Manage Your Writing

This week: Remember that Brazilian butterfly

Almost everyone has heard of that butterfly whose flapping wings can affect distant weather. It's often labeled as Chinese, though Edward Lorenz's 1972 introduction of the concept was titled "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

The point: in a complex system, tiny causes can have huge effects.

Remember that as you revise your drafts. A small difference in how your readers respond to your first sentence can make a somewhat bigger difference in how they respond to your second sentence. And so on. So make sure your first sentence is absolutely clear, economical, and compelling.

This week: The last shall be first

Famed sports agent Mark H. McCormack, who has been credited for inspiring the film Jerry McGuire, once wrote, "A lot of memos would be more persuasive if their first and last paragraphs were switched."

This week, when you've finished drafting each piece of writing, ask yourself whether you could make it more effective by taking McCormack's advice. Even if you decide not to literally switch the beginning and ending paragraphs, just asking the question may alert you to ways to improve how your message ends and begins.

This week: Write a one-minute outline

When many of us were in school, outlining had a lot to do with Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, capital letters, and lower-clase letters. As a result, when someone mentions outlines, we run away fast.

Outlining can be much easier than that. When you're planning a piece of writing, just jot down--in any order--the ideas you want to include. Then take a minute, or less, to put them in the best order for your reader. 

If your ideas are on a computer screen, just drag them around. If they're on scratch paper, just number them:

"Let's see, I'll put this in paragraph 2, this in paragraph 4, this I'll leave out, this in paragraph 1, this also in paragraph 2, and this and this I'll also leave out."

Bingo. You have an outline. And you'll have a more effective message.

This week: Resolve to improve your writing

If you're reading this blog, you probably would like to become a more effective business writer in 2012.

So be specific. What would you like to improve most about your business writing this year?

Jot down your answer, and make it a resolution.

If  you'll send that resolution to me, I'll make sure this blog helps you keep it. And I'll send you an e-mail next December to check how you've done.

Happy New Year!

 

This week: Best wishes for 2012

This week: Beware the dreaded "it is"

In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry writes:

State that something is your understanding. This statement should be firm, vaguely disapproving, and virtually impossible to understand. A good standard one is: "It is my understanding that this was to be ascertained in advance of any further action, pending review."

Although that sentence has several problems, its fundamental one is that it starts with "It is," an absolutely empty subject-verb combination (unless, of course, the "it" refers to an earlier noun).

This week, as you revise, look for sentences like this:

It is not until Wednesday that the parts will arrive.

Change them to sentences like these:

The parts won't arrive until Wednesday.
The parts will arrive Wednesday.

(Which you choose depends, of course, on whether you're the buyer, complaining, or the supplier, promising.)

 

This week: Speak your reader's language

According to a story I once heard, when the United States and the USSR were planning their first joint space mission, planners thought hard about how the language barrier would be crossed, especially in the perilous situations that could occur in space flight. Naturally, the American astronauts were taught Russian, and the Soviet cosmonauts were taught English. But which language should be used when, and by whom?

The answer may surprise you. After extensive study, NASA announced that the U.S. crew would always speak Russian, and the Soviet crew would always speak English. Why? Because the speaker, who knew what he wanted to say, could more easily do the work of mental translation. With lives at stake, the listener should not have to both mentally translate and absorb new information.

This principle applies to everything we write, even to speakers of our own language. We know what we want to say, so we bear the burden of making our message as easy as possible for our reader to understand.

This week, as you revise, pretend that your reader speaks a language different from yours.  Write as clearly as you can, so your reader cannot misunderstand.

 

This week: Cut when you revise, not while you draft

In the early nineteenth century, British author C. C. Colton wrote, "That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time."

Most of us know that in theory. We know that we should make our writing as economical as possible. But we may be paying attention to conciseness too soon, while we're drafting.

This week, don't interrupt the flow of a draft to worry about whether you're using too many words. Just write the words as they come, even if you know you're going to cut some out later. When you revise, you'll find that cutting words is easier than adding new ones.

 

This week: Avoid thundershower activity

In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry provides a helpful question and answer:

Q. What do they mean on the TV weather forecast when they say we are going to have "thundershower activity"?

A. They mean we are not going to have an actual thunderstorm, per se, but we are going to have thundershower activity, which looks very similar to the untrained eye.

This week, as you revise, look for places where your writing includes the equivalent of "thundershower activity." Go for "thunderstorms" instead.

 

This week: Start with purpose

If a coworker interrupts us while we're writing a letter and asks, "What are you doing?" most of us will answer "Writing a letter."

That answer reveals a focus on the written product, not on its purpose. Such product-focused thinking keeps our writing from being as effective as it could be.

This week, when you start each writing job, take a few seconds to think about your purpose—about what effect you want to have on your reader. This week, if a coworker interrupts your writing and asks what you're doing, be prepared to answer (for example), "I'm trying to get this customer to forgive us for a shipping mistake we made."