Nothing Worth Taking Into Account

The 300-Word Micro-Essay is a $7 format for saying the whole damn argument in 300 words, which is about as long as anybody stays.

If your sentences wander off before they reach the point, Clarity Counts is a short guide to cutting the clutter and dragging them back.

THE TIP. Hokusai went by more than thirty names. Every new one was a clean sheet, and the old work couldn’t follow him onto it.

Around seventy he wrote down his verdict on everything he’d drawn so far: nothing worth taking into account. Seventy years of work, written off, and that’s the same stretch that gave us The Great Wave. Cold-blooded shit, right there.

At seventy-three he figured he partly understood the structure of animals and birds, and at seventy-four he started signing his work Old Man Mad About Art. He had a schedule, too. Better at eighty-six. Better again at ninety. By a hundred and ten, every dot and line would be alive.

I’m stealing this part. Last year’s work is the warm-up, and you’re allowed to call it nothing as long as you keep going. Most of us call it nothing and quit, which is a hell of a way to review yourself.

Pick a new name if it helps.

Hokusai died at eighty-eight, twenty-two years short of the schedule, still drawing.

What would you sign your next one as? Hit reply and tell me. ~ J.D.