Cadence

Have something to say? Really? An essay on frequency, quantity, exhaustion and the dangers of saying too much or too little.

The other morning, I told a friend that my latest book was about 350 pages. He’s in a different line of work, and told me he doubts he’s had 350 pages of thoughts in his life.

I said that after a few dozen books and a year of these essays, I worry the same is true of me. But it would be a bigger problem for me.

Purposes of speech

People write and speak, in a lot of different ways (see March’s “Tones of Voice, Types of Talk”). In my experience, though, there are two main motivations.

Grooming - mostly in the sense of primates, who pick at each other’s fur to show deference and to keep calm at close quarters, though it works in the other more nefarious context as well. This is speech that says ‘I am here. I am safe. I am on your side. I am just as excited or alarmed as you. Talk to me. We’re inside the same thing.’ This includes marketing.

Communicating - there is a clarity here. It says ‘This happened. This is what it means. This is what I’m going to do. This what it leaves you to decide.’

I put the second one second because it’s less common.