Roger von Oech’s recent post about ‘how creative ideas come from manipulating your resources, no matter how few and simple they are’ included the example of a clever 1960s National Library Week print advertisement.

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At your local library they have these arranged in ways that can make you cry giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder, and understand.
It’s astonishing to see what these twenty-six little marks can do. In Shakespeare’s hands they became Hamlet. Mark Twain wound them into Huckleberry Finn. James Joyce twisted them into Ulysses. Gibbon pounded them into The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. John Milton shaped them into Paradise Lost.

This advertisement made me think about my growing fascination with writing. Maybe the simplicity of resources in writing makes it so special to me. Maybe this is why ‘the book’ is always better than ‘the movie’. Maybe this is why I like surfing the net and reading blogs more than I like watching television.

When I was reading “Getting Real” by the folk at “37 Signals” I found the following statement thought provoking:

Hire good writers
If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.

That’s because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.

I then realised that I have admired good writers in the past, but I didn’t quite know why.