Apologies

"Excellence is not an act, but a habit" is misattributed to Aristotle (I have often made this mistake). Will Durant wrote it in The Story of Philosophy. 

And I owe apologies for deviations from "MVB" to excellence - in speaking, in writing, in critical thinking.

What books and writings influence your thinking and communication? Pause and reflect. 

Study these to improve your communication. 

"On Writing" - Steven King

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

You can write, "She jumped and spiked furiously." Or write, "Sabrina soared above the net and deformed the ball with fury designed to send the intended victim to Valhalla." Either could work. 

King wants powerful verbs not empowering adverbs. Allow the verb to stand on its own merit. Disallow very, really, or truly. Choose "she played very hard" or "No one mistook her ferocity for mediocrity." 

"Bird by Bird" - Anne Lamott

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a sh*tty first draft.”

Write your thoughts down; then edit. Screenwriter David Mamet says that comedians spend their lives "shaving syllables." A story or joke has three parts - beginning, middle, and end. 1) "What was the last thing Washington said to his men before crossing the Delaware?" 2) Pause. 3) "Get in the boat." 

"The Writing Life" - Annie Dillard

"You submit this landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much? The young photographer said, "Because I had to climb a mountain to get it." 

Writing and volleyball share intent. Don't hoard or hold back our best. 

Here's AI generated commentary on "The Writing Life"

Writing is sustained attention. The work is less about waiting for inspiration than about staying with the page long enough to notice what is actually there. Discipline creates the conditions for discovery.

You often have to sacrifice what you love. Dillard’s famous image is essentially: don’t save your best material for later. Use it now. The piece in front of you deserves the strongest sentence, image, or idea you have.

The work develops a life of its own. A draft may resist your original plan. Good writing sometimes requires following where the material leads rather than forcing it into the shape you intended.

Revision is not cosmetic. It is often destructive in the best sense: cutting, rebuilding, abandoning whole sections, and accepting that substantial effort may produce nothing usable. Writing involves waste.

The writer’s life is solitary, uncertain, and demanding—but meaningful. Dillard strips away the romance. Much of writing is sitting alone, failing repeatedly, and continuing anyway. The reward is not comfort; it is the chance to make something precise and alive.

General comments about writing:

Use a creative imagination (overcome the tyranny of the blank page) and a critical imagination to refine our work.

Dan Brown said, "The difference between good writers and bad ones is that good writers know when they're bad." 

Ernest Hemingway shared, "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."  

Attack your writing with the same intensity and integrity that you sacrifice to sport. You'll see the difference. 

Lagniappe. At a random high school basketball game decades ago, a random guy approached me. "I love how your daughters play, just like boys." As preschoolers, they had rough play with boys before and after school. 

Embrace this theme.