Funny how a change in my environment facilitates more change. This book has been lying dormant on my bookshelf for years literally. But since I shifted house, not only did I decide to tackle it, but I managed to consume it within 3 days. One less instance of tsundoku, yay!

John Simmons wrote a stakeholder’s report (henceforth known as the base text) and imposed 26 constraints on himself. This means that he rewrote the base text 26 times, stretching his creative muscles and literary prowess, exploring the unexpected direction his self-imposed restrictions led him toward. This injected a sense of fun and novelty into my reading - I never quite knew what to expect. I even got inspired at one point. Seeing his base text reconfigured in the form of haikus made me do likewise.

My mind racing furiously, I wrote these two haikus in my head last night. And gave up my nap time to design a Canva poster this morning. My students can’t complain that I never teach them properly. I have approached pesky grammar rules from the lens of their favourite sport! ⚽️

Suffice it to say that I was highly engaged by John Simmons’ writing. I love reading about his thinking process behind each rewrite, coupled with samples of his other work or someone’s masterpiece. This is an ode to the beautiful art of writing - a call perhaps for us to use our grey cells a little bit harder in the midst of the onslaught of AI-flooded writing tools.

Recently, I realised that I tend to favour short and sweet sentences because of the assorted pressures placed on my cognitive bandwidth. John Simmons did make me want to do better. There are many ways I can improve my writing, specifically introducing ambiguity in the absence of punctuation, using old-fashioned words, reading my writing out loud, among others. Maybe the enthusiasm generated by his stellar examples will last me some time. A struggling writer can only hope.