{"id":1084,"date":"2015-06-28T15:39:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T03:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2015-06-28T17:16:51","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T05:16:51","slug":"leave-abstraction-to-the-painters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1084","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Leave abstraction to the painters\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=1085\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1085\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1085\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Abstarct23-300x296.jpg\" alt=\"Abstarct23\" width=\"254\" height=\"251\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Abstarct23-300x296.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Abstarct23.jpg 334w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 254px) 100vw, 254px\" \/><\/a>My first grown up writing job was with an advertising and communications consultancy.\u00a0 My boss was a former accountant with a degree in economics.\u00a0 But his real passion was for words.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Tell a story,\u2019 he used to say.\u00a0 \u2018And tell it in the plainest language that you can.\u00a0 Make it interesting, but be direct, be concise, and keep it simple.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018And don\u2019t let anyone tell you that simple means childish.\u00a0 Child-<em>like<\/em>, perhaps \u2013 but child-like has much to commend it.\u00a0 When did you last hear a seven-year-old use words that you didn\u2019t understand?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone subscribed to Don\u2019s philosophy.\u00a0 One of the old hands used to grumble that he hadn\u2019t spent 30 years hunched over a typewriter in order to write \u2018for morons with a reading age of seven\u2019.\u00a0 And, to prove it, he often peppered his prose with words like grandiloquent.\u00a0 But David, the former sub-editor turned copy supervisor, was on to him.\u00a0 Grandiloquent rarely \u2013 if ever \u2013 made it into print.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019s other advice was to steer clear of anything abstract.\u00a0 \u2018Leave abstraction to the painters,\u2019 he used to say.\u00a0 \u2018Jackson Pollock can do abstract.\u00a0 You stick to concrete.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I thought of Don recently while I was listening to \u2018an expert\u2019 explaining how to solve a social problem has, thus far, proved resistant to all of the usual approaches.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We should treat the whole minefield as a new landscape,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018We need to interrogate the intention.\u00a0 We also need to interrogate the data in order to glean the learnings.\u00a0 And of course we need to build new pathways.\u00a0 But most importantly, we need to kick-start the national conversation.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Yeah right.<\/p>\n<p>Is it any wonder that nobody seems to know what to do next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first grown up writing job was with an advertising and communications consultancy.\u00a0 My boss was a former accountant with a degree in economics.\u00a0 But his real passion was for words. \u2018Tell a story,\u2019 he used to say.\u00a0 \u2018And tell &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1084\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1087,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions\/1087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}