Manage Your Writing

This week: Make a resolution

If you're reading this blog, you probably would like to become a more effective business writer in 2009.

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: Give yourself a gift

Those of us celebrating important holidays the next couple of weeks are probably thinking about gifts. Gifts are wonderful--to give and to receive--but one kind of thinking about gifts may be getting in the way of becoming a more effective writer.

Many of us have learned to believe that the ability to write well is a gift. For some writers, it surely is: the great novelist, poet, or playwright is doubtless born as much as made. But the everyday writing that you and I do--the writing that gets the world's work done--requires no special gift. As researcher Frank Smith says, "it is a mistake to regard the thinking that underlies writing as something special, as a unique kind of activity that calls for unusual efforts and abilities."

This week, give yourself a gift: the gift of confidence that writing is a process that can be managed, like any other business process. Know that you're a gifted writer and that you can manage your writing.

This week: Keep your lists parallel

The most frequent grammatical problem I encounter in clients' writing is nonparallel lists. Here's an example: 

1. This item is a complete sentence
2. A noun
3. Ends with a verb phrase

The best short discussion of parallelism I've seen lately was written by Marilynne Rudick for the blog Writing Matters. I encourage you to have a look at it.

This week, as you revise, make sure that any series or list (whether as running text or as a bulleted or numbered list) is grammatically parallel.

This week: Censor your e-mail

Roger Matus's blog Death by Email lists "10 things never to put in email," phrases that can have serious legal implications. They include

2. Delete this email immediately.
6. We're going to do this differently than normal.
10. Is this actually legal?

This week, consider printing out the whole list, sticking it up near your computer, and using it as a constant reminder that some things just shouldn't be said in writing--and perhaps shouldn't be said at all.

(Thanks to Ray Ward at The (New) Legal Writer for the tip.)

This week: Ask "so what?"

A post on the Stepcase Lifehack blog recommends the book Economical Writing, by economist Deirdre McCloskey, and lists five of McCloskey's points. My favorite:

1. Always ask "so what?"

Don’t assume that your topic is important just because you think it is, and don’t assume everyone automatically recognizes its relevance. Be very clear about establishing why your topic is important and why your reader should care. Your reader’s time is very valuable, and he or she could be doing a lot of different things. They have decided, for whatever reason, to take a look at something you have written. Look to inflict interocular trauma. In other words, hit them between the eyes with why what you have done is important. Convince them immediately that they should keep reading your work instead of picking up something someone else has written or playing with the kids.

This week, as you revise your messages, ask "so what?" Make sure you always give your readers a reason to keep reading.

(Thanks to Lifehacker for the link.)