My teachers in school used to tell me great truths, in small bites. I loved having these little sayings to reflect on. I guess it was because the real truths are so simple. The more complicated written ideas get, the easier it is to have them go down the wrong path.
My rhetoric mentor, Mrs. Shelby, had a way of keeping us on track and not letting us get stuck in our own ideas. There was constant reading, writing, and discussions about ideas in her classroom. No sloppy thinking or writing was tolerated. I used to wonder how she got through so many assignments each night, as ruthless as she was in pointing out any weak points in a paper. We were required to read from magazines and periodicals, write up a paper based on the article, and make comments about what we had read, stating a position about the topic of the day. If you didn’t have a good reasoning process involved in your argument, you were in trouble. That blue pencil could put me in tears, and sometimes it did.
She held us to a high standard, and she told us certain things every time we were in a discussion.
My favorite one of all is this one: “Truth lies in fine distinctions.”
When you think about the way life really works, this one saying can take you through an awful lot. Situations that at first glance seem cut and dried can take on new dimensions when you are ready to take a nuanced approach and see more sides of them. You find that your own point of view evolves as you examine the factors that led to things being the way they are. And you start to see that the way they appeared at first is only one part of the story. How did that person find that they believed they needed to do that certain thing in that certain way? What led this process or that to the point where conditions evolved or devolved to create the situation that we see now?
It does make a difference, the way you frame the question. The way the question is framed determines what range of possibilities you are ready to entertain. What more evidence are you ready to consider? Whose point of view is valued more than another person’s, and why? How can you change your point of view to learn more and find a deeper truth that is hidden by appearances?
These questions are at the heart of writing, and they are at the heart of the work I do with writers. When I am working on a life narrative, or a work of fiction, I look deep into what motivated the characters. In a business book, I want to know all about the processes we are describing so that I can support the author, or write the book for that busy executive. Truth lies in fine distinctions.
It’s the subtle differences in the way we frame the questions that reveal the realities of life.
As a writing coach, editor, and ghost writer, I find it fascinating how ideas evolve during our processes.
If you’d like to know more about what I do and how I do it, use my schedule link to set a time for a complimentary consultation and see if we are a good fit for each other.