Manage Your Writing

This week: Be your own writing department

In a cartoon I saw once, a Hollywood producer summons his secretary. “I want to send a memo to the parking-lot attendant,” he bellows. “Get me a couple of writers.”

I sympathize. Writing is not often easy or fun, and those of us in business are usually too busy to give it the time it seems to demand. We’d all like to have staff writers on call, to handle those difficult letters and memos that seem to pile up.

Most of us, however—even in large organizations—have to be our own “writing department.” We have to take personal responsibility for the stream of writing tasks that cross our desks.

That’s probably as it should be. As designer and entrepreneur Richard Saul Wurman, president of Access Press, says, “You shortchange yourself if you think that writing is ‘someone else’s problem.’ . . . Even if your job description says  nothing about writing, by regarding yourself as a writer, even privately, you can take advantage of the discipline of  the craft.”

This week, think of yourself as a writing department. Take responsibility for your writing.

 

This week: Take "the liberty of writing poorly"

Comedy writer Larry Gelbart, best known for his work on the TV series M*A*S*H, wrote,

You have to allow yourself the liberty of writing poorly. You have to get the bulk of it done, and then you start to refine it. You have to put down less than marvelous material just to keep going to whatever you think the end is going to be--which may be something else altogether by the time you get there.

This week, take Gelbart's advice. Don't try to "get it right the first time." Give yourself "the liberty of writing poorly," knowing that you'll have a chance to revise.

If you want an answer, ask a question

Politeness is good. But it can cause us to lose focus.

I've seen many messages--paper and e-mail--that ask for information in an excruciatingly polite way:

I am considering buying 500 of your widgets. Could you please let me know whether there is a volume discount for that number and what it would be?

What the writer wants to know is how much 500 widgets will cost. So why not ask?

How much do 500 of your widgets cost?

This week, when you write asking for information, just ask. You can be polite in the next sentence or two.

 

This week: Write to express, not to impress

Great writers have always known that they are communicating to express, not impress. Ultimately, writers must impress their readers with their ideas, not their vocabulary, and a simple, direct vocabulary gets those ideas across more effectively.

Malcolm Forbes said it well: "Pretense invariably impresses only the pretender."

This week, as you revise your drafts, look for places where you may have chosen fancier words in a conscious or unconscious attempt to impress your reader. Replace those words with words that express your meaning more clearly.