George Saunders

So then you ask, be more specific.

Where is it boring and what do you mean by boring?

And as you go through that process, it becomes diagnostic.

You know, it's, oh, actually there's a thought that's repeated three times in the paragraph on page six.

Oh, okay.

Could you choose one of those repetitions?

And a writer can hear that.

They can hear eliminate one repetition.

That's all good.

Whereas you're boring is, you know, less appealing.

I mean, the example I've thought of before is if you had, you know, five Republicans and five Democrats on the town board.

and you ask them to discuss immigration, you're going to get a fight because they're all pre-programmed with their media inputs.

And it's going to just be, just turn on MSNBC and Fox and let them, and everybody can go out and have lunch and the TVs can fight.

But if you said, okay, we've got $10,000 to fix potholes in our little town, and we've got $20,000 worth of potholes, what do we do?

Suddenly the politics is gone.

You know, you're like, well, we should probably fix the one in front of the ER.

And

And then as you start talking about individual potholes, it's just science, you know.

So I think that's what I mean by specificity squeezes out facile judgment.

I mean, you don't want to squeeze out judgment, but you want to squeeze out that kind of quality of empty, agitated, abstract opining that seems to be prevalent right now, which I don't think really produces much except angst.