First Steps

FIRST STEPS:

Usually, when someone knows something very well, they are not the best to introduce someone new, to it.

Because they have already been through the complexities and layers of the thing, and have forgotten what it feels like to take the first step.

It takes a lot of work to remember the first steps.

Often, beginners find things that experts have long since forgotten with familiarity.

When we have spent many hours inside of a room it becomes familiar. We know where all the light switches are. We know all of the sharp corners to be avoided in the dark. We forget what it was like to turn the worn brass latch, give the door a push and peek inside for the first time, not knowing what we would find there.

This is the curse of assumed knowledge. We assume that because we know, everyone else must know.

One of the most powerful things you can do in your writing and marketing communication is trying to remember what it feels like to experience something new. Write to that. Give words to the world from that point of view. Stand in the doorway again, peer thru it, and tell us what you see. And since you have already braved the leap across the threshold into the unknown world beyond, you can offer a glimpse to the newcomer of the mysteries to be found there.

Be careful though to not give away to many of the secrets or too many spoilers of the journey ahead. Remember, that you got where you are by discovery along the way. The journey itself is what makes the destination worth getting to. Offer each new pilgrim enough landmarks to start the journey, but not so many that they might overlook new discoveries.

“Write drunk, edit sober” was Ernest Hemingway’s decree. Setting aside the fact that Hemingway was a raging alcoholic, this pillar of his creative theology it very true, If not in practicality, but in it’s intent. What Hemmingway was getting at was that when we seek to communicate, we have to momentarily forget what we know, or hold to be universally experienced by all. Assumed knowledge. We must set aside what we hold to be obvious and understood about a thing, and look at it again through the eyes of first discovery.