Would I ever have become editor of ES World, the in-house magazine of the biggest science publishers in the world, without Abi Daruvalla? No way. She was my first ‘real’ editor. Recently Abi and I chatted about her career as a journalist and professional trainer, teaching writers—like me—how to KISS.

Keep It Short & Simple—KISS

Abi learned the skills of writing clearly and simply back in the 1970s in the old-fashioned way, not by learning communication theory as part of a university degree, but by doing the job of a journalist under the extremely critical eye of a real editor. This included the ultimate practice of KISSing—headline writing. Later, she was part of the first generation of online and social media journalists. “Oh, how I loved the 280-character limit of Twitter’s early days!”

Born in London in 1957, the eldest child of Indian immigrants, Abi always wanted to be a journalist. Like many of our generation, she was politically passionate with “an over-developed and rather naive sense of justice.” After covering the British general election of 1979, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power amidst rampant racism, she fled to Amsterdam.

Cut & paste
In 1981, Abi fell in love with fellow Brit Mark Fuller. “By then I was telling anyone who would listen that Amsterdam needed an English-language newspaper. Mark translated thought into deed and The Paper was born. The first step was to place an advert in a local newspaper asking anyone who was interested to attend a meeting at our apartment near Central Station.”

The response was overwhelming with 40 ex-pats turning up, ranging from a Ghanian in full tribal dress to a young Irish mother with a baby on her back. In the next five years, Abi and Mark published a huge and varied number of articles, from news stories to restaurant reviews, from interviews with the rich and famous (Alan Ginsberg, Keith Haring, Jan Wolters, Johan Cruijff) to translated fragments of modern Dutch literature.

“You’re dead right about the demand for The Paper.” I’m interrupting but Abi doesn’t seem to mind. “I was an avid fan of The Paper, bashing away at my typewriter, dreaming of seeing my stories in print. Do you remember inviting me to the office on the Lauriersgracht, when I submitted that profile of the American artist Michael Griffin? You sat me down and made me watch you wield a huge pair of scissors. You snipped my carefully typed pages into little bits. Then you showed me how to cut the dross and paste the leftovers in a sensible new order that made the piece simple and clear to read.”

Rather earnestly (as is my wont), I add, “Thanks to you and Mark for publishing that story, and the ones that followed, I got my corporate journalist job. When they asked me if I could do it, I showed them my clippings from The Paper.”

Abi smiles. “So, your writing career started at the sharp end of my editing scissors, way back when cut & paste was quite literally that. But hey, even all those years ago it was clear that you were going to be a writer (and that my talents were confined to editing). I had absolutely no doubt that you were talented!”

“Thanks for the compliment, Abi (your cheque is in the mail). But enough of this kissy-kissy talk, let’s get on with the real business of KISSing.”

Sound bites & headlines
In the past 40 years Abi has worked as a journalist for the Dutch news service ANP and as a freelance foreign correspondent for various publications including Time Magazine, The European, International Herald Tribune and many more. She combined this with teaching journalism at Utrecht and Amsterdam universities and the Dutch World Service Training Center. The latter involved designing and implementing training courses for journalists around the world including writing workshops in China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia.

As well as writing courses, she also specialized in Training the Trainers for the NGO sector (Free Press Unlimited, Unicef) and worked in Moldova, Uzbekistan, Türkiye, Bosnia-Herzegovina and many other exotic destinations.

Back in Amsterdam, Abi set up U2Media, her training company, to help those working in the corporate world and public organizations to KISS in written and verbal communication. “For example, I ask clients to write ten-word headlines to get their message across. And we record ‘TV interviews’ in which clients have to answer five questions and get their message across in two minutes.”

Today Abi’s biggest client is the European Space Agency. “I teach rocket scientists to explain the intricacies of space missions to kids in 30-second sound bites or ten-word headlines. When they say, that’s impossible, I quote Einstein: ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’ Or I show them David Christian’s TedTalk. He explains the history of the world—13.7 billion years—in 18 minutes.”

KISS is the essence of poetry
Now for the big question I’ve been dying to ask: “Does KISS apply to writers of fiction?”

Abi pauses to consider, thereby applying her first principle of KISS: Spend longer thinking about exactly what you want to say before you start writing. Eventually she says, “I do think there is a distinction between writing corporate text and fiction. The primary purpose of the first is to inform, while the main role of fiction is to entertain. But KISS absolutely applies to prose writers.”

Abi continues, “In its purest form, KISS is the essence of poetry. The poet carefully choses every word, is aware that less is more, and that every word must contribute to the overall story. Fiction writers do not need to overburden readers with adjectives but should use words sparingly to spark the imagination of the reader.”

“Sparingly, I like that. Reminds me of Hemingway’s seven writing tips. Doesn’t his number 7 sound really KISSy?”

Abi: “Yes, of course, be brief. I also like his number 2: always stop for the day while you know what will happen next. And I might like to add an eighth tip to his list: you don’t have to start at the beginning.”

In her KISS classes, Abi uses Orwell’s famous tips from his essay Politics and the English Language:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

Good advice from George, indeed, but Abi’s own principles also make sense for writers. She lists a few. “Make every word count. Always go through your text with a big black marker pen to delete every single (both words required here!) unnecessary word, and finally, the less you say, the bigger the impact because—bottom line—the more you KISS, the more likely your text will be read.”▼

Further reading
The Paper ceased publication in 1986. Many years later Abi was involved in setting up the website DutchNews.nl  with DN editor, Robin Pascoe. Like The Paper, DN serves the ex-pat community in the Netherlands.
‘It took me 10 years to learn Dutch – but language is only a small part of communicating’
‘Connecting with people is what I do’
‘Learning to speak Dutch seemed insurmountable’ (scroll down & click on Abi’s name to read the full story)
A selection of Abi’s news articles for The Independent

Featured images
‘The Kiss’ by Rodin. Le Baiser de Rodin, vers 1881-1882. Plâtre patiné, Musée de Rodin, Paris. Own work by Tylwyth Eldar, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

‘Abi Daruvalla’ by the Amsterdam-based, social documentary portrait photographer, Yara Jimmink.