Writing My Sentence

I love definitions. In fact, the basis of my March 2010 One Dream a Month is based on that love, but that's all I say right now about it. Other than this - the reason I love definitions is because it condenses the meaning of a term, word or phrase in a remarkably succinct fashion. Flash fiction in a sentence. 


Like most people, I receive quite a few email newsletters in my inbox every week. Some of them I scan, but there's one I read and re-read over the course of a week - the Harvard Business Review - and in particular, the one that showed up on day two of this month's project. One section stood out to me and especially one phrase, which is attributed to Clare Booth Luce, the playwright and journalist, who said in regards to American Presidents and in particular in a challenge to the young JFK's presidency: "A great man is one sentence." She posed the following challenge: "What was to be his sentence?"


All right, so a little gender-specific in the language, but the essence of it made me stop and in particular, as HBR's blog contributor, Bill Taylor, applies it to business. 


"What a powerful question — not just for great presidents, but for great companies, too."


Taylor continues through his posting to reference a number of highly successful organizations who have been successful because they've been able to craft, and make real, a highly specific and well-crafted sentence. 


"Time and again, as I've gotten to know companies that are winning big in tough industries, I've been struck by the clarity and simplicity of the one idea that drives them — their version of Luce's sentence."


As someone who taught composition and creative writing at Front Range Community College, and as a person who wrestles with language every single day, I have great respect for a well-crafted sentence. As the founder of a new business venture that is was just three days ago an undercover dream, the idea of distilling and defining this dream turned into action is both daunting and very appealing. The refinement that happens in the act of writing and the very necessary revisions and editing, can absolutely be applied to my next step in the project: 

The mission and the vision.

SCREECH....Stop! Oh, no, not those words...I just can't bring myself to use those words. 


It's not that I don't believe in the concepts of mission and vision, I do, but I've crossed them out because they've come to represent the watered-down business-ese that has is just another part of way too much non-defined jargon. I get physically uncomfortable when I hear or read them. 


Instead and because I've spent so much time staring a blank white page and screen, I'm shifting gears away from those two words and will move toward this:

WRITING MY SENTENCE

I like this. Writing my sentence definitely fits into my "What I Already Know" knowledge map that I began to define on day 2. 


I know that this process won't be not easy, nor will it be fast. Boiling down the entire purpose of a company into a strong, thoughtful and originally-minded sentence will take much discipline. But the benefits are obvious: the result will be a business that is focused on a single idea in the same way a good sentence jumps out on the page and makes me get the highlighter out to return to over and over again.  


Will my sentence be short and pithy? Or filled with semi-colons and run-ons? I won't know until I do it, but I do know what I will be moving my fingers across the keyboard to create - a well-crafted sentence that contains, in language, a well thought out and energized sense of purpose and action. 


In other words, I need to write my sentence as if my life, and this project, depends on it. 


Because it does.