Clearspeak.

I was fairly certain at one stage that most people were on the same wave-length as me. We generally had the same idea on what 'good' meant - good quality, good nature, good ethics. Given this idea, I made a conscious choice that I could sacrifice some level of communication when talking with other people because good people would 'get it'.

Then the internet came, and without the additional hints of gestures* and vocal recognition, it became paramount that my written word was made clearer so that I was understood. This quickly separated myself from the majority of other IRC users, many of whom were populating #funfactory and creating the foundations of today's txt-speak. This discipline to grammar that I exercised with extreme prejudice in my own written communication lead to my desire to start writing.

Surely since I could string a sentence together, I could be a writer, right?


Well, kind-of.

What I didn't realise was that there are two kinds of communication; factual and creative. Factual communication is exactly that - factual, objective and clean. One plus one equals two. This apple is green. You cannot continue to act in this manner in good faith of our contract. Etcetera.

The second part of communication, the creative part, is broad. It's not just the ability to convey a fictional story. (Even that is a factual means of communication - the story already exists, it just needs to be told.) Creative communication is the ability to express ideas that don't necessarily have an objective basis.

A manager's ability to delegate and provide leadership is creative communication.
A salesperson's ability to make a customer feel comfortable and empowered to buy a specific item.
A writer's ability to convince the reader that the story they're telling really is as good and exciting as the cover depicts.

And what I know now, quite a few years later than when I first logged on to IRC, is that creative communication has nothing to do with the meaning of your words. Or that they're in the right order, or that the right punctuation is used. Creative communication is about how you say it. The timing of when you say it. Who you say it to. And why you're saying it.

These things can be just as important, sometimes more so!, than what it is you actually say.

A little while ago I tried pitching an idea to Senor Kranzky about a game I was keen to make. In my head it made sense. I had flowcharts showing user throughput, I had marketing plans in place and was even sure that technically the program would be a breeze to create.

When it came to time to talk everyone through it, I choked. I could factually point to everything I wanted and what purpose it would have and why it was designed in that fashion, but I wasn't prepared to pitch it creatively. I had no idea why anyone else would want to look at this game. I stuttered on ideas, and in the end though I had provided "a good idea" for the purpose of the game, the actual game content itself left everyone underwhelmed.

I've since redesigned from the ground up what I want in the game and suited it's function to match it's purpose. As a result the re-pitched idea came much more smoothly. I knew now what I wanted to do, and how to say it. I didn't have to convince that it was a good idea - factually this was evident in the redesign - and my enthusiasm for the idea came much, much easier.

I'm not a salesman. At all. Years upon years of excessive typing and having hours to formulate replies has left my interpersonal sales and pitching skills underdeveloped. I consider this to be a positive trait though, 'cause it just means that whatever I need to sell is going to have to be so freakin' awesome that it will speak for itself.

And in that circumstance, telling someone about it - creatively - is so much easier.

-Anthony

*Of which I use. A lot.


quit yer jibber jabber and help me with the boom-booms