Clear and Concise Writing

Menacing stares sword-fought their way through the jail bars, “You motherfucker ain’t got a prayer” said the first voice echoing, starting up an uproar in the jail house. What were they talking about I wondered. How could they have known? It hasn’t even been a day since I found out. How did they know?

I was placed in the fifth cell on the left. It was clean, shiny, and of course cold. “Hi there. My name is Jakob. What’s yours?” I asked, trying to sound as cheery as possible. “I’m Dan, but everyone calls me Danny.” said Danny with a smile on his face. It appeared that my cheery demeanor worked. The man no longer looked like he was going to kill me, or do any of the other horrible things I had heard happened in places such as this.

“Judging from where you are I’d say your day ain’t got a happy ending – how was the beginning though?” having finished saying that, I immediately realize what an idiot I was. Why the hell did I remind him of where he was, nothing good can come of it, nothing. “It was a great beginning. I had toast for breakfast, a little orange juice, some honey. It was a great start.” while saying this Danny wiped his ass and got off of the toiled bowl, he moved over the bench and sat down. “Tell me Jakob, what brings you here?”

“How interesting you should ask that. I was just about to ask you the same thing.” said I, clearly trying to get out of answering him. “Well Jakob, mine is a long story. A really long story.” said Dan. “Yes, I understand. There really is no need to get into it then. Unless of course you know how to summarize well.” said I sitting down on the bed on the other side of the room. “As a matter of fact I do. I am a master at summarization. I think I actually have an award lingering about my house for that exact thing – summarization that is. “

“Wonderful!” said I, genuinely elated to hear the news. “Won’t you tell me why you’re here then?”

(side note: sometimes I confuse elated with inebriated, if such is the case above: i am sorry)

“As I child, I use to masturbate.” said Danny, clearly impressed with himself.

“Well, will you elaborate on that, or is that it? Because you know, there are a lot of people who did that same thing and they’re not in here with us now. Maybe if you’d explain a bit more.” leaning forward, and with great care I said those very words. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t elaborate, or expand, or go into detail, I simply summarize. No one ever gave me a trophy for anything else.” said Danny clearly irritated.

“Yeah, yeah I get it Danny. You know, I’m in here for breathing.” said I. “Breathing, well what the hell do you mean breathing. Everyone breathes, how can you not? They can’t put you in here for breathing.” said Danny with a smirk dawning on his face as soon as he finished uttering ‘breathing’. “I see what you did there Jakob, you sly devil you. You showed me how my summarization was bullshit. And how it really didn’t tell you much. Well OK. You win.”

“I use to masturbate as a child, but instead of taking the playboy-mag into the bathroom with me I took the dictionary. You see I’d look up “dirty” words, words like vagina, or vulva, or ass – though ‘ass’ in my dictionary was not really defined as a ‘person’s rear-end’, rather it was a ‘donkey’ or ‘a stupid person’. This caused some confusion as I am clearly not into bestiality.” said Danny. “Clearly.” said I. Though truth be told, it really wasn’t clear at all. I waited, hoping the rest of his story would clear things up, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen, as Danny didn’t continue talking.

After about a minute of silence, Danny realized I was expecting more. “You mean to tell me that you’re still not satisfied? I mean isn’t that enough. Not many people masturbate to words, do they? I mean like single words, and their definitions, do they? What else is there. What do you want from me?” asked Danny with a glimmer in his left eye. “It’s just that people don’t go to jail for masturbating to words.” said I, hanging my head. “Tis true. Not many people do, but I’m here for that very reason.” said the man in the cell next to ours. He was dressed as a pirate: fake wooden leg, eye patch, fake parrot – I could barely believe my eyes. “Nah, I’m just joshing you. I’m in here ‘cuz that bitch Tracey finally got what was coming to here. A saber to the chest I say. A saber to the chest. And not the wooden kind either, if you catch my drift.” added the pirate, and with that passed out on his bed.

“Alright, well. I liked words. That was the point. I went to school and studied writing, if that’s even possible. I got into a class where I was told that the best writing is clear and concise. That the best way to show respect and love to words was to use them clearly and concisely. And I loved words, there was nothing I wanted more than to show them love and respect.” said Danny. “So?” asked I.

“So, eventually I started writing things. You know, stories and such. And through my writing I realized that writing was life, or rather that life was a work in progress. A masterpiece being written. It was all so clear to me, and still is. I mean it has been two weeks now and everyday things become clearer and clearer. Life is a novel made up of billions of short stories. That’s what it is. All I tried to do was make writing in the novel more concise, that’s all.” said Dan. “Well now, what do you mean by that? How did you try to make it concise Danny?”

“One day, actually last Saturday, I went shopping because I was all out of Alphabet Soup. While moving through the store isles I ran into two women who where shopping together. Both of them had a cart, each of ‘em had a bag, and neither of them wore a hat. What’s more, they looked identical. In every way you could imagine. Perfectly identical. They were a redundancy in this masterpiece. As you can imagine, I couldn’t let that go. I mean, clear and concise writing was all about eliminating redundancies. Something had to be done, and I did it. That’s that.”

“Well Danny, considering what you did for writing you must feel real shitty about being in this here little piece of mine, one that can hardly be described as good. I’d imagine it is causing you great discomfort. You must be boiling mad.” said I. “No, no. It’s quite alright. I get the rules. Even though I do want to kill you right now, preventing this sad composition you call a ‘piece’ from being released into the internet wilds, I get that you’re writing it, and thus you decided whether you die or not. It’s cool.” replied Danny. “Wait a minute. You’re trying to fool me. I mean you killed a woman on a whim. You don’t even feel bad about it, and you expect me to believe that you’re ‘cool’ with being put into this here piece. That doesn’t add up. Something is wrong here.” I blurted out with a worried face.

“Something is wrong? Well yeah, something is wrong. And I think you’ve touched on it already. This piece of writing is neither clear, nor concise – that’s what’s wrong.”

-Jakob Lint