How is it that everyone has so much to say they have trouble deciding what not to say? I'm thinking of this quote, attributed to Blaise Pascal:
I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.This gets brought up in the context of presentations, papers, conversations, code, art, anything that requires some amount of creativity. The hard part, as it goes, is condensing the huge number of things you'd like to say into a smaller coherent form, often to satisfy some external constraint on time or space. If left to my own devices, a person of this mindset must think, I would emit an endless stream of wisdom, but alas, others are unwilling or unable to process my brilliance in its entirety. All of my effort must therefore go toward eliminating all but the very best of what I have to offer. And these are gems I'm discarding.
Never once in my life have I had this experience. Coming up with enough to say has always been a struggle for me. While other people are cutting stuff out left and right, I'm trying to come up with just enough to avoid outright embarrassment. Am I just not creative? Not prolific? Or is my threshold for what is worth saying much higher? I wouldn't say it's that high, since I'm blogging about this right now.
Incidentally, So Much to Say is possibly the only Dave Matthews Band song I like.
