The phrase "purple prose" is used to shame people into not trying too hard. But you know what? I'd say Shakespeare is relatively purple. It's natural when you write to want to impress; it's sensible to make an effort to distinguish yourself and your work.

When I write, I'm constantly steering around pretentious options as if they were submarines desperate to sink my battleship. Eventually I pare back so far I wonder if I'm talking down or failing to trust English to mean what it says. And still I'm sure I come across as pretentious. At some point you have to ask yourself: what does it mean to be pretentious, and how much is that a real problem rather than an imagined one?

I know from many tests and lots of feedback from people who know me a little or extremely well that I'm considerably smarter than average. Is that ego speaking? Maybe. Maybe I'm deluded. I feel stupid most of the time, and I try to go on outside evidence, but I suppose if I really am as stupid as I feel, I could easily be deceived, especially by myself. So maybe I'm not very smart; maybe it's only the Dunning-Krueger effect, despite what seems like an objective basis.

But let's suppose I actually am smarter than the average educated person. And let's suppose I'm smarter than some others who are seen as smart and successful. When I sit down to write - or stand up, or walk, or whatever - how much is it my obligation to hide this? If I'm presenting an idea that seems unrecognized or at least underrecognized, how important is it for me to write in a style that looks like everyone else's style? Or that makes everyone feel as if they could have written the same thing, if only they'd thought of it sooner?

One thing I love about Jimi Hendrix is that he wasn't by most objective standards an exceptional singer. He compared his singing voice, next to the juggernaut of his guitar presence, to a mouse standing next to an elephant. As it happens, I love the mouse almost as much as I love the elephant.

But when he "wrote" - played or recorded guitar work - did he avoid showing off his talents? Did he make sure you would feel you could do the same thing he was doing? Was he preoccupied with not alienating you? I don't know. But it seems to me he owned it, and his guitar swagger was part of his charm. He "wrote purple prose," and oddly enough, that's a lot of what was good about him.

Writers often start out like guitarists, trying to play the pen like a virtuoso. Then they run into technical problems, usually with their grammar and emotional and aesthetic skill. They might fool one or two people - might fool themselves - but sooner or later, they realize they aren't fooling the people who matter to them; to those people, they sound dopey, pretentious, arrogant, incompetent. They sound like they're trying too hard.

When they become aware of this, it embarrasses them so much that in humility they course-correct into an ethic that says virtuosity or any effort in that direction is arrogant and wrong, unless you are one of the chosen few gifted by the gods.

When I hear Shakespeare or Hendrix, I hear enormous skill cultivated over countless hours of purple. They didn't sheepishly quit and hide from ambition as if it were a sin. They ambited.