bulb had just gone on in my head.

Our human brains cannot see words like development. Instead, we have to imagine a picture, a smell, a sound. Like a skyscraper being built… or the smell of wet grass in April… or Ravel’s Bolero.

But there are some dark clouds on the horizon.

Because without thinking, most of us for reach for words like development and substance all the time, like we reach for popcorn while watching a movie in a dark theater. We reach for these words, even though, like popcorn, they have no body to them.

My point is this:

Popular advice is to write the way you speak.

I say this will get you a silver medal at best.

But if you want a gold medal, then write the way you speak… and then take out words like substance and development. And instead, put in word pictures, of tapioca pudding or half-finished skyscrapers.

Because the bigger the weight you take off the shoulders of your reader, the more likely he is to follow you as you lead him down the sales page… and the more likely he is to add another dollar bill onto the stack of dollar bills that makes up your bank account.

I mean, if your bank account really were made of stacks of dollar bills, instead of bodyless numbers in a computer database. But I think you see what I mean.

Here’s something else you can see:

Each day, I write a little letter. I put it in an envelope and I send it to hundreds of people around the world. Some of these people read my letters… some even chuckle or rub their chins in thought. You can do the same. It’s free. You can sign up, with just your address, by filling out the form here.

The opportunity of the Inner Ring

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“For all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table, and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table, they think them more blessed, and more in worship, than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellowship.”

That’s from a collection of stories about King Arthur, written down in the 15th century. Lots of things have changed since the 15th century, but a few things stay the same.

Such as, for example, the need to belong. And, in particular, to be on the inside of what C.S. Lewis called the “Inner Ring.”

It’s a very strong drive. It’s so strong it can even overcome self-interest, like in the quote above. Other times, the drive to the Inner Ring might disguise itself as self-interest. In Lewis’s words:

“I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.”

C.S. Lewis believed in a universal morality, and warned against lust for the Inner Ring. I do not believe in a universal morality, and have no issue with lust, for the Inner Ring or otherwise. That’s why I’ll leave you with the following:

The need to belong to an Inner Ring is not met for many people. That was true in the 15th century, and it is true today. It’s almost true by definition, because an Inner Ring is formed by excluding people.

So a lot of people have this yawning, unmet need… and they have few options for sating themselves. Do you know what this is usually called?

You guessed it. An opportunity.

Anyways, I’ve got my own Inner Ring. It’s a small group of people I write an email to each day with thoughts like what you’ve just read. I occasionally open up spots to a few new people to join… but not right now.