philosophy

It’s a mistake to think of writing as an art; it’s a feat of engineering.

You start with words: each one needs a job, and if it’s not pulling its share of the load, it either needs to be reinforced or removed. These are carefully constructed into sentences, which then get stress-tested to make sure they can carry the weight of their words without collapsing. Those sentences grow into paragraphs, and these paragraphs build the pages of your work.

As those pages become chapters, you start thinking about how your visitors will respond. Each page is a room that your reader will inhabit; each page needs to orchestrate how they will navigate it. You’re designing for maximum flow as people enter and leave: dead-end corridors frustrate visitors, and messy layouts intimidate guests.

Consider your use of space on your pages: ma, the Japanese concept of negative space, is the pause that gives shape to motion. Writing should use space as a structural tool, a respect for silence and giving equal importance to what is absent as what is present. Ma is as crucial to pacing as action and dialogue, allowing your readers to live with the words and sentences.

Each level — word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter — needs to be considered for fit, style, and length; each needs to be built to simultaneously stand alone and support the larger structure, your punctuation marks acting as joints and connectors. Everything crafted with the utmost attention to detail, everything designed for form and resonance.

This forms the foundation, the most important stage of your writing, and only after you’ve laid it down can you start considering aesthetics. But ask yourself first: what are you trying to achieve, and will those flourishes serve that? Do you need Van Gogh granite if people are just picking up groceries?

At this point, some will decide they’re fine with what they have — after all, a Holiday Inn is still a serviceable hotel. Others will decide they want to be the Hoshinoya in Tokyo — also a hotel, but one bathed in sheer elegance. Most will try to land somewhere between*, though the underlying principle remains the same: anyone can write a sentence, but a stable foundation grants you the freedom to write one that readers will care about.

My goal is simple: design thinking applied to language, where every word, comma and line break is engineered for excellence, well-structured writing giving way to art.

Most people write. I design. And I’ll help you do the same.

*Many will also, unfortunately, end up as a Motel 6. They still do business, but nobody wants to admit they stayed there.