Act As If Every Word Costs $5

Jul 1

“My mother used to say to me, ‘Write as if every word cost a nickel.’ But that was in the 1950s and ‘60s, so I revised this somewhat. And I’m gonna say, “Write as if every word cost $5.”

— Joyce Maynard

One of my favorite people to follow on Instagram is Rach Kincaid. I’ve been following her for a long time and while there are many reasons to love and appreciate her account (her adorable family, her unwavering love of Jesus, her impeccable style, for instance), it wasn’t until last year that I finally put my finger on why I was drawn to her so much.

Rach is a master of word economy—she says a lot with very few words.

Her instagram captions pack a punch, and are, on average, a third of the length of mine. How does she do it? When I visit her account or see her posts show up in my feed, they feel like a breath of fresh air. I follow a ton of writers on Instagram, and we can be a wordy bunch.

But Rach?

She is able to say just as much (or more!) in half the word count.

About three years ago, I stopped wearing eyeliner. Not altogether—if I’m going to a party or taking family photos, I might still put some on. But I stopped wearing eyeliner every time I left the house, which had been a habit of mine since age 13.

I do not remember the exact day my parents started letting me wear makeup, but I remember I spent all of high school rocking thick black eyeliner under my eyes. One of the girls at my high school taught me if you hold your pencil eyeliner up to a lighter and melt it a bit, it will stay on much longer. Naturally, I started doing that every chance I could sneak my makeup bag down to the candle lighter in the kitchen drawer.

I cringe thinking of that now, putting melted eyeliner inside my bottom eyelid? Gross. It is one of two major beauty regrets I have from the early 2000’s (the other being waxing my already-thin eyebrows).

At some point, I stopped melting my eyeliner, but that didn’t stop me from wearing it. I’ve spent much of my adult life wearing eyeliner to the grocery store, to the park, to grab coffee with friends. Eyeliner was part of my daily makeup routine, as normal as undereye concealer and chapstick.

One day a few years ago, though, I applied makeup as usual—concealer, a light foundation, blush, mascara—and I skipped the eyeliner altogether. I can’t remember if I was in a hurry or just in the mood to experiment.

Either way, I ended up skipping it the next day, and the next day, and the next.

And then, a strange thing happened: I started to think I looked better without it. I looked more awake, alert. I didn’t look like I was trying so hard. I no longer looked like an Avril Lavigne wannabe. I no longer looked like a raccoon come 7pm. My makeup routine became simpler; washing my face at night took less time. When I saw myself in photographs, I thought I looked … younger, a joyful epiphany wrapped in irony itself, seeing as how I’d worn eyeliner for almost two decades in an attempt to look older, something I no longer desired.

It felt odd, then, to realize this thing I’d been doing for roughly 18 years was, in a word, unnecessary. For years and years I believed eyeliner enhanced my appearance, but looking back—specifically at pictures—I don’t see an enhancement at all. I see insecurity masked by charcoal, a desperate attempt to fit in, a plea to be deemed beautiful by Glamour magazine’s standards.

I still wear eyeliner occasionally, but I no longer feel the need to wear it every day, to add add add to my otherwise bright green eyes.

I guess what I’m trying to say, in too many words, is: sometimes less is more.

“Don’t worry so much about your word count. Your word cut is more important. You have to sit there sharpening that red pencil or hitting the delete button or flinging the pages into the fire. Often, the more words you cut, the better. A good day might actually be 100 words less than you had yesterday.”

— Colum McCann

So how do we do this? How do we trim the fat from our writing?

Here are a few tips:

Look for repeated words or phrases. One of the best ways to spot these? Read your work out loud. (And then read it out loud again. And again.) You can also use the “find” feature in Word or Google docs to search for words you know you overuse.
Quit the qualifiers—very, really, somewhat, perhaps, usually.
Prune your adverbs. Examine every -ly word in your piece; are all (any) of them necessary?
Detect the fluff. Vivid details should pertain to information that enhances your story. Ask yourself: does the reader need this information? Is it relevant to the story?
Cut the cliches—in light of, in a nutshell, at the end of the day, never say never, etc.
Respect the intelligence of your reader. When you are tempted to explain something to death, ask yourself: would my reader understand this in fewer words? Economical word choice not only makes your prose more fluid and straightforward, it also shows you respect the intelligence of your reader.

“Avoid pointing out what your stories mean. Trust your reader. Allow the revelation to belong to them. You are a guide in a foreign land. Say just enough that they can learn the territory for themselves ... good stories are written, in the end, by their readers.””

— Colum McCann

Inspirational reading:

Read the following pieces and take note of what each writer says (and even more importantly—does not say) with their limited word count.

Almost | Brevity Magazine | 281 words

Euology | Passages North | 413 words

His Apple Pie | Brevity Magazine | 636 words

Carriage | 100 Word Story | 100 words

Writing exercise:

1) Write a story using only 100 words. Peruse 100 Word Story for inspiration.

Prompts:

Lessons Learned in Quarantine
Our First Date
Expectation Management
What, Now?
At The Bottom Of The Diaper Bag

2) Write a six-word memoir. Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” In November 2006, Larry Smith, founder of SMITH Magazine, gave the six-word novel a personal twist by asking his community to describe their lives in exactly six words. Read more here.

Editing Exercise:

Re-work a piece you’ve already written—this could be a full essay, a freewrite, or a blog post. Take a chainsaw to it. Act as if every word costs $5 and give yourself a budget. Read it over and over and over; look for opportunities to trim the fat.

When you’re done, read the two versions back to back. Which sounds more fluid? Which trusts the intelligence of the reader more?

Feeling brave? Share your before and after in the Exhale FB group!