If there is one thing I wish I’d written, then I’m a rubbish writer who pays no attention to how much fantastic writing there is in the world. But definitely one of the things would be this line of “Brevity. Soul. Wit.” which used to be on my favourite mug, which made that mug my favourite, until I lost it somewhere.

It was a mug from the Royal Shakespeare Company and maybe you need that context to recognise what it’s after saying, but I think you get it. This is the six-word quote “brevity is the soul of wit” reduced to three words.

You can always reduce anything. I once read a commissioning document that, by way of an example, cut the whole of Hamlet down to about 100 words. Small problem: if you read those 100, you would never take a single look at Hamlet again. You can edit text and make it more effective, you can edit text and make it crap.

I was in a discussion this week about whether one should edit one’s writing at all. Ever. That if you edited it, maybe you could ruin it.

Intellectually, I get the argument, and I could even make a decent fist of arguing that uninhibited stream-of-conscious writing needs protection.

Except it’s bollocks. People who don’t want to edit for fear of ruining their work really just don’t want to edit. Editing is hard. It’s heavy lifting, it’s deep examination instead of just merry typing.

There’s an older, if similar argument that asks whether writing is an art or a skill. I’m just not sure how this can count as an argument when the answer is yes.

Not quite true, or not quite the full answer. I was once in a pub discussion where the answer was actually “Yes, and it’s your round.”

Of course, if I really wanted to edit this down to its core, I’d just point out that the mug concerned is not the RSC one.