A hole

When I write, I often like to leave a hole in the shape of what I’m really talking about. Maybe it’s because I don’t actually want to talk about it, maybe it’s embarrassing or humiliating — actually this is often the case. But it might also be more entertaining. It’s more fun for the reader to put the pieces together, more stimulating to use one’s own senses to find the signal in the noise. Writing too plainly is like doing a magic trick that’s too simple, or not a trick at all.

I’ll argue with myself here, though. If the idea is that writing is creating an illusion (as in a magic trick) then the writer can also get away with creating the illusion of meaning. Others have called this “passing off obscurity as depth.” You can hide meaninglessness in fancy prose.

Maybe what I’m saying is that you need to be obvious enough that your meaning can be taken without having to mention it directly. Create meaning with more than just the words, but it should not be a mystery.