Manage Your Writing

Urgent message? Don't use e-mail.

Scott H. Young has posted a great list of "The Seven Bad E-mail Habits that Make People Want to Kill You." My favorite is one that goes smack-dab against conventional wisdom:

My guideline is that I shouldn’t send an e-mail if I need a response in less than five days. Not only do some people take days to respond to e-mails, you won’t be able to convey urgency in text. When you are on the phone or in person, you can transmit the impending need of your request, while in text you can only resort to using CAPITAL LETTERS or exclamation marks!

Thanks to Lifehacker for the lead.

Put writing on your calendar

Dave Navarro, at Freelance Folder, has published a list of ways bloggers can break through writer's block. At least one of them is a good tip for all writers:

Schedule regular time and show up, even if you think you can’t write. Sometimes your brain will freeze, your motivation will leave you, and your car won’t start. Showing up at your keyboard will solve two of those problems. If you’ve scheduled 8am to 9am to write, and you sit there for an hour and nothing comes out, you’ve still followed through on your appointment. When you sit down tomorrow your chances of breaking writer’s block skyrocket. I’ve never met anyone who followed through on showing up and had long term writer’s block. When you show up, you’re subconsciously telling yourself that you’re serious about writing … and that sets you up for a win.

(Thanks to Lifehacker for sending me to this.)

This week: Pay attention to Subject lines

A participant in a writing workshop I once led taught me something. (That almost always happens.) The hardest thing about writing messages, she said, is "filling in the subject."

"So you just throw something in there," she continued. "When the reader gets it, it's the part he or she reads first. And the subject line may not be what you want them to get out of it."

She was right.

This week, pay attention to Subject lines in the e-mail messages you write. If you've really thought about what you're going to say, and to whom, and for what purpose, go ahead and write the Subject first. It will focus your work on the message itself.

But if you're not sure exactly what you'll be saying in the message, save the Subject line for last. (Actually, save it for next-to-last; don't fill in the To line untl your message is absolutely ready to send. You'll avoid those terrible premature dispatches.)

Grab that cocktail napkin

At last, someone has invented a word processor that captures the reality of on-the-run writing.

Check out Word Perhect. Wait patiently while you read the first two screens. Then knock yourself out!

(A scribbled thanks to Ray at The (New) Legal Writer for the link.)

This week: Postpone "perfect"

Ken Blanchard and Robert Lorber wrote in Putting the One Minute Manager to Work:

Anything worth doing does not have to be done perfectly--at first.

This week, as you draft, give yourself permission not to be perfect. If you want to go for perfect, make time to revise.

When a writer can't find the nuance

Norman Mailer died this week. Here's one of the things he said about writing:

When a writer can't find the nuance of an experience, he usually loads up with adjectives.

Mailer advises well. I overuse adjectives, so his words chastise me. When you next revise something, honor Mailer's memory by looking for ways to replace adjectives, as I tried to do in this post.

Side effects and benefits

Copywriting guru Bob Bly has posted a funny example of what happens when writers "don’t think about the meaning of the words they write."

Check it out.

This week: Pay by the word

Most of us write as if we were getting paid by the word. But in fact, we--and our organizations--are paying by the word.

Writing costs big money to produce and read, mostly in the time spent by writer and reader. Uneconomical writing wastes this money. More important, though, it wastes the money that comes from reader attention and goodwill.

This week, as you revise your drafts, think of each word as costing you ten dollars, ten pounds, ten euros. Revise to cut that cost.

When writers strike

I'm sad about the US TV and film writers' strike, both for altruistic reasons (strikes are always hard on somebody) and for selfish reasons (I miss my daily fix of Jon Stewart).

But the strike reminds us how important writing is.

It's important for us and our businesses too. Today I'm going to try to notice what would happen to my business, and my clients' businesses, without writing. Care to join me?

Letters: what a concept!

Upwrite Press has just posted a helpful list of five reasons to write a letter rather than send an e-mail message. (For those of you who need clarification, a "letter" is an e-mail message that is printed or handwritten onto a sheet of paper, placed in an envelope, and sent by means of a country's postal system--you know, that system that brings you paper magazines and paper copies of spam.)

My favorite from the list:

If your information is private or of a sensitive nature, a letter is the best way to ensure confidentiality—electronic messages may end up in the wrong computer.

(I chose this one because our family has received several medical test results this past year, all sent by postal mail, presumably for that exact reason--to help ensure confidentiality.)