{"id":1108,"date":"2015-09-17T08:40:11","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T20:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2015-09-17T08:40:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T20:40:11","slug":"decisions-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1108","title":{"rendered":"Decisions, decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=1107\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1107\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1107\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Decisions-300x295.jpg\" alt=\"Decisions\" width=\"300\" height=\"295\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Decisions-300x295.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Decisions.jpg 503w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Writing well is all about making decisions.<\/p>\n<p>In a sense, you begin by deciding on your first word.\u00a0 Although, in practice, most writers begin by deciding on their first sentence.<\/p>\n<p>Then you decide what follows those first few words.\u00a0 And so it continues: one word at a time; one sentence at a time; one decision at a time.<\/p>\n<p>At some stage \u2013 hopefully not too far into the process \u2013 you decide how much of your subject to include.\u00a0 More importantly, you also decide how much to leave out.\u00a0 And, while there is often an inclination to include <em>everything<\/em>, if you want your prose to be clear and concise, everything is probably going to be way, <em>way<\/em> too much.\u00a0 Less is usually more.<\/p>\n<p>But one of the most important decisions comes when you think that you have finished writing whatever it is that you are writing.\u00a0 That is when you have to decide: Have I said what I intended to say?\u00a0 And, in our experience, this is where a lot of writers come unstuck.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few days ago, a client came to us with a nicely crafted piece of prose.\u00a0 It was easy to read, and it had a satisfying \u2018heft\u2019 to it.\u00a0 The only problem was that it didn\u2019t actually say what the writer had intended to say.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It\u2019s your decision,\u2019 we told the client.\u00a0 \u2018But we think that you might want to decide to start again.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing well is all about making decisions. In a sense, you begin by deciding on your first word.\u00a0 Although, in practice, most writers begin by deciding on their first sentence. Then you decide what follows those first few words.\u00a0 And &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1108\">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],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108"}],"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=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1109,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}