Clarity

From Joan Bolker, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes A Day:

Because I was able to write quick, nearly finished first drafts, I had never found out how good a writer I might be. Revising my writing would mean exploring my limits, perhaps deciding to push them; but I would probably also have to give up my fantasy that by working hard enough, I could write like Virginia Woolf. The other terror, of making myself clear, was even greater. I responded by writing in a private language. When readers said they couldn't understand what I was talking about, I was both distressed and secretly relieved. As I grew older I found I had some things I wanted to say and have heard. At that point it became necessary for me to speak in the common tongue, and to revise.

To make your writing really clear is also to make yourself very vulnerable. If someone can find out from your writing what you believe, or how you feel, or where you stand, then you may be liked or disliked, agreed or disagreed with, congratulated or criticized for what you've written. As long as you stay hidden in opaque or obscure writing, you're safe. Don Graves put this dilemma succinctly: "You have to be willing to be a professional nudist if you're going to write." If you are having some trouble making yourself clear in writing, consider whether you really want to.

For real, though. My writing has been criticized for a number of reasons, but opacity is not one of them. In fact, over the years I've been praised for the clarity of my writing. For example, in my dissertation practicum last semester, one night when we were workshopping a draft of mine a student in the seminar began her remarks by saying, "First of all, I just have to say: Your writing is excruciatingly clear." :-) I still, however, like this passage and agree with it, but I also wonder if some people are afraid that if they do write clearly, they'll be accused of coming across as having a simple mind, not because of the thoughts they're expressing, rather because they're afraid their method of expression will read as unsophisticated dross lacking the appropriate complexity. I know I've had that fear.