Come together

Come together

“Come together.” We use this with works of creativity. When general ideas form into something more coherent, something more complete; when ideas become reality, they come together.

What sorts of things can come together? Anything that starts as just an idea, and then becomes something more concrete, can come together. And “come together” describes the transformation from just an idea into something like a finished product.

Let’s start with the written word. If you are asked to give a speech or a lecture or a talk, you might have a general idea of what you want to say. But the speech really starts to come together when you have a draft, when it’s organized, when you have a much more concrete sense of what you’ll say.

Not all ideas come together well, especially in creative works. Gabriel García Márquez drafted a novella called “Until August,” but he didn’t like how it came together. He had ideas, but when it came to actually writing it, he was never satisfied.

He had the words: they were there on the page, several drafts, in fact . But he didn’t like how it came together; he didn’t like how the story developed when he got the words onto the page. He didn’t like how it came together. But you can be the final judge on this one: “Until August” was released by García Márquez’s sons last month.

Stephen King famously got his start with the novel “Carrie.” But he threw the first few pages in the trash; he wasn’t happy with how it was coming together, with how the story was developing. His wife convinced him to keep writing; she wanted to know what happened in the rest of the story! “Carrie” was published as a novel and jumpstarted the famous author’s career.

Painters face the same problem. They have a concept; they have an idea. But sometimes when the paint hits the canvas, they just don’t like how it comes together. Claude Monet was famous for his paintings of Water Lillies. But there are paintings we’ve never seen. He destroyed several of them because he didn’t like how they were coming together. He didn’t like how the paintings were developing when his ideas hit the canvas.

So this is how you use it with creative work. But you can use “come together” with more mundane, everyday things, too. PlainEnglish.com is really well-designed, but even I will admit that it’s no Monet painting. Even so, we can still use “come together.”

You know, we just made some great improvements to the design and organization of the content. And when I was working with the developers and looking at the drafts, I told them, “This is coming together very well. I like how this is coming together.”

That means, I told them I liked how they were taking my ideas and taking my drafts and instructions, and making them concrete, actually creating the pages and the templates that we eventually published.

If you organize a big event, there are a lot of moving parts. And sometimes a big event starts as just an idea. Maybe you have a location; maybe you have a theme. But you need to plan the event—let’s say it’s a conference. You have to create the agenda, reserve the rooms, publicize the event, sell tickets, get the logistics in order.

And as you’re doing that, you can say a few things. “The conference is starting to come together.” If you say that, it means that the conference is no longer just an idea: it’s now a plan. It’s really happening. You can start to really envision how it will go because it’s more than an idea.

You can also say, “The conference is coming together nicely.” That means, you like how it’s going. Your idea is becoming reality, and you like the way it looks now that there are more concrete plans. “This conference is coming together nicely.”

Finally, any master chefs in the audience? There’s at least one—that’s JR. If you’re starting to prepare a meal and you have a pile of ingredients—well, all you have is an idea. But if you start putting the ingredients together, and you take a step back, and you see that it’s starting to look like a final product, you can see in your mind how it will look on people’s plates, well, your meal is starting to come together.

See you next time!

That’s all for us here at Plain English for Thursday, April 25, 2024. About a month, maybe six weeks ago, we did update—like I told you—we did update the look and feel and organization at PlainEnglish.com

We made a lot of changes behind the scenes, but also a lot of changes to help you find the right content as quickly as possible.

One of those changes is the full listing of expressions. This is lesson 669, so we have done—not quite 669 expressions, but almost that many, in our history. And never before have you been able to browse them all on one page.

But now you can. Just go to PlainEnglish.com/Expressions . Or, if you’re on the website, choose “Expressions” from “Learn” menu at the top of the page.

And then you’ll be on a page that has them all listed, from A to Z, in alphabetical order. So you can just scan that list and click through to the ones you want to learn. This is a great way to take advantage of all the content we’ve created in the past.

So check that out, PlainEnglish.com/Expressions or just choose “Expressions” from the “Learn” menu at the top of the page. And like I said, I’m really happy with how that page came together.

That’s it—have a fantastic rest of your week. We’ll be back on Monday with a new topic. See you then.