The Work Behind the Words 003 - Voice, Authority, and the Hemingway Rule

How to Connect, Convince, Converse

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If the reader doesn’t trust you, they will not follow you. Trust, authority, is earned, and without it your story, your poem, your essay means almost nothing.

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A Parable

There was an ancient kingdom and in the city square artists competed for supremacy.

Each wore masks of their own crafting, of gold or stone or clay. The masks were adorned with feathers and fire and precious jewels.

One by one, before the crowds, the artists would dance or sing or tell a story — each vying for attention and applause. Their ornate robes flowing, sparks and flags, all spectacles meant to capture the eye.

There is a legend, passed down, that a woman entered the square without a mask, and without robes. Her voice was shaky and her body trembled.

And her story was one of agony and pain — and of earned hope and ordinary redemption. Blood and tears dripped from her eyes.

When she was done no one clapped.
There were no applause.

The crowd wept, not just for the pain of her story, but because it was the first story they had ever heard.

Everything else was desperation; begging to be seen.
Performance.

But this was something different.

This was story as altar.

And though she spoke softly and with tremors — and though here robes were plain and craft was jagged, the entire kingdom listened.

Because when someone tells the truth, the real truth, we don’t clap.
We remember.

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The authority of the writer is not in the mask, nor the robes, nor the performance. Authority is beneath it all — the face we show underneath. Authority is always truth.

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1. Bleed, Don’t Pose

I work under the assumption that everyone’s bulls**t detector is top of the line — the latest model, first in its class — and that trying to sneak a fast one passed someone isn’t really going to work.

And I especially assume that when it comes to readers.

Readers can smell a performance a mile away, the stench of its pomp, the odour of its circumstance, the repugnant posturing.